I managed to get myself out of the room and down to the hotel gym at on Monday morning. When someone consumes as much pork, foie gras and seafood as I had at APDC you need to do something to burn off the calories! One hour and 500 calories later, I was lucky if I was 10% of the way to offsetting my caloric intake of the past 2 days. Would I do it again you ask? Well at least once per year!
On our last full day in Montreal we set our sights on some more clothes shopping on Rue St Catherines looking for good prices on the stylish clothes you see all of the locals wearing. French Canadians have a sense of style that you don’t see in the rest of the country. It does not seem to matter whether they are young or old, short or tall, skinny or heavy set. They have a sense of style! We were hoping to find a bit of that for ourselves before heading home.
On the way we stopped at a small restaurant in the office district just off St Catherines. We spotted a pizza place that was 90% full at 1145 with men in business attire, women taking a break from a shopping trip downtown, and other local office workers. Add to that the wood fired oven we were sold on having a couple pizzas to get us through the afternoon. We managed to get a table near the door at ‘Il Focolaio’ (1223 Carre Phillips, 514-879-1045, www.ilfocolaio.ca) and within minutes the place was packed without a seat to be found. Since building a wood fired cob oven in the summer of 2010 we are always looking for places to try and compare to what we are doing at home. While they were quite good, I have to say I am happy with my home made pizzas which will be featured in the next couple weeks on my blog.
Later in the afternoon we dropped into the Plateau Lounge at our hotel, W Montreal. As one would expect a lounge is almost empty on Monday at 1630. We had an amazing cocktail called a ‘Cote d’Artagnan’ which consisted of cognac, whiskey, sweet vermouth and maple syrop with twists of lemon and orange. I will share the drink recipe if/when I can convince the hotel to share it with me! We asked the bartender for restaurant recommendations for Monday night, a night that most Montreal restaurants are closed. She recommended ‘F-Bar’, a Portuguese restaurant at Place des Artes. After a quick review of their website I was hopeful that we had stumbled upon another great Montreal restaurant.
We skipped making a reservation and walked over to Place des Artes where we came across two very modern restaurants along the waterpark. Both were brand new glass and steel buildings (we should have taken pictures) that were no more than 16 feet wide, with 12 foot ceilings and seemed to stretch forever from the front door, through the bar, the dining area, then to the kitchen at the very end. We were in for a really pleasant surprise!
The restaurant was busy but not overcrowded for 1800 on a Monday night. The hostess brought us to a great table beside the bar where Jeff and Phil could see at least half of the dishes being served to other patrons, since I was facing the window I didn’t have the advantage of seeing the amazing dishes being ushered to one table and the next. After the first 5 minutes of watching plates pass by Jeff knew exactly what he was having for a starter and the main was obvious from the menu.
Tonight we each decided to order different appies and mains, share… maybe but not for sure…
For starters we ordered the pea soup featured on the menu and their website, the mackerel that we saw going to another table, and the charcuterie platter. I had the charcuterie platter with 3-4 slices each of salami, prosciutto, capicolla, chorizo, brawn (jellied pig head), rabbit/sweetbread terrine as well as a bowl of pickled gherkins, radishes, mushrooms and pearl onions. I have ordered many charcuterie platters before and have often felt ripped off by the portions, not so at F bar, where the platter was delicious and generous. Phil ordered the pea soup which I had assumed was a hot pea soup. He kindly offered to share but I kindly refused. It wasn’t until our flight home that he told us it was a refreshing cold pea soup with crispy bacon and fresh mint foam, now I wish I’d taken him up on his offer.
As much as we both enjoyed our starters, nothing could compare to Jeff’s mackerel. Two fillets of mackerel served on 3 sauces (almond, coco bean and chorizo/pepper). I could have eaten 3 orders alone! Simply amazing.
For our mains we ordered the lamb burger, cod (morue) and Magret duck breast. Again Jeff scored on his choice of mains, the magret duck breast. The duck was served in round stainless tin on top of new potatoes, olives, DiMaggio onions, mushrooms, strips of guanciale and tarragon. The duck breast, although not overly large, was seared to rare perfection. What an incredible dinner.
The lamb burger with salad and fries was Phil’s choice. He was thrilled to bite into his burger on a home-made Portuguese bun to find it cooked medium rare, the way all burgers should be served (if you trust the chef). It was served on top of a nice slow roasted slice of onion and topped with a cucumber-mint raita, not something you’d expect on a burger but it really worked with the lamb burger. The fries looked well prepared but were a bit soft (they needed to be eaten first, but Phil was far too eager to try the lamb), not nearly as good as everything else at F bar.
My black cod was also served in a stainless metal tin like the duck but with a much simpler presentation. The seared black cod was just barely cooked through, as I like it, layered atop mashed potatos and braised fennel. The mashed potatoes were a very complex preparation of ‘sardine parmentier’ which consists of mashed yellow potatoes, sardines, grainy Dijon mustard and cream. An amazing combination that I will try at home after making a batch of APDC mashed potatoes!
Dinner at F bar was a great way to wrap-up our trip to Montreal. The total bill including a couple good local beer, a nice bottle of Portuguese white wine, tip and tax was $220. F bar and her sister restaurant ‘Ferreira Café’ on Rue Peel are strong recommendations for anyone travelling to Montreal. Now it is time to pack all our new clothes, amaro, pastis and chocolate from ‘Chocolats de Chloe’. I did not provide a review of Chocolats de Chloe (546 Rue Duluth Est, 514-849-5550, www.leschocolatsdechloe.com) but if you like chocolate you’ll love this shop that only uses Valrhona, my favourite chocolate, in everything she makes.
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