Brad's Montreal Odyessey -- Day 7 , 16 Avril 2013

The seventh of the dailuy blogs, featuring food and drink, from Montreal!

Tuesday it rained.
A lot.
Pelting down, cold rain. Not a day for exploring neighborhoods, though I had the foresight the day before to buy a cheap umbrella on St. Viateur Street at a Jean Coutu, the Duane Reade of Montreal.I had a concert at night too so dinner plans had to take that into account.
Still, I had plans for a rainy day. I went to the Marche Atwater in the Little Burgundy neighborhood, a more "Anglo" area, as they say, west of downtown. It was a short, but soaking, three-block walk from the Metro. Once there, I found a smaller version of the Jean Talon market, perhaps more upscale. It had some hardy maple syrup vendors in outside, but covered stalls.
I wound up buying cheese at Fromagerie Atwater, including a Langres de Champagne that was the disovery of the trip among French cheeses, plus some Saint-Justin, Montreal's local sparkling water I saw only at this shop the whole trip and quite good, coffee and Cuban (!) chocolate, rich and silky and not too sweet, 70 percent cocoa.
Then I got a baguette at the city's premier local bakery, Premiere Moisson, and that was one awesome piece of bread, ttangy, good crust, nicely chewy. VERY friendly ladies work there too, tolerated my French (most Francophones just broke into English when they heard me speak French).
Lunch, or really breakfast the way things went, was a delicious sandwich from a stand in the market called Charcuterie de Tours that had every kind of sausage and cured meat imaginable. I had a strong German-style sausage with really good, sinus-clearing Dijon mustard and topped with fresh sauerkraut and pickles on a tasty hard roll. Washed that down with the Saint-Justin.
On the way out I bought a can of Quebec No. 1 maple syrup and a bit of maple syrup candy, a tasty sucker-style treat.
Slog through the rain to the Burgundy Lion pub to watch my Everton boys play Arsenal, a game Everton should have won but ended in a scoreless draw.
The pub was pure English. They could speak French, but the lingua franca here was English and I heard little French. Awesome selection of Scotch and Irish whisk(e)ys - but oddly no Dewar's, which is really rare in Montreal, and apparently no one drinks Scotch and sodas because when you order one people ask if you want it with Jameson. Uhhhh....
The beer selection was strong and I had pints of the Quebecois Blanche de Chambly -- crisp, refreshing, not sweet as some wheat beers can be -- and of Okanagan Spring ale from British Columbia, which seemed under-hopped and under-powered, kind of bland.
Ate dinner at the Lion after the game. Stayed with the beer for a vegetable curry, nice and spicy and served piping hot over rice. The veggies could have been more varied, seemed like a lot of eggplant.
Bangers and mash was two house-made crumbly pork sausages with a coriander tang, very fresh and nicely cooked over good chunky mashed potatoes to covered with a very dark but perhaps underseasoned gravy. Service from two very, very attractive young lady bartenders was very friendly, even chatty, and prompt with refills of my beers and soda water.
I'm not sure I'd schlep too far out of my way to eat at the Burgundy Lion but if I lived nearby it would a fine local. Also finding soccer bars in Montreal is not all that easy so I'd certainly recommend going for that, big TVs and good beer.
That summed up the food day; I enjoyed the eclectic and nicely varied concert of the Montreal Chamber Orchestra that featured a concerto (more or less) for a 2-stringed Chinese instrument called the erhu (pronounced, as we were told by the soloist. errrrrrrrhhhh---WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!) on themes written around 200 AD in western China. It's the kind of thing I usually hate but this was enjoyable and didn't outstay its welcome The rest of the program was pleasing if not profound even if the Mozart 1st Symphony seemed flattish and tossed off. The  orchestration of Debussy's Petite Suite is always welcome.
Went home, ate some cheese and that good baguette as a snack with a couple of glasses of 2011 La Sablette Muscadet Sevre et Maine Sur Lie, a cheapie pickup at the liquor store and a good example of its kind. Tangy, lemony, some exotic spices on the finish. Paired well with aged goat cheese. In its price range ($12) Muscadet is the best white going these days.
Not bad for a rainy day eh?