August 1, 2004
here comes the sun king
today i picked up the keys to apartment #3. i can't wait to have moving over with, but i am not looking forward to sleeping alone after seeing the villiage last night and the ensuing ghost stories. and i haven't even started playing doom 3 yet.
here are some montreal pictures:
the goals of the montreal trip were to avoid the DNC, and to go to some restaurants. here are some reviews, in chronological order:
le nil bleu (sunday dinner)
it was good but i don't like getting dried chickpeas on my fingers.
chu chai (monday lunch)
when the dish is presented to you, you may mistake it for a meat dish, but the fake pieces of meat don't really feel or taste like meat. but phil is right, it is tasty nonetheless. the chicken and crispy spinach and peanut sauce is not to be missed.
lezvos (monday dinner)
according to phil, i didn't actually eat at lezvos since i abstained from the octopus appetizer (it seems i get sick when i eat octopus or squid. i even think i might have had squid in paris the night i got sick there. everything is starting to fall into place). but i had some others: eggplant and mushrooms i believe. for the main course, we chose red snapper (since i had never had it before) and it was very tasty. i think i ate 5 pounds of lima beans as well.
they apparently have two other locations; one is doing well but one isn't. i don't know where they are.
(on tuesday we had lunch at a not-all-that-great crepe place, and had a hot dog at the expos game, then went to mondo fritz where i had a nasty hamburger and some good fries)
shed cafe (wednesday lunch)
we did not make it early enough for breakfast, but the service was not nearly as bad as phil made it out to be. i had some grilled salmon; it was ok.
milsa (wednesday dinner)
if we had stayed in montreal longer, perhaps we could have devoted a whole day to the milsa meal. unfortunately we had eaten lunch, and couldn't cause them to run out of meat. my only dissatisfactions were that the lamb man didn't come around again, and that i ate the mushrooms. i seem to have the same problem with a certain type of mushroom that i do with octopus and squid, because before it was time for dessert i had to run to the bathroom. oh well.
rosalie (wednesday after dinner)
shaver's sister was working here, so we went over to say hello. since i was still recovering from milsa, i decided to just have some water.
zyng (thursday lunch)
a noodle place similar to kramer's pizza restaurant or fire + ice. i tried to keep things basic, as i didn't want to create a noodle incarnation of poochie the dog, which i think is a risk when you get to create your own dish. i had pad thai noodles with a peanut sauce, and it was pretty good.
globe (thursday dinner)
after waiting 15 or 20 minutes without getting menus, we flagged a waiter. after waiting another 5 minutes, we decided we were too hungry to risk our meal to pamplona-esque service, and left for hopefully greener pastures.
la prunelle (thursday dinner)
we had walked by this tiny french restaurant earlier in the week, and phil said he'd been there once before and it was pretty good so we decided to try it.
they apologized that they only had non-smoking tables available, and were confused when we didn't bring our own bottle of wine. however, we had (english!) menus within minutes of arriving so it was already one up on globe.
i had snapper (again) and some vegetables which were pretty good. but the highlight of the meal was the appetizer: scallops marinated in a currant vinegar, with some smoked salmon and something like guacamole. the menu will not tell you this, but the waiter will likely point out that the scallops are not cooked. this should not deter you, as they were excellent.
thai grill (friday lunch)
we should not have walked here, because it was quite a haul in pretty muggy weather. i had some dumplings in peanut sauce and pad thai. the dumplings were excellent; the pad thai so-so. phil hadn't been there for lunch before, and it sounds like i need to try the dinner menu some time.
