Restaurants

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Au Pied de la Chute Restaurant, Richelieu

Today, my uncle treated my grand-mother and us to lunch at the charming Au pied de la chute restaurant in Richelieu. It is so named ‘at the foot of the falls’ because it is on the banks of the Richelieu River right across from the dam. It’s a fine dining establishment that favours local products (produits du terroir).

We ate out on the terrace, so I did not see the interior, which must have been charming since the restaurant is set in a traditional Quebec home made of field stone.

Au pied de la chute

The very affordable lunch menu includes soup or salad with your meal, bread, and a hot beverage. The potage (smooth vegetable soup without cream) was apparently very good, but I opted for a lovely salad with a dressing that apparently smelled Japanese.

For the main course, my mother opted for the deer and Brie burger with frites while the rest of us all went for the lightly breaded perch with rice and roasted vegetables. Very, very delicious! There wasn’t that much on the lunch menu that had inspired me (the rest was red meat or mussels with curry or a pasta dish with artichokes and sun dried tomatoes that sounded good), but I don’t need much choice when something stands out so obviously! I especially liked the leek confit served over the fish.

We all had the German chocolate cake for dessert, a sliver of goodness served with some fruit pieces ($2!). The coffee was delicious.

Needless to say, I was very impressed with Au pied de la chute!

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Prato Pizzeria, Montreal

When I got in from errands today, my mother asked me what I had planned for dinner because she was in the mood for thin crust pizza and there was a well-reviewed restaurant in Montreal she wanted to try out.

So off we all went to downtown Montreal to Prato Pizzeria, located on the iconic Saint-Laurent Boulevard, known as ‘La Main’ (as in the English word main, not the French word hand!). The restaurant is nestled between chic boutiques, European-style cafés, big name fast food joints, and is just a couple of doors from the world famous Schwartz Deli.

Pizzerias like Prato are a dying breed because of environmental laws forbidding charcoal ovens. All existing restaurants are grand-fathered in. This restaurant was listed as one of the top three places to eat pizza in Montreal.

We ordered a pitcher of beer since it was super hot out and we had parked several blocks from the restaurant so we were feeling rather parched! A pitcher contains six small glasses of beer, so we had two each. We started off with the arugula salad, which had cherry tomatoes, Parmesan shavings, and a nice lemon vinaigrette. Very tasty!

They shared a pizza that had olives and anchovies (shudders) while I ordered my usual for this type of pizza joint, a Margherita, with Parmesan, bocconcini, tomato sauce, and fresh basil. The pizzas are considered to be sized for one person and are served on a paper-lined baking sheet:

This was pizza perfection. The edge of the crust was crunchy, the base was flexible, the edges were charred, the tomato sauce was smooth, the cheese was stretchy, and the basil was piquant. Yuuuuuum. I wouldn’t have been able to eat the whole thing, but had no leftovers since they took one slice to try it out.

For dessert, my mother and I each had an espresso (macchiato for me) and their Skor-chocolate mousse (excellent) while my step-mother tried the tiramisu (very good). The coffee was particularly good, being extremely strong and flavourful without being bitter.

We all agreed that the next time we’re craving good pizza, we’re going back to Prato!

On the way back to the car, we stopped at a Viennese-style bakery for bread and pastries for the morning. I don’t eat sugar first thing anymore, so I opted for a plain croissant even though the chocolatines were calling my name!

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Entering a Dreary Stretch

The heat wave didn’t last long. It’s been a little cooler every day. I awoke to a very damp world yesterday but the daytime rain held off till tonight. Blech. But it’s not like I could be out enjoying the sun anyway; I have way too much work to do!

I did make a brief escape tonight to grab some more sushi from Hiro. Parking there, I discovered that Moya has a burnt out headlight! I hope that putting in a new one is easy and that I can find one here in town. I don’t want to drive anywhere but a place that sells automotive lights next time I get in the truck, and I am going to have to wait for full sun to do so. I’m just lucky I didn’t get pulled over this evening.

As for dinner, I decided to be lazy and cheap and order a special where the chef makes the choices. I did ask them for no tempura, no cream cheese, and no avocado and was told that was fine.

Behold dinner:

This was a pretty good selection! That said, I’m ordering à la carte again next time. For one thing, I would rather have had octopus than shrimp and the dark red fish.

I have no idea what that dark red fish is. By process of elimination on the menu, it is izumidai, which is tilapia and not red, but the translation the restaurant gives is rouget, which is goatfish or red mullet, which makes more sense. So colour me confused except for the fact that I didn’t like it; it just didn’t taste as fresh as the lovely salmon next to it.

There is also kappa maki, which are cucumber rolls. Nice and crunchy! Finally, the big rolls or futomaki, don’t appear on the menu and were absurdly delicious in that they featured lettuce and red pepper! Very nice, I’ll admit, but they seem like a slippery slope to eating cream cheese with my rice and nori! 🙂

For $13, this was an impressive spread and Hiro has lived up to its first impression.

I’m off to spend some time in the garage with my cats.

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A Familial Weekend

It’s been a pretty lazy weekend. The most exhausting thing I did was battle the throngs at Canadian Tire Saturday morning to pick up a 50% off ($27) 300 watt inverter with USB ports for Moya. Now, I’m keeping an eye out for sales on 12V deep cycle batteries.

My sister-in-law told me to come over at some point this weekend to see the house she and my brother bought last fall. So I walked over there Saturday afternoon and ended up spending a couple of hours helping these new parents with their chores. Sis-in-law was horrified, but I told that that’s what aunts do and that since I have more experience being an aunt than she has being a mother, she should just go along with it. 🙂

I had the house to myself today and didn’t really know how to spend the day. I had to sit around and wait for Vidéotron to come effect some repairs, but the guy was here first thing, which left me a full day to fill. My grand-mother had left her sunglasses here the other night, so I decided to call her in the early afternoon to see if she’d be up for a visitor.

As it turned out, one of my aunts called to wish my step-mother a happy birthday and mentioned that she was heading to the cinema and then dinner with my grand-mother. So there went my grand plan for the afternoon. I mentioned that grand-maman’s sunglasses were here and my aunt said they’d swing buy to pick them up shortly.

I had just sat down with my katakana workbook when the doorbell rang. I handed the sunglasses to my aunt and she asked if I wanted to go out with them. If so, I had five minutes to get ready! I ran downstairs for footwear and my purse, locked up the house, and headed out to the car.

En route, I learned that we were going to see Les Adieux à la reine (Farewell, My Queen), a movie about the last days of French queen Marie Antoinette told from the point of view of the servants. I know a lot about this period of history, but not from this perspective. The movie is based on a novel and the protagonist did not exist, but it was still a fascinating and wonderful movie. I especially liked that although it was a period film, it felt contemporary.

After, we couldn’t make up our mind about where to go to dinner. Of all the options around the cinema, only one really appealed to me so I suggested Casey’s. We all had a nice dinner including dessert and excellent coffee.

As our meal was wrapping up, my aunt realised that she’d lost an earring. So after eating, we decided to retrace our steps in the hopes of finding it. We wound up back in the same parking spot at the cinema and, lo and behold, there was the earring under the car in the next spot, undamaged! Talk about lucky!

So it’s been a lovely, relaxing weekend at my end. I hope that the week ahead is very busy with work!

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There’s Nothing Like Quebec Fast Food

From sous-marins to steamés to poutine, Quebec fast food as no competition in North America. Quebecers just know what to do with grease and especially with potatoes.

My mother told me she was heading out for hot dogs so I placed an order for a ‘steamé all dressed avec une frite’ (steamed all dressed (mustard, onion, cabbage) hot dog with French fries).

The casse-croûte messed up my order slightly, sending me a toasté, but no big deal, it was all yummy! For a truly authentic flavour, you should leave your fries in the greasy paper sack, but I like my ketchup (mixed with LOTS of black pepper and some salt) on the side.

My mother eats super healthy, so this was an unexpected treat today. I make it a point to avoid casse-croûtes at all cost, so I only eat like this maybe two or three times a year. I’ve already had a poutine this summer, so I’m pretty much done for this trip. *smirks because she could justify a few more trips as ‘catching up on lost time’*

I took this picture with my phone, motivating me to figure out how to get pictures off the dang thing. The cable and memory card didn’t work, so I did some research and found a solution: Bluetooth. First time I’ve ever used that tech! All that bla bla bla to reward you with a pic of me sitting at the wheel of my truck! 😀