A friend of mine once asked me for a fried rice recipe and I gave them my trusty chicken fried rice with gai lan recipe. I followed up with them the next day to see how it went and they said it was good, but something was different. They asked me what “gai lan” was and I explained to them that it was Chinese broccoli. They said that they weren’t able to find it at their local grocery store and used regular fleurette broccoli and that by using soy sauce, would rationalize it as being “Chinese“. After I stopped pounding my head against the wall, I tried to figure out if the problem was my friends or the fact that I didn’t specify where to get the ingredients… especially after I found out that their pantry soy sauce was the kosher-gluten-free variety.
Mile-end/Plateau Mont-Royal
I love bread. I once bought a bread maker from Canadian Tire and made all sorts of bread; nutty kinds with different grains and dried fruit, then I went through a vegetable phase and made loaves with zucchini and carrots… for like a week and never touched the thing again. There are things that you need to leave up to the professionals, roof repairs, off-shore oil drilling, cellphone unlocking and bread making. I recently hit up this spot in the Mile-end that has been giving the people of Montreal bread boners claiming them to make the “best bread” in the city.
In case you’ve been sleeping, Montreal is currently in the thick of Restaurant week aka TasteMTL, where the city is seeing over 100 restaurants offering table d’hôte menus at three extremely friendly prices. Recently voted as one of North America’s Best Food Festivals by Foder’s Travel, this second edition of this eleven day restaurant extravaganza has big shoes… I mean stomachs… I mean plates to fill.
