Last week-end

New topic! I like to eat out a lot, so for the Montrealers reading me, you might get a few ideas from this blog from now on. (Shifting from pop culture to lifestyle...) I'm putting this post under "Places": it will mostly be places to eat, but other places might come up too.

I tried the new vietnamese restaurant that opened in my little suburb. It is part of a big Asian complex, since my suburb is basically Montreal's South Shore's Chinatown. The place is called Sao Sao: no idea what it means, and it doesn't really sound vietnamese. The restaurant filled up in no time. Unfortunately, it seemed as if there wasn't enough staff in the kitchen to keep up with all the clients. We waited a really long time for our meal. Okay, the place is new, but my father kept saying it wasn't an excuse. The staff on floor seemed completely overwhelmed. Perhaps they hadn't ever expected to receive so many people in their restaurant?... Anyway, aside from this point, the food was okay. There was a really good mango and shrimp salad (very fresh mango) and I ordered rice and grilled pork, a vietnamese classic. My meal wasn't particularly warm, but it didn't really matter. According to my mom, the soup was good, and that's pretty important, since it's a big classic also. All in all, I would come back to this place, but not anytime soon. I would wait for them to get used to the rhythm, or I would go at a random hour, so that there are no other clients in the restaurant. And I would definitely order the mango and shrimp salad again. 

Saturday night, I went to a fancy restaurant with my parents. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have no life. But I had completely forgotten about Valentine's Day and I had the choice between studying my head off or getting free food. Besides, I love dining with my parents. They always bring me to fancy places, and it's not as if they're a totally lovey-dovey couple.

The restaurant was called La Porte (The Door, for anglophones) and it's on St-Laurent street or, as we call it, the Main. A very animated street, great ambiance. We had a fixed menu that night. It was pretty expensive, but usually it's not that bad a price. We tasted a lot of different things, all in pretty small portions, but all incredibly delicious. Lots of interesting mixes, and nothing too weird.

We began with a "petite patience", or a "little patience", meaning something to make us wait. It was a small shooter of "brandade de morue": sort of a cod purée. There were also dried tomatoes. I am used to having my brandade warmer than that, but it was still really good.

Next we had two apetizers. The first one was duck liver with piglet truffles confit (not my translation...), along with a potato shooter. When I first read the menu, I was really weirded out by this idea of a potato shooter, but it turned out to be really good. (I'm giving up on finding synonyms for "delicious" and "really good".) It was warm and very tasty. The duck liver was to be spread on a special little warm bread. The bread was a bit sweet, and it was the definite star of the course, along with the potato shooter.

The next apetizer was a tartar of oysters and truffles in a hot cream of parsnip. On the menu it said we were supposed to get scallops as well, but when the meal was described to us when we received it, there was no mention of scallops. I didn't feel any, either. I had never eaten raw oysters and had always been disgusted by it, but this time it slided down really well. The meal was a great mix of hot and cold. Man I have a thing with temperature.

Our first main course was a piece of monkfish crusted with chorizo resting on ink risotto along with a piece of bok choy with a lobster foam on it. The bok choy tasted great with the lobster foam on it. As for the fish, it was simply delicious. It didn't really taste like fish, but it had a really great texture. 

Second main course. This was a Gaspor's piglet roasted with grilled hay in a cast iron pot. Aside of it was a spinach nem (which is actually a vietnamese roll, when it does not have spinach in it) and a little polenta bun with reduce. All of these were great. The piglet was very well roasted, and the polenta had a nice corn taste to it. You know what was great about the polenta? It was warm. :)

The cheese! Really interesting mix. We had a small slice of gorgonzola with pear crumble and gingerbread on the top. Gorgonzola is a pretty strong cheese, and the sweetness of the pear crumble and the gingerbread counteracted that. Delicious.

Finally, the desert. It was pretty simple, compared to the rest. It appeared as an ordinary chocolate cake to me. Okay, you know, it was Forêt Noire, but that doesn't mean much to me. It was very tasty though, I'll have to admit that. What I liked most about it was the sherbet on top, which was a sherbet of some kind of red fruit. Raspberry, cranberry, I don't know. Maybe I just liked it because it was cold. I like things that have a definite temperature.

To finish up, there were also sweets! First off, a little chocolate sausage (don't ask, just know there was no pork involved, and that it was delicious); second, a little lemon cake; and finally, a delicious lavender and red fruits macaroon. Perfect.

My favorite elements of the meal were the potato shooter, the fish, the piglet and the polenta. :) I just really rediscovered polenta. 

The place was full, and my parents complained that the meal took a little bit too long, but perhaps my parents are just difficult. I think it's fine if you want to take your time. The place itself is really beautiful, too.

Okay, maybe it's not somewhere you would go for an average night out, but you know, if you have your job and you are well established in your life... Anyway, I certainly hope this place will still be around in a few years.

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'RE AT THE END OF THE POST!!!