It’s been a busy 48 hours of long-missed visitors coming to town.
On Friday CBJ and I met up with our old friend Wade, who was visiting Toronto and whom we hadn’t seen in ~20 years. We had an excellent dinner at Richmond Station (duck duck lamb) before hitting a couple spots (Planta Burger, Beerbistro) for drinks. There was a lot of reminiscing and struggles to remember names, as well as some struggles to read the menus without our glasses. It’s been 20 years, okay?
Yesterday two of Lindsay’s oldest friends T+K arrived from Halifax. So far we haven’t done much other than hang out, enjoy the weather, and eat…so, the perfect visit, basically. Last night we had a bottle of wine on the Chez Nous patio before ordering Descendent for dinner and sharing a magnum of Bachelder Pinot Noir.
This morning we went for fancy, boozy brunch at Cluny, and ordered plenty of food and cocktails. As we paid up and prepared to leave, something very nice happened: our server said we’d been such sweet guests that they wanted to send us over a round of mimosas. We happily accepted and drank our drinks, wondering what exactly we’d done to deserve such a treat. After observing more of the guests’ behaviour, we think it might have been more about what we didn’t do — i.e., be demanding jerks. I guess maybe at a touristy, insta-worthy restaurant, being polite, hungry, and low maintenance is enough to stand out.
We spent last week in Montreal, visiting friends and old haunts, and taking the first downtime we’ve had since December. It was the relaxing & refreshing trip we needed, I think.
SUN
After the long drive to Montreal, with a brief stop at the Kingston Brewing Company along the way, we arrived at a familiar home base: the Hotel Nelligan. We dropped our stuff, got cleaned up, and then took a swing at dinner. Lindsay had done a bit of digging on the way into town and found Monarque; while they didn’t have reservations left, we took a chance and showed up. Luckily for us, there were two seats at the bar. Our meal was super tasty, and we liked the vibe. Here’s what we ate & drank:
A glass of Domaine Laroche, Les Butteaux, Chablis 1er Cru 2020 for me, and a Queen Bee cocktail (gin botanist, lillet, lacto-fermented mango & chili honey, lemon, orange blossom) for Lindsay
After a pretty healthy lie-in (it was a VERY comfy bed!) I went downstairs for some breakfast while Lindsay relaxed. We had a lazy morning until heading out for brunch at Le Cartet around the corner and eating our fill. Lindsay had eggs benny served on an English muffin, orange hollandaise sauce, duck confit and onion compote with red wine, spinach, roasted potatoes with salted herbs, and greens. I had brioche French toast with apple butter, caramelized walnuts, chocolate crumble, chocolate mug cake, caramelized apples, salted caramel custard, and fruit salad. We walked it off along the waterfront, sat on the promenade du Vieux Port, and enjoyed the warm weather.
After relaxing for a few hours back in the room (I watched the new episode of The Boys) we went downstairs to the wine bar for a drink (okay, fine, we had a bottle of Viognier) before heading to dinner at Marcella, a new Italian place just down the street from the hotel. It was bustling and loud and had great music on the speakers. Our cocktails were good and the sausage and fennel salad were tasty. Everything was really great…until the pasta. We split the carbonara, and it was just so disappointing. My theory is that, because it was just before the kitchen closed, a line chef slapped it together or re-warmed it. Or something. It was bad. Overall the night was a good one, but that wasn’t a good note to go out on. (Also, we ordered a bottle of Barolo, with which I sometimes struggle.)
It was hard to believe we’d only been in Montreal 36 hours. I’d definitely achieved a relaxation level I’d not felt in some time.
After some breakfast downstairs, we walked out of Old Montreal for the first time on this trip, meeting our friend N outside the not-yet-open (despite what the hours on their website and their door say) L’Ideal before plan B-ing our way around the corner to the cafe Saint Henri for some coffee and co-work time. We did eventually make our way back to L’Ideal — again, after some confusion about the hours — but settled in and enjoyed some funky wine. We chatted for a few hours, enjoying the fresh air, even if it was infested with so much pollen it looked like a mild snowstorm. Once good and chill, we walked home and crashed at the hotel.
For dinner we’d booked in at Nora Gray. We didn’t rally get the full experience as Lindsay suddenly felt very sick and we had to cut the evening in half, but I really enjoyed what we did have:
Appetizers
Homemade focaccia, pepperoncini, La Villana olive oil
QC lobster, asparagus, pickled ramp, brown butter crumble
Bottle of P. Frick 2018 “Auxerrois” Crémant d’Alsace
After yet another good sleep, I popped downstairs for breakfast while Lindsay tried to exorcise whatever demon possessed her body the night before. We kept the morning pretty relaxed, overall, watching an episode of Gaslit in bed while Lindsay nibbled gingerly on a croissant. Eventually we went out for a walk along the water, stopping in a park to admire a fountain and squeal at some cute ducks.
Eventually we got hungry, and went round the corner to Pub BreWskey. We opted to sit inside, but later regretted it. I had a salad and a fruit smoothie sour; Lindsay had mac & cheese and a grisette. I needed to eat some vegetables, and she needed to eat something, so we both did well, I think. After another walk & sit by the river, and a nice flat white from Aloha, we went back to the hotel to relax a little more before dinner.
Dinner #4 was at old favourite Maison Publique. It’s not far from where Lindsay used to live, so we went every time I was in town. Four years away didn’t diminish our affection for the place, nor had the food suffered — the meal was absolutely delicious.
Food
Mozzarella with radish and pesto
Duck hearts in a spicy diavola sauce
Smelts grilled in lemon, butter, capers, tarragon
Ravioli with ricotta, garlic
Halibut in a cream sauce
Drink
glasses of a Mâcon Chardonnay
a bottle of Chardonnay from Jura, very funky and different but delicious with our meal
Time to leave our hotel, and Old Montreal. As the week got closer to the big F1 weekend, it was becoming nearly intolerable anyway. After a quick lunch at Mandy’s we jumped in the car and drove to a new neighbourhood. N lent us their apartment for a few days, and we got ourselves settled in just ahead of the huge rainstorm which battered Montreal on Thursday, In between downpours we managed to skip over to one of our old favourite beer bars, Brouhaha. We had some tasty pints (me: a brown and a session IPA; Lindsay: a sour and a rauchbier; Finchy: lager) and a flatbread pizza, and timed our escape for another lull in the rain.
Later that night we met up with N= J at Brouillon Café-Buvette for a pre-dinner drink. We’d originally planned to visit somewhere outside of the city, but the biblical rain would have made that pretty miserable, so N smartly booked us in for a late dinner at Pichai. Luckily it had been on my list of places to try, not just because it was on the Canada’s Best 100 list, but because they’re known to have a great wine selection — which, it turns out, was curated by Nora Grey’s sommelier. It turned out to be an exceptional choice — what a wonderful meal.
Food
Veal tongue
Fried rice w/ scallops
Green papaya salad w/ peanuts & dried shrimp
Fish balls in sweet chili sauce
Grilled hangar steak w/ rice powder, herbs, lemon
Sauteed Argentinian shrimp, green beans, chili, basil
Wine bottles (note: their list isn’t online and I didn’t take good notes/pictures, so this is all I remember)
I went out in the morning to get coffee and pastries from a local place called Miche & Carré. The croissants and my capp were good; sadly Lindsay’s Americano was not.
Eventually N + J met us here, and we jumped in the car for a day trip out to see La Fondation Grantham. We were there in part to see an exhibition called Exhibition Troubled Garden: Study for Migratory Roots:
The Iranian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist Anahita Norouzi is interested in displacement issues related to notions such as statelessness and hybridity. For two years, in collaboration with the Biodiversity Research Centre of the Université de Montréal, she is developing a research/creation project on the ecological, cultural and social dimensions of migration issues from the perspective of non-native plants that have appeared in Quebec as an extension of the migratory flows of populations. Curator: Bénédicte Ramade. [source]
We were also there to see the building itself, tucked into the landscape and old forest, with a river running lazily by. We found trails afterward, and got some fresh air and walking in before the mosquitoes found us.
On the way back to Montreal we were hungry, so we pulled off the highway and visited Cantine Chez Dave & Dan in Saint-Liboire, a box on the side of the road which served up delicious hamburgers and chicken burgers and enough fries to kill a horse. We piled back in the car and did our best to stay awake as we drove back in to Montreal traffic, narrowly missing rush hour and another thunderstorm. We decided not to tempt fate, as we’d done the day before, and just stayed in.
SAT
Not much to Saturday: packing, one last coffee with N as we handed their apartment back to them, and a drive home. We fought one last brutal rainstorm on the way out of town, but the rest of the drive was pretty easy. We even stopped in Cornwall and fulfilled Lindsay’s nostalgic wish for an East Side Mario’s lunch.
We came home to a Kramer who yelled at us for a couple of minutes but pretty quickly became an affection monster. Not a bad welcoming party, really.
A week where we did little but sleep in, dine out, drink well, and see friends did us a world of good. As much as I love vacations where we experience something new and fill our brains with different, this was what we needed right now.
Today Lindsay and I (and our friend Sarah) drove down to Beamsville to pick up our Hidden Bench wine club allotment. It was our second one of these visits. It was a beautiful day — we ate snacks and sipped wine inside the barn and out.
We’re now loaded up on a bunch of great Riesling and rosé for the summer, but also their killer Pinot for the cellar and — most excitingly — the 2018 La Brunante, their flagship red, which was superb when we sampled it today. I still have the 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2017 vintages as well, so there’s a pretty solid vertical building up.
Earlier this week we joined a handful of other patrons at Chez Nous Wine Bar’s inaugural Flight Club. It involved samples of 11 different Ontario wines (see below) some of which were the acknowledged stars of Niagara, while others snuck up on us.
It was terrific fun, to where Lindsay had to restrain me from excitedly blabbing too much. If this is a monthly event, we’ll happily keep signing up. Though, given how we felt Tuesday morning, we probably won’t share a bottle of wine before we go to the next one. That wasn’t our best call.
The wines:
Meldville Muscat Bubble 2020
2027 Cellars Pinot Gris 2020
Leaning Post Riesling 2018
Flat Rock Gewuztraminer 2020
13th Street Maximum Intervention 2020 (Riesling; orange wine)
Last night Lindsay and I, and three other couples, had dinner in the beautiful private dining room in the cellar at Barberian’s steakhouse. We’d won the dinner in last fall’s Grapes for Climate Change charity auction; after not being sure what would happen throughout the Omicron lockdown we found out last week it was going ahead, and we re-mobilized.
Dinner wasn’t just dinner either — there were special guests. Beverly Crandon, one of the founders of Vinequity, and Thomas Bachelder, Niagara winemaking royalty. Thomas was pouring several of his wines to go with the meal, and we got to compare, contrast, and learn about the wines as we went. Some were the very last magnums and bottles (sorry — half-magnums) of his 2014s. At one point Arron Barberian came down and talked about the barrels of wine Thomas had made of blended wine from dozens of Niagara producers, and which he had put into more magnums, which Barberian had signed by Geddy Lee. Proceeds from the sale of those bottles also went to GfH, so…we bought six.
It was a great night, our first since this latest lockdown began. And the best part is, the winnings included a tasting at the Bachelder bat cave in the spring. Can’t effing wait.
We’ve just wrapped a few days’ visit from some lovely friends, in from Montreal. We hung out. We relaxed. They made us dinner. We opened good wines. We played Marios, both Kart and Party. It was — they were — a welcome bit of light beamed into an otherwise grim February.
Also: yesterday while I was sitting in the office, I saw a large owl — what I guessed was a snowy owl? — take off from the roof of our house, swoop across the laneway, and perch on a nearby roof. A few minutes later it came back, and I got the full National-Geographic-style view of the owl in full wing, seemingly looking me right in the eye.
Last night we met up with friends K & E at La Paella, a Spanish restaurant just down the street which none of us had ever been to. We sat on their covered patio on a warm, rainy evening, and ate & drank…uh, a lot.
We shared four tapas plates — grilled lamb chops; sweet pimientos del piquillo stuffed with beef cheeks; sauteed garlic shrimp in Spanish olive oil; and Oyster mushrooms, garlic & olive oil, pan seared in Andalucia sherry wine — before digging into a paella of rabbit, wild boar, Spanish chorizo, Jamon Serrano, green peas and piquillo peppers. It was all washed down with several bottles of Rioja and Duero. Dessert was everything on offer: almond cake, manchego cheesecake, house-made chocolate, and some kind of flan? Anyway, the star was the 1968 Bodegas Toro Albala Don PX Seleccion.
It was a long, lovely dinner, the likes of which we haven’t had in over a year.
This morning Lindsay’s old friend N and N’s girlfriend J left for Montreal, having stayed with us the past few days. It was a treat having them here. It felt odd to even have guests in the house again, but the week was just so chill and fun. And they kept cooking for us, which felt pretty luxe.
Last night was especially fun — after drinks & decor ideas and book browsing, they made an amazing dinner of tenderloin steaks wrapped in bacon, Caesar salad, and oven-roasted fresh-cut fries. We had plenty of wine before and during: Muscadet, Albarino, Ontario sparkling, Pet Nat, and Napa Cab. We sat outside in the perfect weather and wolfed it down. The dinner, the day, and really the whole week was just such a joy.
While normally we find it exhausting to look at screens, yesterday they were the underpinnings of a pretty good day.
Somehow yesterday I became aware that Bar Volo, and its College Street sibling Birreria Volo carry Gueuze Tilquin, one of my all-time favourite beers but heretofore extremely hard to find in Ontario. I jumped on the laptop, ordered a bunch from Volo (including the new-to-me wild blueberry Tilquin, and a bottle of the Rullquin stout, and a bottle of Cantillon for good measure), followed by an order from the Birreria of 6 (!) bottles of their standard gueuze and 2 bottles of the cassis. Turns out they can’t deliver it without food, so we grabbed some sausage, manchego, and a baguette too.
After that was all put away, and as I cleaned up the kitchen, we watched two episodes (one from last week, the other live) of Think You Know Wine, the virtual blind tasting by four of the WineAlign wine critics. It was Lindsay’s first time watching, and she could barely stand the humbling the critics took these last few episodes, but I loved it. Made me feel better about my own tasting endeavours. We finished them up as we sat down to dinner.
Not long after said dinner we jumped on a Jitsi call with some friends, and ended up chatting the night away for four hours. I kept the TV on in the background, and watched the Habs blast the Canucks for the second straight night. We finished some wine and tackled some of the excellent new beer. Kramer saw some raccoons walking through the backyard and freaked out. By the time we went to bed we’d been drinking and eating for about 8 hours, so we woke up this morning feeling a little overindulged, but nothing a lie-in, some coffee, and some greasy breakfast couldn’t fix.
Last night, for a friend’s birthday, we took part in a fun thing: a blind beer tasting (on Zoom, naturally) between people over five households. Each person bought five beers, wrapped them to obscure what they were, and safe-dropped them with the coordinator who then distributed them to each of the households.
So, last night we signed on, and tasted all twelve beers one by one, each time guessing what they were. There were, as we’d guessed, a lot of sours. Lindsay picked a smoked lavender stout from Avling; I picked up a seasonal east coast IPA from Radical Road. Both were hits.
Lindsay and I tied for the most accurate guessing. All in all, it was a really fun night, and a cool way to celebrate a friend’s birthday, even if she did try to kill us all with Delirium Tremens.
