Last night I strolled up the street to see the latest installment of Comedy Kapow at 120 Diner. My friend Amy was one of the comics, and she killed it as usual. There were a few others I found really good as well, especially Jimmer Lowe and the two hosts, Amish Patel and Ernie Vicente. It was nice to see a few of my old colleagues there too.
Weirdest moment of the night: seeing Globe and Mail sports reporter David Shoalts walk on stage and do a set. Was not expecting that.
Things haven’t really slowed down after that epic long weekend. On top of a busy week at work, the eating and drinking has still come thick and fast.
Tuesday: I finished my last meeting of the day at Sin & Redemption,with a Rodenbach, a Duchesse de Bourgogne, and a few Erdinger dunkels.
Wednesday: after a work event I stopped in at Richmond Station for a beautiful little glass of Pearce Predhomme Pinot Noir, then met Lindsay and some friends at Batch.
Thursday: we met Lindsay’s friends for dinner at Museum Tavern (duck buns, seared tuna sandwich, lamb shoulder), but first stopped for drinks and pizza at Buca Yorkville.
Friday: we split a bottle of wine of Rioja (the Olabarri Reserva 2008) with a friend at Cava, then went big: dinner at Jacobs & Co. It was Lindsay’s first time there, and I think it lived up to all my hype. Here’s what we ate:
Saturday: a much-needed lie-in, then the market for supplies, coffee at XO Bisous, late lunch at The County General, a very cool exhibit at Inter/Access called Bread and Circuses, and a stroll around The Artist Project.
Sunday: we finished watching Dope (imdb | rotten tomatoes) after falling asleep partway through the night before. Excellent movie, by the way – killer soundtrack too. Then, after finishing the last of the leftover Jacobs steak and banging out some work (over a few bottles of craft beer) we got some killer tacos at La Carnita, explored the Aquarium for the very first time, and then made an amazing batch of pasta at home before completely crashing out, exhausted from the weekend. Phew!
I need a busy week just to recover.
Uh, that was a ridiculously great long weekend.
Friday: we saw an amazing Japandroids concert (seriously, one of the best value-for-money shows I’ve ever seen) and had a late dinner at The Auld Spot.
Saturday: we drove to Beamsville in the beautiful sunny weather to sample wine and eat raclette at Hidden Bench, then do more tastings at Foreign Affair and Megalomaniac before heading home and getting fancy for dinner at The Chase. We had Perrier-Jouet Champagne and buratta, and scallops + pork belly with Chardonnay and Nebbiolo, and duck (me) and lobster cavatelli (Lindsay) with a fantastic bottle of Sangiovese. Dessert was a slightly disappointing (for me, anyway) honey pastry, but I came home and had some 1986 Don P.X. to make up for it.
Sunday: we were a little slow-moving, honestly, so not much happened until we had a halfway-decent-for-us lunch at b.good and a pint at Beerbistro before going home to watch Going Clear (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Unfortunately we ended the day with a somewhat gross AYCE sushi dinner that night at Fushimi.
Monday: we hung out in my (almost) new hood, hitting Boxcar Social for beers, L’il Baci for brunch (spicy pork balls, turducken balls, cocktails), Ed’s Real Scoop for ice cream, and Mercury for cortados. That night we made pasta we’d picked up at the market, and it was freaking delicious.
Whadda weekend.
Two weeks ago I mentioned that I was staging this condo for sale.
It listed last Wednesday. There were 34 viewings by Sunday.
Monday there were half a dozen offers. Now someone else owns it. Or will, in a few months.
Most sane humans would sell first, then buy. Or buy first, then rent. I, naturally, chose to parallel-track these things, and bought a new place on Wednesday. So in April, I’ll live somewhere else for the first time in ten years.
My superb weekends in Montreal are becoming too numerous to count. Here’s the really, really short version.
À la prochaine, Montréal.
On Monday night I met up with T-Bone (finally!) for a dinner at Canoe, put on by Le Vieux Pin, one of my favourite BC wineries. It was…okay. I liked the wine (T-Bone didn’t as much) but the dinner didn’t blow either of us away. My beef was cooked to medium; my dessert was unremarkable. Quite odd, for Canoe. Luckily, I get another crack at it next week for work.
.:.
Cover photo by b-l-k, used under Creative Commons license
I had a busy weekend, but not too busy to sneak in a couple of movies from last year’s best-of list.
Deepwater Horizon (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was an example of what I’m now calling the Peter Berg Special: something that sits right on the line between action movie and serious film, with a bunch of dude banter thrown in. It was better than I expected, especially with Mark Wahlberg in the lead.
I wasn’t sure what to think of Tower (imdb | rotten tomatoes) in the first couple of minutes. The rotoscope-y animation took a little getting used to, but I guess there was really no other way to comprehensively tell the story of a mass shooting — maybe America’s first and most famous campus mass shooting, the University of Texas tower sniper — without it. That animation, archival footage, and current-day interviews ended up being a pretty effective combination. The fact that, fifty years later, America is still asking the same questions about gun massacres that it did that day says a lot about the state of their society.
Finally, a light note: Hail, Caesar! (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was the Coen brothers’ homage to post-war Hollywood. It’s silly and cute and self-referential and pretty funny in parts. Ralph Fiennes during the “Would that it were so simple.” scene killed me.
After 4+ years in this condo, I’m selling it. It’s too much for one person to live in, especially one who owns as little stuff (wine notwithstanding) as I do. So it’ll hit the market next week; in the meantime my agent’s stager has been in to dress it up.
They left with strict instructions to touch nothing unless completely necessary, and to repair any damage I leave in my wake for the next few days. By, you know, sleeping and bathing myself. I feel like Michael Bluth living in a model home. Or like I’ve been trapped in a cover story for Canadian Living magazine. It’s nice and all, but so not my style. I mean:
Anyway, I can’t get wait to get on with this bit and find a new place to live. The Toronto real estate market is calm and highly predictable, right? *sobs*
From The AV Club: “Richard Kelly wants to make a Donnie Darko sequel“
I wanted to be nowhere near a TV on American inauguration day, aka the beginning of the end, so I worked in a frenzy until I had to run to the airport. I was headed to Montreal for the weekend where it was cold and damp and gray.
After a really interesting talk we grabbed dinner at The Balsam Inn. We split the Quebec mozzarella and garlic bread and chorizo cake with fried egg and tomato jam (!), and then the salmon tartare and beef tartare, all with a bottle of Pinot. We sampled a peanut blondie and orange/almond cake for dessert, with scotch for me and bourbon for Lindsay.
The next day was kinda lazy, slightly worky, heavy on the pastry (there’s this amazing bakery near Lindsay’s place that makes me SO happy), and ended up with us at Saint Houblon for beers and lunch. Lindsay’s lamb burger looked prety good; my duck confit burger was fantastic. The beers were all pretty solid too…great selection (some brewed there, some from other Quebec microbreweries) and laid-back atmosphere.
We relaxed a little back at Lindsay’s before dinner, and drank a bottle I bought (and left behind) the last time I was here: Beau’s “One Ping Only” Baltic porter. I mean, I love porter anyway, but the reference to The Hunt For Red October guaranteed I’d buy it.
Dinner Saturday was at our usual spot: Maison Publique. Our first time there together was stellar; the second time was good, not great. This time, though, we found that first height again.
Sunday was a big old pile of relax: pancakes, merguez sausages, mimosas, work, and watching The Invitation. I was so relaxed I forgot I even owned a watch, and accidentally left it behind when I took off for the airport.
See you in two weeks, Maison Publique. You too, rest of Montreal.
.:.
Cover photo from the Southbrook site
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 