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http://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/dining/a5818/montreal-restaurant-scene/ Asked to name the best restaurant city in America—meaning the United States—I offered the only reasonable answer: Montreal, a city with the culture, the cooks, the restaurants, the provisions, and the hospitality. (Also of significance is Canada's nicely diminished dollar, which makes dining a deal.) Such a welcome package was neatly summed up by a Canadian pal, Mike Boone, who worked with me at the Montreal Star in the 1970s. He said, "We're not just nice, we're cheap." Of course, Montreal isn't exactly in the United States, should you be hung up on such details as international borders. (Obviously, I am not.) The city is in the province of Quebec, a part of Canada as long as there has been a Canada. My belief that Montreal is really a lost colony of the United States is strengthened by the indisputable fact that our Continental Army captured and briefly held it in 1775. One need only glance at a map from those days, when the province of Quebec was nestled just north of the 13 colonies, to admire the logic. Allow me to add this: The citizens of Quebec practically exhausted themselves trying to secede from Canada in the latter half of the 20th century, only to fail when a 1995 referendum lost by a few thousand votes. To me Montreal is spiritually a part of the U.S., a kind of New York City in miniature, although it's even more like an independent city-state. OLD MONTREAL AT NIGHT. DENNIS TANGNEY JR./GETTY IMAGES The restaurants of Montreal are the attraction. Their evolution, which started in this century, has been swift. They are modest in size and technically proficient, and they provide a sense of casual fine dining that is embraced more wholeheartedly here than anywhere in the U.S. The dining culture is descended from those of both France and England— thankfully, more from France—leaving Montreal a sort of culinary orphan, free to seek its own path. New York, which was considered the best American dining city in most eras, but no longer, has become ground zero for casual dining. (A restaurant critic for the New York Times recently announced his top dish of the year: a sticky bun.) Montreal has developed an engaging dining personality at the same time that New York has been losing the one it had. Famed Montreal restaurateur David McMillan (Joe Beef, Le Vin Papillon) says, "I'll tell you why Montreal is the best restaurant city, and it's not about the skill of our cooking. We have the most advanced dining public in North America. I serve lamb liver cooked rare to 17-year-old girls. I sell tons of kidneys and sweetbreads. Manhattan is one giant steakhouse. Everybody there wants steak, or red tuna. I don't want to know how much red tuna is sold every day." Chef Normand Laprise, the grand old man of Montreal chefs (even if he is only 54), adds, "I visit pastry shops in the States, and I know Americans are not open- minded customers. It's hard to sell any- thing other than cupcakes and macarons." Montreal has had multiple culinary revolutions in the past 50 years. When I worked for the Star the restaurants primarily served French cuisine, albeit not quite what you'd find in Larousse Gastronomique. The Beaver Club at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel featured such fantastical dishes as Le Coeur du Charolais Soufflé aux Splendeurs du Périgord. The top chefs, who came to Canada from France following World War II or stayed in Montreal after working at Expo 67, were a little too fixated on flambéing and melting cheese. After the financial debacle of the 1976 Olympics, which almost bankrupted Quebec, the restaurants declined precipitously. The only noteworthy and enduring establishment was Toqué!, operated by Laprise. In 2001 came Au Pied du Cochon, which was informal and inventive. Chef Martin Picard embraced local products and reinvented old, somewhat primitive dishes such as jellied pig's head and poutine, an ungodly assemblage of french fries, cheese curds, and gravy that arose in rural Quebec in the 1950s. Picard created a regional cuisine and, more important, prized local products as few before him had. ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW Joe Beef, the next great restaurant, did away with tablecloths and menus (using blackboards instead). That was followed by Les 400 Coups (in the French tradition) and Lawrence (quite Anglo), establishments embracing either side of the local language divide. They were among the places that made Montreal the best for restaurants in this hemisphere, one where fine dining has been transformed into a modern ideal. No other city does it as well. DAY 1: FARM FRESH MEETS CRAZY GENIUS Daniel Boulud, who has a restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton Montreal, tells me that a visitor can grasp the essence of the dining culture before arriving, simply by looking out an airplane window. "Twenty minutes before you land, you pass over the farms, the greenhouses. This isn't California. Here you have really small farms next to each other, not industrialized." So as I fly in I peer out the window. First I see mountaintops and lakes, then silos and barns. Boulud is right. After we land, my traveling companion and I head to Les 400 Coups for lunch. The room is primarily in shades of charcoal and black, understated. The clientele, like most people in this city, dresses stylishly. The food is auspicious. Our squash soup is not like other squash soups. No bulk. No boredom. It's speckled with drops of olive oil, as though they had floated down from a cloud. The duck croquette is precisely as duck should be: rich, savory, skinless, and easy to eat. If there were such a thing as a wagyu duck burger, this would be it. AN ARRAY OF DISHES FROM LE MOUSSO, WHICH FEATURES A NEW TASTING MENU EVERY DAY. @ONDEJEUNE Les 400 Coups also has a pastry chef, a category of professional disappearing from American restaurants. I don't mean to overdo the compliments, but the desserts are notable as well: delicious and artistic, a little Georges Braque, a little forest tableau; the lemon cream dessert includes sea buckthorn. I would not be surprised if the pastry chef forages when off duty. I feared that our choice for dinner, Le Mousso, an all-tasting-menu restaurant that had just opened, would be like all the tasting-menu joints in America, the chef desperately seeking to express himself. Such food is occasionally brilliant. Too often it's awful. My friend was intrigued, certain it would be different here. She was correct. The restaurant is very Brooklyn, with an array of seating options at tables and counters, plus hanging lightbulbs and a chef, Antonin Mousseau-Rivard, who sports a short beard, a knit cap, tattooed arms, and Adidas shower sandals. He is self-taught, mostly via Instagram, and he says, "I didn't even work at a good restaurant in my life." We are handed a printed menu. It looks weird, but tasting menus always do. We eat seven dishes, all marrying ingredients never previously combined. But the wagyu beef from Quebec accented with slightly salty sturgeon caviar is masterful, as is the cool arctic char nestled in what appears to be a paint box of colors and flavors. Even the desserts are arresting, and desserts prepared by savory chefs are rarely that. The first is labeled sang, which means blood. I'm frightened, as I'm sure the chef means me to be, but it's blood sausage ice cream as Häagen-Dazs might make it, plus Quebec cheddar crumble in an apple-vinegar reduction. (Yes, Quebec has a flourishing cheese industry.) I suggest to Mousseau-Rivard that he might be a crazy genius, and he replies, "I like the word crazy more than genius." DAY 2: LOCAL HEROES A few blocks from the Parc du Mont- Royal, a revered green space designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, sits Beauty's, a luncheonette owned by Hymie Sckolnick, 95. He is always there. Hymie bought the shop in 1942 for $500. He is nice enough not to brag about his investment prowess. BREAKFAST AT BEAUTY'S, A LOCAL FIXTURE SINCE 1942. MICKAEL BANDASSAK Breakfast at Beauty's followed by a park stroll serves two vital purposes: The park provides visitors with an aware- ness of the physical glory of the city, as it's built on the slopes of the multitier hill Mount Royal, and Beauty's remains a notable example of Montreal's enduring (and somewhat inexplicable) fascination with Jewish food, most famously its bagels—smaller, sweeter, and superior to New York's—and its pastrami-like smoked meat. ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW At Beauty's, bagels from the St.-Viateur bagel shop (officially La Maison du Bagel) accompany the "famous mishmash," a kind of omelet that would be scorned by French chefs, inasmuch as it is not golden yellow or elegantly contoured. It consists of eggs, scrambled and browned a bit, the way my grandmother made hers, plus hot dog, salami, green pepper, and fried onion. You will sigh. You will burp. Unmatched in Montreal (or anywhere) is Le Vin Papillon, owned by David McMillan. The food is casual, mostly vegetables. The place takes no reservations and for a long time was nearly impossible to get into, although recently it doubled in size and the struggle has subsided. I recommend arriving at 3 p.m., when it opens, although take care not to wait by the wrong door, the permanently closed one, or you'll feel as if you've been locked out. We have celery root ribbons bathed in bagna cauda, a Piedmontese sauce made with garlic and anchovies; charcoal-roasted white turnips with housemade pomegranate molasses; and the best dish of all: a curiously savory hummus of hubbard squash with homemade focaccia. LE VIN PAPILLON'S CHALKBOARD MENU. RANDALL BRODEUR We don't leave until 6 and decide to skip a formal dinner, choosing instead a late smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz's, which seems to be open day and night. Schwartz's never changes, although the ownership has. The original proprietor, a Jewish immigrant from Romania, is long gone, and Schwartz's is now the property of a consortium that includes Céline Dion. I order my smoked meat fatty—most customers request medium or lean—and the waiter says, "Good for you." Maybe the place has changed: That's a long speech for a Schwartz's waiter. The rye bread continues to be tasteless, the smoked meat is still really good, the cole slaw reminds me of North Carolina, and the fries aren't as great as they used to be, but they're not bad. DAY 3: OLD FRENCH, NEW BRITISH Maison Boulud is admirable for who owns it (Daniel Boulud), for where it resides (in the historic Ritz-Carlton), and for its lovely location adjoining a small garden and duck pond (request a table overlooking both). The restaurant is among the last of its kind, a French one (well, mostly French) in a city where French cuisine is vanishing. (This is happening everywhere in North America; it just seems more baffling in Quebec, where more than half the population is French-speaking.) I order a lunch that spins me back in time: housemade pâté of startling freshness and eminent richness, and confit of guinea fowl leg in a miraculously silken foie gras sauce. The kitchen sends out lovely ravioli stuffed with sheep's milk cheese. It doesn't taste French, and shouldn't—the executive chef, Riccardo Bertolino, is from Bologna. THE MAISON BOULUD KITCHEN. Dinner that evening is entirely anglophile, at Maison Publique, an appealing tavern that offers only Canadian wines (and somehow pulls it off) and plates of mostly meaty foods that sound peculiar, as British cuisine almost always does. I never miss a chance to eat here. We order andouille sausage (reddish, dreamy, and fiery) spread on toast, and tender lonza, or salumi, made from free-range piglets raised for the restaurant in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The main room has an old wooden floor, dark paneling, and mounted deer heads with soccer scarves wrapped around their necks. The menu is a well-lit corkboard to which is pinned a list of food and drink. Folks gather around it to discuss the dinner choices, a sign of changing times. When I lived in Montreal in the 1970s, during the separatist movement, concerned young people gathered in bars and pubs to sing protest songs demanding freedom from Canada. Now they chat about the origins of local meats and vegetables. DAY 4: A POUTINE CHALLENGE We have made no lunch plans, but when desperate I always call the nearest hot dog joint. On Saint Lawrence Boulevard is the Montreal Pool Room, which opened in 1912 in a different location not far from the current one. (Other changes have occurred: no more pool tables.) In case you have trouble finding it, directly across the street is the garish marquee of Café Cléopatre, which features stripteaseuses and danseuses à gogo. ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW My friend calls the Pool Room and asks, "Are you open? Are you serving food?" A sweetheart of a counterman replies, "Yes, madame. Hot dog, hamburger, cheeseburger. You come, you eat." She has her first Montreal hot dog. They're famous, even if they're bland compared with New York's. Here they're served correctly: steamed and topped with mustard, relish, and mild chopped onions. She also insists on poutine. I await her disappointment, but she loves it, saying, "It filled my every poutine expectation." If you're from New Jersey and enjoy disco fries, you might love poutine too. Hot dogs followed by poutine can be filling, which makes Hôtel Herman—it's not a hotel and there is no Herman—an excellent option for dinner. It offers small plates that are unusually small. The food is unexpectedly elegant, given the rough-hewn decor (wide plank floors that look as old as Montreal itself, tin ceiling, bare lightbulbs). Little logs of housemade foie gras are brilliantly composed, topped with crumbs and cranberries. The chef, Marc-Alexandre Mercier, bakes his own bread, dark and earthy and easily worth the $2 surcharge. The sweetbreads come with mashed potatoes from a variety called Ozette, grown in Quebec. They are mesmerizing, and it's not just the added buttermilk and cream. Mercier tells me his way with vegetables is a result of childhood trauma: His mother made him eat a bowl of rutabaga so awful it made him cry. DAY 5: GENTRIFICATION FLAMBEE Lawrence, among the most Anglo of the Anglo establishments, is blessed with big windows that allow in an abundance of light, a major reason I love to have lunch there. The staff is sweet, the wine list just right, the crockery seemingly from a church basement sale, and the menu filled with dishes you might never have eaten before. Fried endive topped with snowy crab, an unlikely concoction, is crunchy and juicy, impeccably fresh. The desserts are simple but superlative, the "burnt" chocolate pudding much like an all chocolate crème brûlée, and the warm ginger cake is topped with a crème anglaise that I'm tempted to drink. In the evening we set out to see two new restaurants with unusual appeal. Both feature wood-burning ovens, which are unusual in Montreal, and both are in newly gentrified sections of the city. A TRAY OF OYSTERS AT HOOGAN & BEAUFORT. ALISON SLATTERY PHOTOGRAPHY Hoogan & Beaufort is in a former industrial park in Rosemont where the Canadian Pacific Railway once built locomotives. An excellent consequence: It has stunningly high ceilings. William Saulnier, one of the partners, says that in the restaurant's opening days many of the calls they received started out, "Where are you?" Foxy is in a neighborhood once largely populated by Irish immigrants. Both of these spots are following an established American trend, moving away from midtown to more remote locations where rents are cheaper and space more generous. We weren't able to eat at Hoogan & Beaufort, only peek in, because we were dining with Lesley Chesterman, a friend who is the restaurant critic for the Montreal Gazette, and she was reviewing Foxy. She seemed to like my theory that Montreal belonged to the U.S. She said, "Montreal has never felt less Canadian to me." I leave the analysis of Foxy to Chesterman, enthusiastic about everything except the two dishes prepared in the wood- burning oven. About my favorite she wrote, "I loved the flatbread we ordered. Covered in melted raclette cheese, red onions, potatoes, and house-smoked ham, it was reminiscent of an Alsatian tarte flambée. We scarfed it back in minutes, the only problem being that one of the pieces of ham popped off my slice and, as I discovered the next morning, fell into my purse under the table." DAY 6: END ON A SWEET NOTE For me, departure days begin with a trip to the St.-Viateur bagel shop, where I buy a few dozen to take home. The price these days is 80 cents each. Hymie Sckolnick told me they used to cost two cents. When I complain to the counterman, he laughs and tosses in a few extra. Hymie's is a good name to drop in Montreal. PATRICE DEMERS WORKS HIS MAGIC AT PATRICE PÂTISSIER. MARC KANDALAFT Our getaway meal is lunch at Toqué!, which is run by Laprise, that most essential of Montreal chefs. His new establishment is a member of Relais & Châteaux, and his kitchen is a marvel, overflowing with cooks. The food isn't what I think of as new Montreal cuisine—it's too precise and luxurious—but it's up there with the best haute cuisine in North America. An appetizer of arctic char is creamy and silky, tasting of smoke and lemon. My Montreal Star pal Boone, joining us, calls it "the cotton candy of fish." Chicken, prepared sous-vide, is so moist there's beading on the breast. My friend has what the waitress calls "a perfect egg," cooked slowly, with a sauce made from a long-simmering duck reduction. Dessert is so ethereal—mostly honey, jelly, and cream—that on the way to the airport we stop at Patrice Pâtissier so I can pick up a few stuffed-on-the-spot chocolate-banana cream puffs. Patrice Demers, the owner of this new shop on Notre Dame West, was the first pastry chef at Les 400 Coups and thus is a hero of mine. But then, so many Montreal chefs are. Alan Richman is a 16-time winner of the James Beard Award for food writing.

http://sandiego.eater.com/2015/2/2/7963755/real-deal-montreal-style-bagels-poutine-for-hillcrest Our beloved Eater Street Team spotted a sign posted on a Hillcrest storefront at 142 University Avenue, Suite C and asked us to sleuth out the story behind the Montreal style authentic poutine and bagels being advertised as coming soon. Mess Royale Poutine & Bagels will in fact serve the real thing when it opens in March— hand-rolled St-Viateur Bagels from the legendary bagel bakery whose flagship store is located in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal. The new Hillcrest eatery will be receiving shipments of the bagels, which are boiled in honey water then cooked in a wood fired oven, three times a week. Owner Hugo Tassone says that initially, the bagels will be used as bread for sandwiches and offered with cream cheese or butter for breakfast before being able to be purchased by the dozen. Tassone, who hails from Eastern Canada, has a background in food industry and has been visiting San Diego for the last 20 years. He hopes that Mess Royale will be his first of many shops to feature Montreal-inspired gourmet comfort food. Other specialities will include poutine, made with twice-cooked fries, cheese curds and homemade gravy, available as is or topped with everything from bacon to chicken and lobster. There will also be grilled cheese sandwiches, pulled pork sandwiches on brioche buns, four ounces of thick cut bacon on a stick and Montreal-style hot dogs, which come on either a steamed or toasted bun with mustard, relish, onions and a special slaw. For dessert, Mess Royale will serve a "treat royale", also known as a Canadian beavertail, which spreads sweet toppings on a paddle of fried dough.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/smartertravel/10-most-fattening-foods-i_b_5107205.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063<header style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: Arial, FreeSans, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"> You might think that the United States, with its super-sized portions, absurdly high obesity rate, and uniquely American innovations like the Doritos Locos Taco, is home to the world's most fattening foods. But you'd be wrong! Our national dishes have nothing on these artery-clogging bad boys from around the world. Here are 10 of the most decadent foods you'll find in other countries. </header>Acaraje, Brazil You know what's really not great for you? Palm oil. A mere tablespoon of the stuff contains a whopping 7 grams of saturated fat—which is too bad, because saturated fat makes food taste really great. Case in point, Brazil's acaraje: black-eyed peas formed into a ball, deep-fried in palm oil, and then stuffed with vatapa and caruru (spicy pastes made from dried shrimp, ground cashews … and more palm oil). Churros, Spain Forget your boring breakfast of Special K and skim milk. In Spain, a popular way for locals to start the day is with a meal of churros. These fried-dough pastries are dipped in sugar and cinnamon and then—here's the fat kicker—dipped in a thick hot-chocolate drink. Talk about a morning sugar rush! Poutine, Canada On its own, the humble potato is a relatively healthy starch. But in the hands of Canadians, it becomes poutine—French fries smothered in gravy and cheddar-cheese curds. This cheesy dish is so popular that it's even sold at Burger King in Canada, where (according to the chain's nutritional information) the dish contains 740 calories and 41 grams of fat. And that's just the traditional version. There are entire restaurants that solely serve varieties of poutine. Smoke's Poutinerie dishes up Triple Pork Poutine (with chipotle pulled pork, double-smoked bacon, and Italian sausage), Nacho Grande Poutine (with homemade chili, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, and jalapeno peppers), and Bacon Cheeseburger Poutine (with prime ground beef, double-smoked bacon, and cheese sauce). Khachapuri, Georgia Eating off a plate is so boring. What if your food were served up inside a bread boat instead—and what if the bread boat were filled with melted cheese? Georgians have the right idea with their khachapuri. It's a bread bowl that is stuffed with melted cheese and topped with an egg and a large pad of butter! Nutella Crepes, France Just one serving (2 tablespoons) of sweet, chocolaty Nutella spread has 200 calories (110 of which are from fat). And when using a spoon (or a finger) to eat the hazelnut spread straight out of the jar just isn't enough, you'll want to head to France for a Nutella crepe. There, many street carts and restaurants fry up batter in butter and make thin pancake-like pockets in which to deliver your Nutella. Even better, the crepes are usually topped with powdered sugar and sometimes even whipped cream. Aligot, France You know the stereotype that French women don't get fat? We have to wonder how that's possible when a dish like aligot is served up in the country's L'Aubrac region.Aligot is made with mashed potatoes, butter, cream, garlic, and melted cheese, all whipped together into a thick, rich dish. According to calorie-counting websiteFatSecret, 1 tablespoon of aligot contains 6 percent of the recommended daily amount of saturated fat. Deep-Fried Mars Bars, Scotland After you've tried the deep-fried fish and deep-fried potatoes in Scotland, what should you have for dessert? A Mars bar—deep-fried, of course. Who wouldn't love a chocolate bar gone all melty and encased in a satisfyingly crunchy shell of fried dough? Answer: The Mars candy company, which reportedly feels that the deep-fried dessert is not in line with the company's goal of promoting a "healthy, active" lifestyle. Because, you know, nothing says healthy like chocolate candy! Jalebi, India Sure, plain ol' fried dough is unhealthy on its own. But India really steps up the game with jalebi, deep-fried dough that is soaked in a sugary syrup. Funnel cake, you're on notice—a sprinkling of powdered sugar just doesn't cut it anymore. Calzone, Italy Did you know that a traditional calzone uses the same amount of dough as an entire pizza—and that it's meant to serve four people? Or did you, um, think that the whole delicious calzone was all for you? We have the Campania region of Italy to thank for birthing this version of pizza that is even unhealthier than the original. In a calzone, tomatoes, mozzarella, and other traditional pizza toppings are stuffed into an easy-to-eat dough pocket and then served. Ramen, Japan Ramen has exploded in popularity over the last few years—and we don't mean the sad, dehydrated Cup Noodles kind of ramen, either. We're talking about the traditional Japanese soup dish, consisting of noodles in broth, topped with a variety of meats and vegetables. Soup is basically a health food, right? Unfortunately, the broth (often made with beef, lard, and oil) really packs a fat punch, even if the noodles aren't fried. —By Caroline Morse Read the original story: 10 Most Fattening Foods in the World by Caroline Morse, who is a regular contributor to SmarterTravel.

On démolit une pizzeria pour faire place à un pojet de condo qui ressemble un peu au Gounod I et qui est situé de billet, sur la meme rue: http://www.mtlurb.com/forums/showthread.php/15343-Le-Gounod-3-étages?highlight=gounod D'ailleurs, c'est par le meme promoteur. La pizzeria est déjà fermé. Too bad, j'aimais bien leur poutine !!! Voici le site web (mais je n'arrive pas à extirper le rendu pour la mettre ici) : http://www.montrealdevelopers.com/montreal-condo/LE-GOUNOD-II-montreal.html?ProjetID=101

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/feast/2011/jul/11/tivoli-poutine-anybody/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2011/07/12/today-show-montreal.html

Courtesy of

World poutine-eating contest to be held in Toronto. Yes, that's right. T.O. By Andy Blatchford (CP) – 20 minutes ago MONTREAL — One of Quebec's cultural symbols has been called everything from disgusting, to heart-attack inducing, to delectable. But can the increasingly popular Quebecois dish known as poutine -that messy mix of french fries, sauce and cheese curds -now be considered a gooey source of Canada-wide pride? When a gang of professional "eaters" from the United States and a handful of Canadian amateurs battle for the world poutine-eating championship, it won't go down in Montreal, Quebec City, or anywhere else in la belle province. It will be held in, of all places, Toronto. And due to provincial contest rules, Quebecers hoping to eat their way to the title won't be allowed to even take part. No longer seen as just working-class grub from small-town Quebec, poutine now has fans across Canada and beyond. The concoction has been integrated into haute cuisine and has secured niches under the bright lights of the Big Apple and Los Angeles. "I think it shows that poutine has become a national meal," Charles-Alexandre Theoret, author of the 2007 book "Maudite poutine!" ("Damned poutine!") said of the upcoming all-you-can-eat showdown on May 22 at BMO Field in Toronto. "It was once a Quebec meal, but now it's everywhere." A dozen stars of Major League Eating, a circuit best known for its stomach-turning, rapid-fire hot dog eating contests, will have 10 minutes to wolf down as much poutine as they can. "You must use a fork, so there's going to be certainly some skill involved," said Mike Antolini, a spokesman for the International Federation of Competitive Eating. "It's going to test their capacity, but also their hand speed and technique." The champ wins a modest sum of $750 and bragging rights. Antolini said organizers considered poutine-serving joints in Montreal to serve the fare, but eventually chose Smoke's Poutinerie, a Toronto-based chain. "I know that Montreal maybe feels like poutine is theirs, but we are going to be crowning a champion in Canada, and I think that's the most important thing because poutine certainly is Canadian first and foremost," he said. Of course, that hasn't always been the case. For years, the towns of Warwick and Drummondville have duelled over the true birthplace of poutine, but one thing has never been questioned: it's from Quebec. Warwick claims the dish was invented by local restaurant owner Fernand LaChance in 1957, while Drummondville insists that restaurateur Jean-Paul Roy blended the first poutine in 1964. To help cement its claim, Drummondville started holding an annual poutine festival in 2008. Regardless of its exact origins, poutine has long had a complicated bond with Quebecers, many of whom have looked down their noses at what some have called a culinary abomination. "It's a love-hate relationship, there are younger generations who feel fine with it, and almost make it a cool icon," said Theoret, whose book takes a historical look at poutine. "But older generations didn't grow (up) with it and think that it's low class, low life. They're really ashamed about it." For the poutine-eating contest, three Canadians will be selected through a sweepstakes to join the race. In an ironic twist, Quebec laws don't allow its residents to apply. "I don't argue with lawyers," said Smoke's Poutinerie owner Ryan Smolkin, who has five restaurants and one mobile kitchen in his growing poutine empire. All of them are in Toronto, but he's expanding to other parts of Ontario and plans to eventually open up shops across the country and around the world. The Ottawa native imports cheese curds from Quebec's Eastern Townships and tops his poutines with authentic chicken-based sauce. But he said he's never tried to pretend he's a Quebecer. "I know where the roots are, I know what it's all about and I'm trying to maintain that heritage for sure, and the Quebec influence," said Smolkin, who opened his first restaurant 15 months ago. "I respect and want to take that heritage and culture into my brand and help spread that across the world." With poutine's popularity spreading in the United States, he wanted to make sure the dish was "Canadianized" before an American restaurant tried to claim it. "It's been too isolated to Quebec," he said. "Nobody's just tried to take it big outside Quebec, so I'm trying to do that."

Publié le 05 septembre 2009 à 08h05 | Mis à jour le 05 septembre 2009 à 08h13 Poutine: reconnaissance mondiale pour La Banquise Stéphanie Bérubé La Presse Le magazine spécialisé en voyage Travel&Leisure consacre son plus récent numéro au tourisme gourmand. Bien manger, partout sur la planète et à tous les prix. Et pour se régaler à moins de 5$, les rédacteurs ont dressé la liste des cinq meilleurs plats du monde et des endroits où se les procurer. Cinq délices à tout petit prix. Pas un de plus. La courte liste comporte des frites cuites dans le gras de canard à Chicago; une soupe de nouilles aux pelures de tangerines à Hong- Kong; les fameux dumplings à la soupe d'un boui-boui de Shanghai; les fameuses tartelettes à la crème d'une pâtisserie de Lisbonne et, on vous le donne en mille, la poutine du restaurant La Banquise de la rue Rachel à Montréal! La reconnaissance tombe pile: le Festival de la poutine se termine aujourd'hui, à Drummondville.

Michel Bachand s'affairait à déguster un à un les grains de fromage de sa poutine, à la salle à manger du club de golf Venise. «En Californie, on n'a pas cela... malheureusement». Pour en lire plus...

Eat like a local in ... Montreal Poutine may still be a student staple but Kevin Gould finds fresh, inventive dishes in the city's bistros, delis and micro-breweries Kevin Gould The Guardian, Saturday June 7 2008 Slow food ... find friendly service and fresh food as part of Montreal's creative food scene. Photograph: Rudy Sulgan/Corbis I start my search for the fresh local tastes of Montreal at Marché Jean-Talon (7075 Casgrain Ave between De Castelnau and Jean-Talon metro). This is not some bourgeois foodie faux-farmers' market. Held indoors in winter, the market spills outside at this time of year, with countless eat-ins, takeaways, wine shops and stalls, busy with people expecting (and getting) high-quality, well-priced, local, seasonal produce. As with the rest of Montreal's food and drink culture, someone has done a marvellous job of inculcating the virtues of the Slow Food movement, without the pretentious nonsense we're often served up in Europe. Montrealers are disarmingly friendly. A cheerful tubby bloke munching a pickled cucumber on a stick invites me to his restaurant, a minute away from the market. Jean-Philippe's Kitchen Galerie (60 rue Jean-Talon Est,+514 315 8994, no website) has no waiters: you're served by one of the three chefs who cook your dinner. He pours me a glass of excellent red from L'Orpailleur in the eastern townships, which has the grace of a French pinot noir, and the energy of a Californian one. "We're not sommeliers," he smiles, "but we know how to drink!" They sure know how to cook, too. Minestrone with chorizo and calves' sweetbreads with soft-shell crab give a flavour of Jean-Philippe's full-on stance on food. The standout main course is a massive côte de boeuf with tarragon sauce and roast veg. You can "super-size" it with truffles and foie gras. Gloriously, ridiculously rich. Strawberry salad with basil syrup and 7-Up jelly completes the feast. The most creative, interesting food scenes in town are mostly in Le Plateau and Mile End, where you find a mixture of ethnic communities, students and sophisticates. I loved Maison Cakao (5090 rue Farbre, corner of rue Laurier, +514 598 2462) for its cupcakes and brownies, and Le Fromentier (1375 rue Laurier Est), where the bread and charcuterie are at least as good as anything you'll find in Paris. Fairmount Bagel (74 rue Fairmount Ouest, fairmountbagel.com, open 24 hours, 365 days) is a tiny local institution that hand-makes 18 varieties and bakes them in wood ovens. Another institution worth its reputation is Schwartz's (3895 blvd St Laurent, +514 842 4813, schwartzsdeli.com, all you can eat $15. No reservations, expect to stand in line), whose smoked meat - think salt beef with deeper flavour - is sensational and worth queuing for. Order your meat "lean" unless you're in with a cardiologist, and eat too much of it with gorgeous dark brown fries, crunchy pickles and a soda. Around the corner, Le Reservoir (9 rue Duluth Est, +514 849 7779) is a micro-brewery with a kitchen. It is the most happening place in the area for Sunday brunch - expect fresh cranberry scones with yoghurt; cod cheeks and chips with home-made ketchup; fried eggs and smoked bacon over sublime Yorkshire pudding. Poutine is a Quebecois speciality, consisting of oily french fries strewn with curd cheese and smothered in salty gravy. Oddly comforting, and excellent for mopping up alcohol, together with every last drop of saliva in your mouth. The Montreal Pool Room (1200 blvd St Laurent), an appealingly grungy, noisy and popular diner, is a good place to try it. If poutine is old-school Montreal cuisine, the Cluny ArtBar (257 rue Prince, +514 866 1213, cluny.info) is its new wave. Cluny is in the centre of town, only a short walk from the touristy joints of the old town. It's near the riverside, attached to a gallery in an ex-foundry. Come here for generous, innovative salads and grills. A few steps away, Le Cartet (106 rue McGill, +514 871 8887) is everything you'd ever want for a buzzy, Scandinavian-smart take on the communal canteen. Great for lunch, Le Cartet has a deli attached and also offers a blowout Sunday brunch buffet, where you can nurse the hangover you nurtured the night before at Pullman (3424 du Parc ave, +514 288 7779, pullman-mtl.com), the gastro bar du choix for Montreal's beautiful people. They're serious about their wine at Pullman, but also mix a mean cosmopolitan. Try tapas like venison tartare with chips, tuna sashimi with pickled cucumber salad, mini bison burgers and roasted marrow bones with veal cheeks. Were Pullman in London, it would be double the price and snooty. Here, it is honest, exciting and fun. As Montreal reinvents itself as a multicultural, modern city, so its young chefs have thrown off the shackles of classical French cuisine. My favourite example of this pared-down, matter-of-fact excellence was in the 10-table neighbourhood Bistro Bienville (4650 rue de Mentana, +512 509 1269, bistrobienville.com). There are no starters or mains, just whatever's good today. They'll fix you a stunning seafood platter, grill you a beautiful piece of fish, and roast you a perfect fat joint of beef. I also ate excellent local cheeses, drank fantastic wine, and thought that if I lived in Montreal, I'd be in here every day. Instead of parading a love of good food and drink as accessories to an ostentatious life, Montrealers celebrate the joys of the table with the matter-of-fact verve born of living half the year in the teeth of an Arctic gale. · Canadian Affair (020-7616 9184, canadianaffair.com) flies Gatwick-Montreal from £99 one way inc tax. The stylish La Place d'Armes (+512 842 1887, hotelplacedarmes.com) has rooms for around £125 including breakfast, cheese and wine and hammam. The training hotel, l'Institut de Tourisme et d'Hôtellerie (+514 282-5120, ithq.qc.c http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/jun/07/montreal.restaurants/print

Un autre article faisant l'éloge de la gastronomie montréalaise Hungering for beauty and the bistros The Boston Globe La tire, maple syrup frozen on a stick, for sale at Marche Atwater. (Jonathan Levitt for the Boston Globe) By Jonathan Levitt Globe Correspondent / May 4, 2008 Interstate 89 north of Burlington, Vt., is as big, remote, and windswept as the Western plains. I cross the Canadian border at Highgate and drive through the flatness, past miles of tidy dairy farms - pert suburban-type houses with barns and cows in back - and keep going over the Saint Lawrence River, looking down to spot Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" and her gypsy cabin, but she's long gone. Then there it is, the island of Montreal, and at the base of Mount Royal, the skyscrapers, just a few, but tall, and huddled together. Like most big cities in Canada, Montreal feels like one last great human place before the bleakness of the northern wilderness. At Hotel St-Paul in Old Montreal, I stare at the manicured cedar bushes and the 1900 Beaux Arts façade, then walk into the lobby, past the Spanish alabaster fireplace to the front desk. Everyone who works here looks younger than 30. With the key I go upstairs and into my room with the low-slung bed, faux fur throw, ebony-stained wood floors, and view of another Beaux Arts building across the street with a giant perfectly accurate clock. I take off my shoes, turn on the flat-screen television, and watch "The Age of Innocence" dubbed into French, and I nap. When I wake up it is still light out. The streets of Old Montreal are hushed and narrow. It's the oldest part of the city, along the river, and near the original French settlement of 1642. In the twilight it's easy to imagine fur traders and Iroquois attacks. I wander through Chinatown and across rue Sainte-Catherine with its grime and strip clubs, and accidentally make eye contact with some "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" punks. They are begging and drumming, exotic with tattooed faces, dreadlocks, and big handsome dogs. The last time I walked around Montreal it was January and so cold that inside my coat pockets I wore socks on my hands. But now it's April and sunny and 60 degrees, and at the outdoor cafes it looks as if everyone pretty shoved off early from work to eat and smoke and drink cold beer. On Duluth Street in the middle of the flat, graffiti-clad Plateau neighborhood I stop for dinner at Au Pied de Cochon. P.D.C., as it is known, is a former wood-fired brick-oven pizza place converted into a temple of excess and neo-Quebecois peasant food by celebrity chef Martin Picard. I order venison steak frites. On the walls are jars of preserved summer tomatoes, and in the bathroom, a showerhead for a sink faucet, and a bucket of beer on ice by the toilet. It's early but crowded. Word has gotten out because the food press seems to write about the place every few weeks. But it still feels like a chummy club, and every portion could serve two or more. Picard is giant, hairy, balding, and looks like Shrek. The fries come fried in duck fat with a side of good mayonnaise; the venison steak is smothered in a rich jus with mushrooms and caramelized onions. On the plate is a cartoon of Picard, wearing a tall chef's hat, riding a pig or a shrimp, depending on the plate. After dinner I walk and walk, then wander into the bistro next to the hotel. It's called Restaurant Holder, and the music sounds like the soundtrack to a video game. They've stopped serving real food, so I order the Quebec cheese plate and eat lots of baguette. Benedictine monks make one of the cheeses, and it tastes like cleaning out the chicken coop, but in a good way. For breakfast I walk down St-Paul Street to the bakery Olive + Gourmando where, once again, everyone is beautiful. They are carrying yoga mats and ordering coffee and pastries like almond croissants and apple tarts that look too good to be real, and so I order the same. By now I am certain that the food here is better than back home, better than the over-hyped poutine, those french fries soaked in gravy and studded with cheese curds for which Quebec is known. So I think only of food and have lunch at L'Express, a bistro that has been in the same place on rue St-Denis for almost 30 years. I order duck confit on greens and frites with mustardy mayonnaise. The waitress brings a crunchy baguette and a jar of even crunchier cornichons to grab with worn wooden tongs. There is white paper on top of the marble tabletop. The duck skin stays crispy and is the prettiest golden brown. L'Express is as reserved as Au Pied de Cochon is boisterous. The bill comes on a tin plate. It seems like a good bistro can be like a diner, like a place to go every day, a kitchen away from home. And so I go to another bistro, the restaurant Leméac, at the base of the mountain, and this one is much more posh. I get the veal a la Lyonnaise, which is just a fancy way of saying liver and onions. Now it's late, and I'm tired, but I poke my head into Garde Manger, a new place people are raving about, but all I see are rich kids with their cocktails and lobster poutine, so I go back to the hotel and fall asleep in front of the TV. In the next morning's cold rain, la tire, maple syrup frozen on a stick at Marché Atwater, makes for a smoky sugar high of a breakfast. Marché Atwater is the smaller and more expensive of the city's two public markets. Afterward, I wander around the cleaned up and condo-fied, but still gritty, St-Henri neighborhood until it's dinnertime and time to go to Restaurant Joe Beef. The place is named for Charles McKiernan (1835-89), the inn and tavern keeper nicknamed Joe Beef because of his knack for rounding up meat and provisions for hungry fellow soldiers during the Crimean War. The legend goes that McKiernan kept wild animals - black bears, monkeys, wildcats, a porcupine, and an alligator - in the basement of the tavern and brought them up for entertainment and to restore order at the bar. When he died the animals were in his funeral procession. Joe Beef preserves the innkeeper's outlaw attitude and supposedly his bathroom door. At the bar, John Bil from Prince Edward Island shucks oysters. He is a Canadian shucking champion and an elite marathon runner. He feeds me oysters and bourbon until chef-owner Frédéric Morin brings out the deep-fried white bait with tartar sauce, and the whole king crab, and more bourbon. Then we go next door to Liverpool House, a quirky sort of Italian/French/Quebecois place that Morin also owns, and we eat black pudding with foie gras and ribs braised in Dr. Pepper. Morin makes rum punch and brings out a cheese plate with warm green grapes. The restaurant closes and I follow the cooks to their favorite dive bar, and after it closes, I go along to their favorite diner where just before dawn I have a plate of poutine, soggy and wonderful. Jonathan Levitt, a freelance writer in Maine, can be reached at jon.levitt@gmail.com.

DURING the 2000 presidential campaign, the candidate from Texas fielded a question from Canada: “Prime Minister Jean Poutine said you look like the man who should lead the free world into the 21st century. What do you think about that?” When George W. Bush pledged to “work closely together” with Mr. Poutine, Montrealers fell off their chairs laughing. It wasn’t so much that the Canadian leader was, in fact, Jean Chrétien, but that the “reporter” — Rick Mercer, a television comedian — had invoked the city’s emblematic, problematic, comedic junk food dish: poutine. A gloppy, caloric layering of French fries, fresh cheese curds (a byproduct of Cheddar making) and gravy, poutine goes deep into the Quebequois psyche. Somehow, Quebec’s rural roots, its split identity (Acadian farmers or Gallic gourmets?) and its earthy sense of humor are all embodied by its unofficial dish. This may be one reason that until now poutine has not traveled well. True, it was on the menu for years at Shopsin’s, the quirky West Village restaurant that closed this year, but so was nearly every other known foodstuff. But recently, it has materialized in a handful of cities across the United States. In New York City, it is on the menu at three highly divergent establishments, and this time it shows signs of taking hold. Andy Bennett, the chef at the Inn LW12 in the meatpacking district, recalled his reaction on being told (by the Canadian faction of the inn’s owners) that poutine must be served. “I said, you’ve got to be kidding me. Then I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get away from it.” Mr. Bennett, however, was converted. “You have to embrace these things,” he said. “Now it’s our biggest selling item by a long stretch.” “I think it’s going to be across the city soon,” he said. “It’s going to stick without a doubt.” Mr. Bennett’s choice of words was apt. Poutine is an extreme stick-to-your-ribs concoction, whose name is said to derive from Quebequois slang. According to the dominant creation myth, in 1957 a restaurateur named Fernand Lachance, when asked by a customer to combine fries and cheese curds, said it would make “une maudite poutine” — an unholy mess. (And this was pre-gravy. Another restaurateur, Jean-Paul Roy of Le Roy Jucep, claims to have first served fries with gravy and curds in 1964.) Since Mr. Lachance’s death three years ago, poutine’s de facto spokesman has been Bob Rutledge, creator of the Web site MontrealPoutine.com. Mr. Rutledge, a professor of astrophysics at McGill University specializing in neutron stars, black holes and gamma ray bursts, first heard of poutine on moving to Montreal in 2004. He was instantly smitten. “When I started asking about it, I got one of two responses,” he said. “It was either: ‘Oh here’s my favorite poutine place; you must go...’, or else it was: ‘Oh my God, why do you want to eat that stuff?’ It’s a veritable food phenomenon; half the people are embarrassed it exists.” Siobhan O’Connor, a journalist who moved to New York from Montreal five years ago, has a different view. “The only people who don’t like poutine are people on a diet,” she said. “It’s the first thing you want when you go back, a real late-night post-drinking thing.” Ms. O’Connor recently sampled the new batch of New York poutines. The classic version at Sheep Station, an Australian gastropub on the western edge of Park Slope, initially struck her as too dry. But, on discovering that the Quebequois chef, Martine Lafond, had secreted further curds and gravy under crisp, hot fries, she warmed to it, declaring the gravy authentically peppery, salty and meaty, and the curds as fresh as could be expected so far from home. At Pommes Frites, an East Village storefront that traffics in Belgian fries but now has a sideline in their Canadian cousins, neither the rubbery, yellowish curds nor the lukewarm, flavorless sauce met with Ms. O’Connor’s approval. But Mr. Bennett’s four varieties at the Inn LW12 did, despite distinctly unorthodox stylings. “I’d come back here just for this,” she declared of the plate with five-spice gravy and chewy strips of pork belly, though she found the Stilton cheese in the rich, toothsome braised beef with red wine version to be overload and the herby marinara sauce on the tomato version — called Italienne back home — disappointing. Though somewhat overshadowed by its glitzy sisters, the classic, too, more than passed muster. Ms. O’Connor explained that poutine really belonged to the French speakers — her Irish-Montrealer mother, for instance, had never tried it — until “around 2000, when people started messing with it: green peppercorns, Gruyère, truffle oil...” According to Professor Rutledge, variations on the theme are fine. “They strike me as creative and interesting so I give bonus points,” he said. He is, however, from Southern California. The average Montrealer seems to be more of a purist. The chef Martin Picard, one of Montreal’s most high-profile culinary figures, embraces poutine at his restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. “That dish becomes an international passport,” he declared. “It’s not haute gastronomie, but it permits Quebec to get more interest from the rest of the world.” Mr. Picard said he occasionally offers classic poutine as a “clin d’oeil” — a wink — to Quebequois cuisine, but his version with foie gras is what everyone remembers. For this, the regular poutine sauce — a thick, highly seasoned chicken velouté, which Mr. Picard enhances with pork stock — is enriched by foie gras and egg yolks. The dish is crowned with a four-ounce slab of seared goose liver. Whether Montreal’s embarrassing but adored junk food does take root in New York, it may never attain the status it achieved earlier this year when the CBC revealed the results of a viewer poll on the greatest Canadian inventions of all time. Granted, poutine came in only at No. 10. But it beat, among other things, the electron microscope, the BlackBerry, the paint roller and the caulking gun, lacrosse, plexiglass, radio voice transmission and basketball.