I like how when people say that they can eat spicy and how everyone’s spice tolerance lever varies to the pipsqueak tongue tickle that people overreact to and are clambering for a glass of milk, to the fire breathers that use Sriracha as eyedrops while doing splits between two Volvo semi-trucks after snorting a line of wasabi. I like to believe that I can handle my spice; I mean I’ll bitch and complain and make a scene about it, but I can take the level of heat that’s just short of sweating oil and seeing sounds.
A couple of weeks ago, the great people at Lincoln Motors contacted me concerning their reimagine/reinventing campaign around the Lincoln Motor brand to share with Montreal the kind of stuff they’ve been up to. They got in contact to inform me that they were pairing up with three local acclaimed restaurants to host dinner events and that they were inviting guests to test drive the brand spankin’ new 2013 Lincoln MKZ. Over 200 guests in three consecutive nights were treated to special tasting menus created by the chefs and teams at Helena, Apollo, Chez L’épicer and a wrap dinner event as a pop-up dinner at the Parisian Laundry with special guest Chef Stéphanie Audet. With a long sign up list to take a spin around the block, Lincoln Motors and Shut Up and Eat teamed up and I was given the opportunity to take one home for a couple of days and really give it a go. I know what you’re thinking “How does this have anything to do with a restaurant review?”
Growing up in a Chinese home and being sent to school with some sort of funk in my lunch thermos that would permeate the lunch room did not help my popularity in elementary school. Last night’s dinner of braised pork belly with pickled mustard greens over rice would be the only thing on my mind leading up to lunch time. Nowhere to be found in my He-Man lunchbox were there any fucks packed by my mom to give about the kids who thought it was gross; frozen chicken nuggets or peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat and other latch-key loveless lunches. Trying to explain what my lunch was, I fought fodder for ridicule and ultimately groomed my passion for Chinese cuisine and subsequent appreciation.
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.
I recently found out that I have a lost-long relative that I didn’t know existed. I’d love to say that we reunited on some daytime talk show where I was brought on as a guest to discuss the perks and perils of the blogging world and the audience member who asks me a question turns out to be the person I’m related to. Then after a brief tear-fest we’re whisked away backstage where we’re left to reconnect on a sofa where paternity tests and out of control teens once met their fates. Unfortunately no. In fact, the person I thought I was related to wasn’t even really a person… more than it was just the name of a restaurant.
Ever since I can remember, our family, nieghbours, strangers and anyone we can unload leftovers on, have always celebrated all holidays, festivities and other reasons to drink with my mom’s signature turkey. I mean, let’s be honest, what’s more festive that slaughtering one of the largest domesticated feathered fowl friends. What makes my mom’s roast turkey so special you ask? My mom’s turkey is Chinese. That’s right, my mom’s turkey gobbles and clucks in Chinese with an accent that’s almost indistinguishable from the American kind with a southern twang.
If you’re a Montrealer and a Montreal who likes to eat, then it’s obvious that you have cherished “go-to” places for certain meals or dishes; whether it be the juiciest gyro with awesome vampire repelling tzatziki sauce, the most decadent slice of chocolate cake, the richest espresso to keep you awake, or the ripest cup of fermented yak’s milk that any Inner-Mongolian would swear is authentic. Now think of your favourite spot for smoked meat… no, not that place, the other one.
Remember the last time you were at the Asian market picking up your pickled mustard greens, pork trotters, salted fish and bottle of lye and saw stacks on stacks of aluminium tins with old Asian aunties huddled around them making deals and trading back and forth like they were gambling plaques from Macau? That coveted aluminium tins house one of the season’s most illustrious treats – Moon cakes! But what are they and why do we eat them at this time of year?
Are there things that you can eat and eat and eat and never get sick of? For me it’s dumplings. Like some people joke and believe that they have separate stomach for the things they love to eat, I love dumplings. I truly believe that I really do have a separate stomach to house and digest the copious amounts of dumplings that I can eat that would frighten the common person, make old people lock their doors and children cry. Where in my body this stomach is located, I’m unsure, but I have a feeling it’s next to the stomach for pho and below the one for chips.
Remember that last time when you ate something so often and so much of it that you swore you’ll never touch it again? I’d love to say that it happened to me when I went on a city wide quest to find Montreal’s best pho after slurping through over 30 bowls of it. But no, this elevated sodium and MSG ladened soup stupor opened some sort of heroine addiction like floodgate in me. I have since had pho at least once a month since – I know that is modest, a friend of mine once ate bananas everyday for three weeks, and now he can’t even look at a pack of Post-Its without dry heaving.