Plus de street food à MTL!

[IluvMTL]

Moi, j'étais plutôt satisfait avec mon mini-pavé de saumon (cuit frais) avec un salsa de tomate mangue pour 7$. Oui il était petit, mais de bonne qualité et mieux que 2 hot dogs & 1 frite. Pour les gens pressés qui veut manger quelque chose de bien, une bonne option. La 'salade' servie dans un cône de bambou pour 5$ était bon aussi.

[Malek]

Disons que c'est pas vraiment ce que j'avais en tête comme concept de street food.

 

Disons que pour luncher avec eux ça prendrais un 20$, sinon ça a plus l'air d'amuses gueules chères.

Modifié 22 juillet 2012 par Malek
Open bar

[acpnc]

C'est vrai qu'on s'éloigne de la mal-bouffe, de toute façon à quoi ça sert d'imiter les Valentines et la belle Province de ce monde, qui sont déjà accessibles partout? Je trouve le concept intéressant et on amène les gens à découvrir autre chose que ce que l'on trouve ailleurs, avec des produits de qualité et savoureux. Quant aux prix, ils suivent les lois du marché qui veut que plus la demande est forte, plus les prix sont élevés. Après c'est une question de choix personnel et je peux comprendre que ça ne séduise pas tout le monde.

[IluvMTL]

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Snacking+Souk+Montreal+growing+street+food+scene/6993567/story.html

 

Just for Laughs' Souk street-food fair is the biggest celebration of street food seen so far in a city notoriously unfriendly to wheeled vendors

By Sarah Musgrave, Special to The Gazette July 26, 2012

 

MONTREAL - They came in Winnebagos, ice cream trucks, converted mail trucks, trailers and even a hearse. Montreal’s mobile food scene got into high gear this month, with the Souk at Just for Laughs bringing a diverse array of victuals and vehicles to the Quartier des Spectacles. It’s the biggest celebration of street food seen so far in a city that has been notoriously unfriendly to wheeled vendors, giving the public a taste of fresh options for outdoor eating beyond the well-known world of hot dogs.

 

Parked at the site, a stretch of Ste. Catherine St. in front of Place des Arts, is the unmistakable lime green of Grumman 78, the taco truck that got the street- eats movement rolling here. One of its co-owners, Gaëlle Cerf, is organizing the food services for the 2012 comedy festival. “It just keeps getting bigger,” she says of the Just For Laughs food fair.

 

She has spent the last couple of weeks on overdrive, making sure the 20 or so vendors have electricity, water and visibility.

 

That recently meant rejigging the set-up of ice-fishing cabins that had been shipped from St. Ignace de Loyola and crane-mounted onto the desolate second level of the Souk, only to be brought down again a few days into the festivities, extending the stretch of the food fair even farther.

 

Despite the bumps here and there, she has gathered an impressive showcase of talent.

 

“What’s amazing is how independent everybody is,” Cerf notes.

 

“They’re restaurant people, so they know their stuff. Issues like hygiene or sanitation are not even a challenge. I had to remind a couple of people to put on their hairnets, but that’s about it. If we were operating with newbies, it would be a different story. As it is, they just do their thing.”

 

The growing street food scene is attracting its share of accomplished restaurateurs.

 

Chefs Martin Juneau and Louis-Philippe Breton of Pastaga, for example, unveiled their repurposed 1980s ice-cream truck at the Souk.

 

Monsieur Crémeux is a dairy bar with a DIY twist: instead of artificial flavouring and corn syrup sweeteners, the caramel, Chantilly cream and chocolate sauce are all made by pastry chef Isabelle Leroux.

 

There are banana splits, mont blancs, homemade vanilla soft-serve ice cream and even slushies with a homespun twist, using strawberries from Hemmingford. (They don’t actually sell the maple sundaes advertised on the yet-to-be-updated front of the truck.)

 

The team found its dream-mobile for sale online in Quebec City.

 

The hard part was driving it back to Montreal:

 

“It doesn’t go more than 80 kilometres an hour, there’s no radio, no air conditioning and it was a very, very hot day,” Juneau recalled of the four-and-a-half hour trip, his head grazing the six-foot ceiling.

 

A second-hand Winnebago is the vehicle of choice for the motorized adjunct to Mile End diner Nouveau Palais. It was purchased, co-owner Jacques Séguin says, at a used-vehicle lot on the South Shore, then gutted and refitted with blue tile, a hood and a high-quality fridge.

 

Chef Gita Seaton prepares Winneburgers (small hamburgers from the restaurant’s late-night menu), tofu belly (a play on the ubiquitous pork belly, it’s tofu skin marinated and grilled, and punched up with pineapple and habanero), and Monkeytails (frozen banana dipped in chocolate).

 

It’s the first year out for the Winneburger, and Séguin, a member of the local street vendors association along with most of the other food vendors here, is working to ensure there will be more room for these enterprises in the future.

 

Pas d’cochon dans mon salon is a food trailer from La Salle à Manger in the Plateau. Outside, a converted oil drum cooks pork shoulder over wood charcoal for 10 hours. “When it comes out, it’s already falling apart,” Julien Hébert says, while Maxim Castellon and Sebastien Harrison prep corncobs in front of the Johnny Cash portrait inside. Gazpacho and fresh oysters from P.E.I. are highlights here. Like other vendors, they’re making the rounds this season; Piknik Electronique and the Osheaga music festival are on the agenda. “So even if the law doesn’t change, we’re still quite busy,” Hébert says.

 

At Death Grill, the specialty is the Philly cheesesteak sandwich, kept trashy-traditional with HP sauce, Montreal steak spice and Cheez Whiz. The real attention-getter, however, is the hearse it came in on: The grill slides out on metal tracks, where the coffin would go; “Rest in beef,” is written on the rear door. Celebrity chef Chuck Hughes will be using the car to cater next month’s Heavy MTL, Deathgrill inventor Tony Vizzaccaro says.

 

The Souk introduces visitors to a world beyond the salted, greasy, over-processed foods that have characterized eating on the fly, though it does get decadent. You can get from-scratch versions of poutine, along with duck confit and lobster rolls, at Lucky’s Truck. La Mangeoire’s fare includes drinks perfumed with lemongrass and gourmet sandwiches that include, most famously, a number made with Nutella, peanut butter and bacon. Crêpe-Moi, a cutely modified mail truck, offers sweet and salty crêpes bretonnes. And there are non-mobile stalls selling everything from gourmet popsicles to tartares to takoyaki, the Japanese octopus fritters.

 

The Souk is also a platform for advancing the street food cause in Montreal. The city has recently indicated that it is considering easing up on regulations that have clamped down on mobile food since the 1940s, permitting vendors only at events, such as festivals, and in locations under provincial or federal administration. The Old Port, for example, hosts Muvbox, a converted shipping container that deploys into a kitchen. Last month, the popular seasonal counter (now with a location in the Plateau) launched a new porchetta sandwich outlet, which joins its popular lobster roll counter down by the river.

 

In urban centres across the country, food trucks have become a platform for innovative, free-to-have-fun cooking. The lower investment – local entrepreneurs estimated a minimum of $30,000 to $50,000, with ventilation and refrigeration systems – is for many aspiring chefs more manageable than opening a restaurant. If in the past street food was equated with fast food, the scenes in coastal cities Los Angeles, Portland and recently Vancouver – home of the Japadog, and where notable chef Vikram Vij launched his own Calcutta-style food truck this summer – have become culinary destinations in their own right.

 

The city may make a decision as early as the fall, according to mayoral spokesperson Martine Painchaud, who notes that the executive committee will be weighing issues of hygiene, permits, and concerns about competition to restaurants.

 

Executive committee vice-chairperson Richard Deschamps is on record with a “favourable eye” on the topic, and Painchaud says committee members “can’t ignore what has become a growing trend,” noting “the positive experimentation in the city.”

 

There could be public consultation on the issue in the coming months, she says.

 

But for now, Cerf is letting the food at the Souk speak for itself.

 

“Obviously, we’re grabbing people’s interest,” Cerf says.

 

“It’s an opportunity for everybody to eat on (the) street, and to see how amazing street food can be – and we’re showing it off like crazy!”

 

© Copyright © The Montreal Gazette

 

 

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Montreal+growing+street+food+scene/6993567/story.html#ixzz21lL7BCtr

[jesseps]

It's nice to see, that some people are not wasting time I will be surprised if the guys from Joe Beef decide to get a food truck. Now for Montreal to work on the laws of walking around being able to drink (I know I said that earlier on and a few of you said it would never work)