quebec – Looking on the Bright Side

My final post about Montreal concerns my favorite topic, food! I love to eat. When I travel, I love to try different restaurants and different types of food. Montreal is an international city with lots of different types of food. We didn’t get to try it all, but here are the restaurants that we did get to visit.

Our first meal of the trip was at Brit and Chips. We ordered some fish and chips, specifically the maple battered haddock. I figured since we’re in Montreal, I should order anything with maple syrup! We also ordered our first poutine of the trip. Poutine is the most famous Quebecois dish, consisting of french fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy. The restaurant was casual, quick, affordable, and tasty!

At Maison Christian Faure Patisserie, we stopped in and got three different fancy desserts. They were delicious!

Occasionally, when traveling with a 5 year old, one is required to stop at McDonald’s for some poulet mccroquettes.

One of our dinners was at La Maison du Magret, a restaurant completely devoted to duck! As a complimentary appetizer, we were given some duck rillettes and bread. We ordered duck confit and duck poutine. It was all tasty.

It’s always important to get ice cream while on vacation.

One of the mornings, we got breakfast at Allo! Mon Coco, a chain in Quebec. The food was good although service was slow. I had a strawberry flambee on crepes bretonne!

After the first big crepe of the trip, we went to two more creperies! My daughter had spaghetti and meat sauce and garlic bread at both. First, we went to Chez Suzette in Old Montreal. All of the crepes were delicious! We had dinner crepes and a dessert crepe.

Crepe Florentine
Crepe Parisienne – brie and apples
S’mores crepe

We ended up at our second creperie the next day after our intended destination ended up being too crowded. It was a family restaurant in the Mont Royal area of town, called Creperie Bretonne Ty-Breiz. I ordered a smoked salmon crepe.

I also ordered escargot and took a picture of my daughter’s face when I told her that I was eating snails. Yum!

Our hotel was connected to the World Trade Center, so a few mornings I grabbed a quick breakfast at La Fabrique de Bagel. Montreal is famous for their bagels, which are thinner and crunchier than the New York bagels you may be used to. There is nothing better than smoked salmon on a bagel!

One night, we went to C’Chocolat for dinner. A chocolate restaurant for a well-rounded dinner. They actually have sandwiches and salads and such, but we just ordered dessert. We had hot chocolate with marshmallows, a liege waffle, and their signature dessert – the c’wow. It was a chocolate dome which was melted tableside by hot caramel revealing the yummy stuff inside, which included waffle, brownie, gelato, crumble, berries, and pecans.

before the hot caramel
after the hot caramel

One of our lunches was at Reuben’s Deli and Steakhouse, downtown. They are famous for their smoked meat sandwiches. The coleslaw was particularly tasty.

For our last meal of the trip, we decided to walk to Chinatown. We ate at Chez Chili, and it was very tasty. We had some pork ribs, dumplings, fried rice, and fried bananas!

I hope you have enjoyed my series of posts about our trip to Montreal. We had a great time there, and like always, I enjoyed trying all the food!

My family and I have just returned from an amazing trip to Montreal, so this will be the first in a series of posts about our travel! Our trip started and ended with lots of delays and travel issues. It took us three flights, a long day, and lost luggage both on the way there and the way back! Each trip was on different airlines. Despite all of our travel issues, we still had a great time in Canada. We went shopping for new clothes and made the best of it.

Montreal is a big city in Canada, so of course, we did a lot of walking. It was manageable though, and even my less adventurous husband and 5 year old survived. I did do some exploring on my own, when they felt like resting. The metro system is easy to navigate. Everyone in Montreal is bilingual, so even though you will almost always be greeted in French, everyone quickly switches to English when they realize you are American. I read French pretty well, but I’m not so great at speaking/understanding it.

Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal) is a great place to shop for souvenirs, art, clothing, etc. I collect Christmas ornaments from every place I travel, so of course I had to stop at Noel Eternel! A shop selling authentic Amerindian art and goods had this stuffed polar bear for sale! My daughter was excited to buy a Kinder Surprise egg at the drugstore.

The majority of our trip was spent walking around Vieux Montreal and Downtown. Our hotel was conveniently located right between the two. I’ve included a few pictures from around town below.