Tag Archives: montreal restaurants

LUNCHING LAWRENCE

Because I work every dinner service at Lawrence, my only opportunity to actually enjoy our food (as a client)is during lunch. Luckily, a lot of the goodies that we offer at dinner — like potted rabbit, pickled smelt, grilled ox tongue, and, of course, our desserts! — are available on our lunch menu, too. (And so much more affordable!)

The other day I stopped in with a friend and we went nuts over the menu: golden shallots with fresh goat’s curd; baked borlotti beans with chewy bacon and horseradish cream; creamy, gooey celery gratin (it’s so good, it reminds me of cheese pizza); our famous housemade charcuterie and pickles… it was a feast. All it was missing was a few bottles of wine.

A FOND FAREWELL

[Photo by Marie-France Coallier]

After 10 days of blogging, a week’s worth of recipe testing, and a million interviews later, my Montréal en lumière coverage for the Montreal Gazette is finally over!

My frenzy of reporting ended with this nice article featuring chef-contributed recipes. I have always been a little intimidated by chef-written recipes (so many steps! so many small parts! so many coulis!), and these are no joke. With the exception of Seattle chef Ethan Stowell’s kale and pancetta-stuffed roast quail (which I made for a dinner party the other night — huge hit!), these recipes are pretty advanced. (The last recipe, contributed by Belgian chef Alex Malaise requires egg scissors, gelatin leaf, whipped-cream dispenser, and nitrous oxide cartridges! Hahahahaah-no). But still, it’s really amazing to see how a chef’s mind works, how they conceive of “steps” in a recipe, how a dish goes from empty plate to a work of art. Even if you wouldn’t make these recipes for yourself, they’re fascinating to read — a peek into the mind of some of the world’s most interesting chefs.

Read the full story here.

HAPPY DECISION MAKING: LEFTOVER LOBSTER OPTIONS

Leftovers. I love them. After an outrageous Saturday date night eating spicy grilled shrimp, 30 day dry-aged steaks, broiled lobster tail, and a dozen oysters on the half shell (not including the cheesecake we ordered, as we both only managed a single bite each), we left Queue de Cheval with not an insignificant amount of leftover lobster. Half a pound, at least. By the way, that restaurant is out of control.

I’ve been brainstorming all morning how to utilize this precious crustacean gold — omelet? pasta? buried underneath puff pastry? risotto? — and all I can think about is my mother’s brilliantly fluffy-yet-crispy fried rice. Her fried rice ingredients are always slightly different depending on the mood she’s in, and the last iteration I enjoyed had huge pieces of lump crab and lobster in it. I’m not even going to try to imitate its seafaring perfection, so I think I’ll stick with the omelet.