2025, Food, Travel, Uncategorized

Fine Dining

33 Comments

One thing I have always loved about Montreal is the quality of the food in grocery stores and restaurants. You may have difficulty finding Diet Mountain Dew, as a couple of our ND colleagues lamented, but in terms of other “real food”, it is Nirvana.

We had wonderful Punjabi food our first night there at a restaurant called Le Taj. The naan was the best I ever had, and now I want a tandoor in the back yard! There are scores of great restaurants serving any ethnic food you might want. We had an early supper one night at a Portuguese restaurant and had lovely lamb sandwiches on panini. That restaurant was wedged between a sushi restaurant and a Spanish restaurant. Many delis are open after midnight.

The hotel where our conference was located fed us breakfast and lunch most days, with a really big dinner on Friday night. The food was always served buffet style, and was wonderful in its opulent diversity. I never saw caviar at a conference buffet before, but on Friday night one of our options was poached salmon covered in about 3 inches of black caviar. I am not exaggerating the amount of caviar that was piled on that salmon. You could take as much as you wanted. I have never eaten caviar and probably never will, but it gives you an idea of the food we were offered. The French pastries and breads were superb. The Vegan and Vegetarian attendees told me they were very happy with the food choices they were offered, too.

Husband stocked our room fridge with great cheeses and cold cuts from a small grocery store for late night snacks. He didn’t find the time for a smoked meat on rye sandwich, though, something Montreal is famous for. It just means we will have to go back.

Eat much caviar? Tell about your travel dining experiences.

33 thoughts on “Fine Dining”

  1. I remember a place in Del Mar, just north of San Diego. A friend and I had flown out to go to a wedding, and see a few sights. One day we took a long walk and ended up at this Italian place with a lovely patio. We each ordered a glass of wine, and then shared a plate of pasta and grilled asparagus. We were there at an odd time, so there were few people about and I think we had the patio to ourselves. There was a little chill in the air that day and the patio had those heaters to make it cosy.

    We also ate at the restaraurant at the La Valencia Hotel during that trip. That was expensive, but very elegant. I don’t remember the food there, but the scenery is lovely in La Jolla.

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    1. Our son used to work in downtown LaJolla. Office rental space is rather cheap there in part because people expect it to be expensive. We ate in a restaurant set right on the edge of the cliff over the ocean. Remember the view, not the food. In our many trips there, best food was in a Mexican restaurant in Old Town.
      Lots of tough news last two days, including one of our pseudo sons is close to blind. He simply wonderful giving upbeat person.
      Clyde

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  2. I’ve never had caviar, and don’t have a whole lot of interest in it. I don’t need to develop expensive tastes. If I ran across it in a buffet I might sample a little.

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  3. Rise and Dine, Baboons,

    There was this lovely spot in Rome that was fairly new and just sublime. The physical space itself was a half basement in a Roman building which was very old. The owner was playing jazz overhead. He came out to greet us and chat with the Americans. That pleased both my husband and son, who all had an extended conversation about American jazz.

    During a different trip to Rome, some extended family and us went to the Hosteria when we were suddenly in the middle of a serious lightening storm which echoed through the cobbled streets and put us in danger. The place was not yet open. We pounded on the doors and they let us in early to get out of the storm. The food there is wonderful.

    Caviar is not my thing. I do not like the texture at all. It is like eating dusty produce right out of the garden which is a bit gritty. Yuck.

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  4. Tried caviar once. DIdn’t care for it. As with many “strange” foods, the texture turned me off more than the taste.

    FIne dining experiences are too numerous to recall here. Best meal ever was probably a 2-star MIchelin restaurant in a small town in Burgundy. Hooo-leeeee cow was that mind blowing!

    We’ve had great meals in many small towns and holes in the wall in large towns. Chicago had incredible restaurants while we were there. Don’t automatically pass up a strip mall restaurant in Chicagoland. You might miss out on a fantastic meal.

    I fondly recall a heavenly lamb shank in an Italian place in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Duck and bacon wontons at Bluefin Grille in Tofte. Sea bass Vera Cruz in Cancun. Grandma Norbury’s roast pork dinner during our visit in 1982 (the epitome of home cookin’). The best tortilla chips we’ve ever tried at a small Mexican restaurant in Buena Vista, CO. A fabulous fig and arugula pizza at a place in Denver. Burnt ends at Arthur Bryant’s in K. Anything from Smokey D’s BBQ in Des Moines, etc., etc.

    And I’m rambling. 😦

    Food is life, food is a reason for living, food is a celebration of the Earth’s bounty and how we’re fortunate as a species to have elevated eating to a level far above mere sustenance.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. Seafood restaurant in Savannah where there was a hole in the middle of the table with a garbage can under it. And a British Pub in Savannah. Seafood restaurant on CT coast. Seafood hot pot in Rutland Vermont. Lobster on Maine coast. Despite all that seafood have not had caviar.

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    1. I have been in that seafood restaurant and the British pub. Food in Savannah is quite good as long as you stay out of the tourist traps. BBQ joints out of alleyway garages are very good.

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  8. The first time I had Indian food was in London on a Concordia May Seminar. It was so delicious, but way too hot for me. I tried my best to eat it and almost started crying in frustration as it was so good but so hot.

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  10. calvin trillin wrote a book about eating local specialties. never eat ribs in kansas city unless its served on a piece of butcher paper. local tradition. find the local joint. being a veggie has been interesting in places where i dont speak the language .

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  11. As you might expect, I had caviar on several occasions while I worked in Moscow. We’d buy half a pound of black caviar, wrapped in newspaper – like English fish and chips used to be – and serve it with plain unsalted crackers, blini, sour cream, and/or a squeeze of lemon. Once in a while chopped hard boiled eggs (the yolks and whites chopped separately), mixed with diced red onion would be offered as well. Served along with shots of good Russian vodka, before you knew it, you had a party. Good caviar is not overly salty, but it needs to be served ice cold. Just a small dab on a cracker; don’t chew it, but roll it around gently, squishing the small black pearls against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. It truly is a delicacy.

    I remember these parties fondly because they were such a contrast to the dull, grey, somber everyday life in Moscow at the time. Most of the people at these gatherings were artists of various kinds. Several were dancers at the Bolshoi, local writers and painters, and once, almost the entire cast from a touring Holiday on Ice show. One friend, Ann Stone, was a young English woman who had been with the Bolshoi ballet school since she was eleven, and of course, was fluent in Russian. It was through her that I received invitations to several of these fairly impromptu gatherings. This was long before cell phones and text messaging; it still amazes me how we managed to somehow get word to one another.

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  12. It seems to me that caviar piled thickly on poached salmon would be a discredit both to the salmon and to the caviar. They wouldn’t exactly balance each other. And with caviar I wouldn’t necessarily think the more the better.

    We’ve had interesting meals everywhere we’ve traveled— good curry in Inverness, braised short ribs on tagliatelle in a small cafe in Florence, duck breast on a bed of root vegetables in a thirteenth century pub in Wales.
    On our most recent trip to Japan we had both comforting street food and more exotic meals. One particularly memorable one was at a restaurant a Tokyo friend took us to. It was a fairly formal setting, with a low table and one end of the small private room offered a view onto a garden. Other than the rice, every item on the multi-course meal was tofu in one form or another and with various flavor components. Some were chewy, some were creamy, and every texture in between. All delicious.

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  13. I’m having a little trouble with WP again today. We’ll see if this posts. I couldn’t even get a comment box for a while.

    I’ve had caviar. My response to it was like many others here. I probably didn’t sample it properly, as PJ described.

    A year ago, this week, in Doolin Ireland, I had a seafood platter in a delightful restaurant. There was salmon, cod, a sample of pickled fish (probably also cod), several mussels, a raw oyster, and some seafood salad. It was all delicious. I’m not a huge fan of raw oysters, but my philosophy had been, “When in Rome….” So I tried everything, including the oyster.

    My friends ordered American choices every single time we ate out. Fried fish and French fries. Coors beer. I felt a little bad about that, but I kept my mouth shut. I did say once that I wanted to eat Irish food while I was there, so I tried all kinds of things. I especially liked the fish chowders or stews. I also had a fish pie in a little pub. I think that was the best thing I ate on that trip. It was just delicious. I also drank Guinness. We were at a pub with live music one evening. My friends ordered Coors beers, and I watched the bartender’s face. He looked slightly disgusted but not surprised. He lit up like a Christmas tree when I asked for a pint o’ Guinness. He asked me, “How’s the Craic?” I asked what is Craic? He responded by asking me if I was having fun. It must have showed. All that live Irish music in a real Irish pub, with a friendly bartender and a pint of Guinness. I was grinning ear to ear.

    I don’t eat in fancy restaurants very often. I wouldn’t know how to behave.

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  14. I could go on and on about this topic. Suffice it to say two of my favorite meals of all times were in Italy, one outside of Rome and one in Sicily. Interestingly enough, both of them were wineries. I had the best sticky toffee pudding in Grand Cayman. And while my favorite tiramisu was at the winery outside of Rome, my second favorite tiramisu was at a little tiny restaurant in Lahaina, which unfortunately was lost during the Maui fire.

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  16. One of our most memorable travel meals was at a restaurant called The Crab Claw on Chesapeake Bay. We sat outside next to the water with paper spread over the table and had steamed crabs piled in a heap in the middle. It was the best seafood this land-locked Minnesotan ever ate.

    We always have great food in Chicago; a current favorite is Burt’s Pizza. In Paris, we try various versions of the classic ham/baguette sandwich (jambon beurre). London has wonderful Indian food–Renee, we go to Dishoom which is delicious but not too spicy for me. One of the best things in London was a “sausage roll” made by a butcher shop called The Ginger Pig. We bought it at a stand at one of London’s many wonderful markets and it was so good we dream about it.

    I think I had caviar years ago, but it wasn’t high quality and just tasted salty.

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