One of the things I love about writing restaurant reviews are the unsolicited restaurant recommendations I get. Doing what I do, I’m always on the lookout for new restaurants that either appear practically overnight on the restaurant radar or finally getting the opportunity to check out a spot that has been buzzing for a while. So naturally when I’m approached with a “hey, have you checked out that new place…” or “I just had the best… at…” I’m taking notes. Recently, the proliferation of pizza shops around town have definitely upped the city’s pizza game by offering pies that run the gamut of styles. From rustic Neapolitan style pizza to Roman al taglio slabs or even Montreal-style grease-wheels with smoked meat and bacon, we’ve got them all. I recently checked out this new pizza spot in Outremont that has been spoken highly of by a lot of people around me, Pizzeria No.900.
Outremont
There’s a long standing statistic that says Montreal has the most cafés per capita in North America, and that we serve the most coffee and warm beverages south of the global 60 degree parallel. Actually, I just made that up because I can’t walk down the street without seeing some sort of cafe that serves fair-trade, local, organic, seasonal, homemade, cold-press, French-press, coffee shop, packed up the walls with jerkholes drinking a three-hour coffee mooching wifi, charging multiple devices and smoking cigarettes outside. If there’s one thing Montrealers do and do well (besides bitching and complaining about other people) is hitting up the cafe scene, supporting local entrepreneurs, sipping on dranks and watching people.
Now that the Montreal en Lumiere festival is in full swing, I had the opportunity to check out one of the week’s finest tables featured in the gastronomy program. Restaurant Christophe – headed by owner and Executive Chef Christophe Geffray is located in Outremont in the midst of local boutiques, cafés and charming quadruplex brownstones. In keeping with the theme of this year’s events, Chef Geffray and team was orchestrating a gastronomic tour of Argentinean cuisine without leaving your seat or snowy and blistery Montreal.