Brad's Montreal/New York Odyssey -- Days Nine and Ten

Said goodbye to my hotel, where I would happily stay again, though my advice would be to skip the "free" breakfast, which was dreadful (tasteless croissants, awful coffee, third-rate orange juice) and not worth the price. Much better to walk 10 minutes to Brulerie St. Denis for the best cafe au lait I have ever had.
To Central Station for the train back to New York. VIA has men to help with baggage, the station is roomy and pleasant -- so much better the third-level-of-hell that is Penn Station in New York.
The ride back is long, but lovely scenery along Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. I saw a huge wild turkey strutting serenely in a field near Fort Ticonderoga. I can't imagine a better train for scenery east of the Mississippi.
Amtrak uses old Amfleet I coaches on the Adirondack, which are weary and tired (the carpeting in the cars is badly worn) but quite comfortable. The car was about half full and I was able to stretch out. U.S. customs was no more annoying than usual.
Amtrak sometimes gets a bad rap for indifferent service, but on this train both the train crew and the cafe car attendant were friendly, witty and helpful. Amtrak's cafe-car food is awful -- its dining car food can be good, though -- but then again the food is dreadful on FRENCH trains, so maybe Amtrak gets a pass.
I only need the beverages from the cafe car, though, which are OK (even the coffee is acceptable, if barely so) because I have a picnic packed of raw-milk cheeses, hot Quebecois sausage and crackers. The Langres, from Champagne, was stinky and runny and gooey and yuuuuuuumy. Also had well-aged Prince Edward Island cheddar, a wonderful Camembert, a ripe St. Marcellin and perfect Pont L'Eveque.
Due to Canadian Pacific track work we were about 20 minutes late into New York, but so what, I got more reading done. Cab to my hotel, The Jane, along the Hudson in the Village and chill for a bit before a short walk for dinner at the Corner Bistro.
The Bistro, one of the last old landmarks of the pre-zillionaire West Village left, is slightly misnamed; it's a dive bar with a cool neon sign, cheap booze, an ancient and sagging wooden bar, a jukebox packed with jazz and blues and a menu that offers chili, grilled cheese, a grilled chicken sandwich (which in 20 years of drinking there I think I have seen one person order), french fries, and burgers.
Dinner at the Bistro is an easy call: a bowl of chili, meaty in a rich stewish broth, topped with onions and cheese and best with about 6 serious jolts of Tabasco, followed by the Bistro Burger, which you want medium rare. It comes with lettuce, onions, tomato, cheese and bacon and is the best burger you will ever have. Period. I like extra onion on mine. I'd skip the fries, though they can be good later to soak up booze. They have wine, which I wouldn't order.
Wash it all down with a mug of McSorley's Dark Ale, have a Bushmills for an after-dinner drink and you have not spent $25. This would be a deal anywhere, but in Manhattan it is an epochal, epic bargain.
It helps that the place is often full of oddball Village characters, and the bartenders are classy, clever, fast and characters themselves; one is a playwright and actor, another a superb photographer who has had gallery shows of his work.
The Bistro is open until 4 a.m. every night, no matter what, and the kitchen closes at 3:30 a.m.
Manhattan has been Disneyified, gentrified and transformed by staggering amounts of money into a playground for the world's wealthy, but if you look the old Manhattan is hanging on in a place or two. The Bistro is as old-Manhattan as you can get.
Next day, sleep late and decide to have breakfast at the Cafe Gitane in my hotel before going to an art exhibit.
The cafe tries for, and pretty well hits, a French Mediterranean vibe. High ceilings, lazy ceiling fans, walls painted in soft-pastel washes, big windows, lots of sunshine. A gleaming and glistening full bar is attractive. A neat place to sit and while some time away.
Breakfast was very good. I had a carrot salad, grated carrots in olive oil, orange juice and mint, that, topped with fresh pepper, I could have eaten a huge bowl of by itself. Main was three eggs baked in tomato and basil and topped with grilled merguez sausage, a tasty combo though the sausage was a bit overcooked. Cappuccino was fine, and my Ricard pastis - a necessity in such an environment, which may as well have been Marseilles, if a rich neighborhood there, was served absolutely perfectly, in a Ricard glass with clear ice cubes in a small basket and water on the side in an adorable yellow Ricard-branded pot. This was the best Ricard service ever outside of France. Service in general was friendly if a bit languid; there's another Cafe Gitane in NoLita but the Jane location is far superior.
Off to the Asia Society for a terrific and highly-recommended exhibit of 17th century Chinese painting - running through 2 June; a real eye-opener for me about Chinese art, which I know little about. Also enjoyed an exhibition of statues and pottery from their permanent collection.
To Grand Central via cattle-car No. 6 train for lunch at -- where else? -- the Oyster Bar. The name tells you what to eat there: the raw bar, stews and panroasts; the fancier seafood is probably to be avoided.
A dozen perfect oysters - Cotuits and Martha's Vineyards from Massachusetts, Blueberry Points from Prince Edward Island and East Beach Blondes from Rhode Island, which is where, I must say, my favorite oysters, briny and richly flavorful, are coming from these days.
Unfortunately, the glass of Sancerre I chose to drink with the oysters - Domaine Fournier 2011 - was a dud. Sancerre goes with oysters because of its flinty minerality but this example was far too sweet and lacked any acidity. Very poor, and surprising at the Oyster Bar, where the wine program is outstanding. Stick with Muscadet or Chablis there.
Ran an errand or two then off to Carnegie Hall for the Staatskapelle Dresden under Christian Thielemann delivering a marvelous Bruckner 8th Symphony. Finished up with a late dinner at the Bistro, same as the previous night, then drive out of Manhattan and back to the real after a glorious vacation. Sigh.

Corner Bistro, 331 W. 4th St., New York. 212-242-9502. Open until 4 a.m. daily, kitchen closes at 3:30 a.m.

Cafe Gitane at the Jane Hotel, 113 Jane St., New York. 212-255-4143. Open 7 a.m.-midnight, until 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

Oyster Bar, Grand Central Terminal, 89 E. 42nd St., New York. 212-490-6650. Open 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Mon-Saturday. 

Brad's Montreal Odyssey -- Day Eight, 17 Avril 2013

The eighth of the daily blogs, featuring food and drink, from Montreal!

Last day, always kind of melancholy. But lots to do.
More wonderful cafe au lait and almond croissants, this time with fresh-squeezed orange juice, at the Brulerie St. Denis then off to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
I spent a lot time there and didn't see some of what I wanted to, such as the design collections and Asian art. What I saw was pretty good, including paintings from Matisse, Rembrandt, Monet and Brueghel the Younger, a Calder mobile, sculpture by Henry Moore and Rodin, a good Napoleon exhibit and a dazzling display of old-master drawings from Bernini, Tiepolo, Fragonard and Brueghel the Elder. And all free, too.
Lunch was at the museum's cafeteria, which was a good if strange whitefish-and-artichoke sandwich on tasty black bread. I had tomato juice, advertised as specifically Canadian which was intriguing and was fine, sparkling water and a very good maple-syrup cake. Recommended if you're in the museum and want to save time on lunch.
I then went to one of the province's "signature" liquor stores to look around and was dazzled as a wine geek. Five magnums of Latour, all from different vintages. Every first growth Bordeaux in multiple vintages. D'Yquem in all kinds of vintages in every format. Imperials of vintage Champagane. Mouton Rothschild's marc. Every great Burgundy name (except for DRC) such as Vogue, Roumier, Jayer, Leflaive, Leroy, etc., every Grand Cru red or white. Alsace, Port, Italy, the Loire, all the best vineyards and Crus. Top California wines. It was amazing.
No purchases there -- are you kidding? -- and went on to the free night at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. Their collection and exhibits were a little disappointing; a large exhibit of Quebecois abstraction was colorful and well-crafted but very derivative; you went to painting after painting and just called out the influences: 'Pollock. Newman. Rothko. Motherwell. Kline.'
They did have a great film by the Swiss artist David Weiss called "The Way Things Go" which is 30 minutes of the world's biggest Rube Goldberg contraption and highly worth watching. That alone was worth the trip to the museum..
Dinner plans called for me to go back near my hotel because I wanted to hear the jazz band at Diese Onze. I had seen a sign outside an average-looking bar on Rue St.-Denis called Brasserie Cherrier advertising Alsatian cuisine at very fair prices. I'd be craving choucroute garnie lately, so off I went.
The situation was a bit unusual. Brasserie Cherrier is your average neighborhood bar where locals of all ages (18 to 65 or older, from what I saw) come to play pool, drink Molson and watch the Canadiens, who were losing to Pittsburgh this night. The place looks like just what it is.
But inside the bar was a restaurant, Restaurant Flamme, run in theory independently from the bar. The bar man brings you your drinks and you pay him for those; the waiter, in my case a chef moonlighting because they didn't have anyone else, handles the food.
The wine list had seven wines, all available by the glass, three whites, three reds and a rose. Two of the whites were Alsatian -- Willm's 2010 Riesling and 2011 Pinot Blanc -- which seemed like a nice coincidence until the waiter told me that the bar man had changed his wines to help the chef out. So the operations, while independent, look out for the others' interests.
The menu had bar snacks (they cook the nacho chips to order for each other), burgers (they grind the meat to order), the wonderful Alsatian snack pie called flammekueche (which I saw rolled to order as a pizza man would toss dough to order) and some other Alsatian mains with sausage, chicken or pork.
I ordered the choucroute ($15), which, for $4 more, was turned into a meal with soup, dessert and coffee.
I started with a glass of rose, a 2011 Lamura Casa Girelli from Sicily, which had a strawberry nose, a lovely deep-pinkish color, and all kinds of sun-splashed fruit on the palate, with a wash of acidity at the finish. A lovely aperitif and good with strongly-flavored salads, fish, or poultry.
The meal was a true bargain. The soup was a minestrone much like a Philadelphia friend makes, bursting with fresh veggie flavor in a tasty, homemade stock. The choucroute was enormous - a massive pile of well-flavored sauerkraut and two boiled potatoes with slabs of Canadian bacon (of course), regular bacon, and pork shoulder plus a frankfurter of high quality and a big link of fresh, chunky, spicy pork sausage. Filling and flavorful.
Dessert was a lemony pound cake with creme anglaise, light and refreshing., Coffee was fine. For less than $20, a terrific bargain.
I drank two glasses of the Willm which was drinking perfectly now; limpid, golden, luscious, bags of Ries appley fruit, enough structure to avoid preciousness, just perfect. I find Willm's basic wines to be very fine in their category.
Service could not have been friendlier, if a little harried and scattershot, and can be summed up by the bar man's leaving the Ries bottle on my table after my second glass, saying, 'there's not enough for a third glass here, finish it off if you like.' That is what they call a lagniappe in New Orleans, something you neither asked for or deserve, but is welcome.
The place is recommended if you can stand the vibe of eating around tables of hockey fans -- Philadelphians who are rightly horrified at the thought of doing so with Flyer fans should know that Canadian fans are much more civilized -- in a neighborhood bar. The food is worth the trip.
I finished up the night at Diese Onze, listening to The Jan Jarcyzk Trio -- the playing of Jarcyzk, the 60-ish piano player, reminded me of Tommy Flanagan, and I have no higher compliment -- enjoying that wonderful stout from McAuslan and chatting with my friend Gary. A terrific way to end what was a magical week.
Returning to the U.S. -- but not home -- loomed. Stay tuned for a report from New York!

Restaurant Flamme and Brasserie Cherrier, 3638 Rue St. Denis, Montreal. Food 1100-2200; Bar until 0300.