PDA

I know a few tapas places in Montreal, and Casa Tapas is where I go when I feel like having typical Spanish tapas, rather than having fancy fusion tapas. It is on Rachel St., and it is a medium-sized restaurant, but it still feels pretty intimate. We were a party of four and shared five tapas along with a paella. The tapas are okay-sized, and we actually could have done without the paella. For next time, though, I'll favor ordering more tapas over a paella. The paella was great, but I just find it more interesting to try lots of different tapas. The ones we had were the fried calamari, the fig scallops, the lamb filet mignon, the meatballs and the stuffed eggplant. The calamari are the best I've had in Montreal. The size of the fig scallops plate was a bit disappointing, but it was delicious nonetheless. The lamb filet mignon was satisfying as always: along with the calamari and the stuffed eggplant, it is one of the main reasons I come to Casa Tapas. It is incredibly tender and is mixed with almonds, basil, and cherry tomatoes. The meatballs, though simple, were also very good. And finally, the eggplant is a pure guilty pleasure: it is covered with cheese, and it is EGGPLANT. Come on. I usually have churros at the end of the meal, that typical Spanish dessert (long doughnut sticks covered with sugar and dipped into chocolate sauce, and they're particularly good and warm at Casa Tapas), but since we were full and didn't want to go over our budget too much, we decided to do without. We had a great bottle of white wine all along, and all in all, we each paid about 30$, which isn't that bad. Of course, with one single bottle and four drinkers, you don't get much to drink. Usually when I go out with my family, we also get a single bottle. However, my parents and I are the main drinkers and my mom doesn't drink that much, so I get a lot more wine on those occasions. :)

All Fired Up

I finally went to La Distillerie the other day. It's one of Montreal's more famous bars among the youngsters and it is located on Ontario St., near St-Denis also. They have several unique cocktails and some of them can be served in a huge format commonly called a "pot Masson". I had a more classic mojito, and it was delicious. The place was a lot smaller than I had expected, and it was pretty dark, too, but it simply made for a better ambience. It will probably become a new favorite of mine.

The Cure

I saw Tegan and Sara at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at the Place des Arts last Monday. I hated the venue, it wasn't intimate at all. The concert was great, though. I liked the light effects a lot, and I found that the girls conveyed a lot of emotion.

Setlist:

Arrow

Don't Rush

The Ocean

Hell

Walking With A Ghost

I Bet It Stung

Burn Your Life Down

Where Does The Good Go

Speak Slow

On Directing

Red Belt

The Cure

Paperback Head

Night Watch

Soil, Soil

Knife Going In

So Jealous

Nineteen

Northshore

Alligator

Sentimental Tune

Someday

The Con

Encore:

Back In Your Head

Feel It In My Bones

My Number

Call It Off

Living Room

Other topic: Yesterday, I went to a great tea lounge called Camelia Sinensis near St-Denis. My friend and I had a black Chinese oolong that required us to use a special technique. We were given specific amounts of time for the infusions, and we each had two small cups in front of us, one of them being more cylindrical. We used that one for the first pouring. Afterwards, we would smell it then pour it into the other cup. The cylindrical cup would keep the scent of the tea, and that scent would change as time passed. The senses of taste and of smell would then be separated, very effectively: the tea didn't taste as it smelled. We also had a delicious grape scone, which was just the right amount of buttery, and a green tea cheesecake, which was as delightful as any cheesecake always is. I left the place feeling incredibly relaxed.

Games for Days

Are you more failblog.org or fmylife.com?

Fight the Power

Oh, I also watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs recently and it was awesome! I especially loved Mr.T's voiceover, and Neil Patrick Harris was hilarious as a squeeking monkey. The character of the dad is also great and provides for many moving moments.

After Hours

Books: Read Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, it was great. Horrors of war, once more. I loved the description of Brod's character, and a lot of other things, including the meaning of the book's title.

Movies: Saw The Fountainhead, Gary Cooper is weirdly handsome as Howard Roark; Patricia Neal is not how I pictured Dominique Francon, but she is also weirdly beautiful; I enjoyed Raymond Massey's portrayal of Gail Wynand the most; one of the greatest things about this movie is that it is old and black-and-white, so, not much there; I don't think the movie makes much sense to anyone who hasn't read the book, oh but how I love the book, I reread it recently and all along I was going ohmygodIlovethisbook.

Saw The English Patient, so horrible, I don't understand how it got so many Oscar nominations, both of the characters of the love story are utterly unlikable.

Saw Ne le dis à personne, a terrific French thriller directed by Guillaume Canet, I guess the boy's got brains too.

Saw Up in the Air, it had some good moments; Vera Farmiga's character is really hot; a good reflection on unemployment; it is scary how somebody can get to the point where George Clooney's character has, i.e. with no connection to anybody whatsoever.

Saw Inglourious Basterds, it was okay, but I wasn't blown away by it or anything.

Music: Have bought The XX album from iTunes recently, not exactly breaking news in the indie world here, but I like them a lot.

Places: Went back to Laloux, one of my favorite restaurants, before it changed chefs; perhaps I mentioned this restaurant before; the servings are usually very small, and it is always frustrating because the dishes are both always expensive and delicious; this time, perhaps because they are changing chefs, the servings were a bit more generous; I had a delicious plate of lamb with a tajine of carrots.

Went to a fancy Vietnamese restaurant, it was excellent, had imperial rolls, a Tom Yum soup, chicken sautéed with vegetables, and a very original dessert: chocomaki, a dessert resembling sushi with sweetened rice replacing the rice, fruit replacing the raw fish, and chocolate sauce replacing the soya sauce, all along with some coconut ice cream.

Real life: Arrived to L.A., it was weird, I kept thinking about all the broken dreams that must go down there; went to Santa Monica, a nice little shopping neighborhood; went to Venice Beach, didn't stay very long; drove down Rodeo Drive, a fancy shopping street; visited the Vietnamese mall in Santa Ana; went to a Vietnamese vegeterian restaurant, it was weird.

Drove from L.A. to San Francisco, the road was really nice, desert-like; San Francisco is pretty beautiful; went to a fancy restaurant called La Folie, had snails, Hawaiian butterfish and a Valhrona and passionfruit bomb; went to Napa Valley and Sonoma, i.e. wine country, it was really beautiful; walked around Fisherman's Wharf; went to a contemporary Vietnamese restaurant, it was so delicious; went to Berkeley; went to Chinatown to eat some dim sum; went to City Lights Bookstore; went to Haight-Ashbury; went to Union Square; saw some Chagalls and Picassos; ate at a great Thai place; went to Stanford.

Come As You Are

I read two other Nick Hornby books recently. The first one is About a Boy. I liked the movie better than the book. (And, as you know, I preferred the written version of High Fidelity to its filmed one.) The end of the book is pretty different from the end of the movie. I liked the bit where Marcus, one of the main protagonists, says that it doesn't really matter who are the people who back you up, as long as they're there.

The other one is The Polysyllabic Spree. It's a collection of essays which Hornby wrote for a magazine. The essays are about the books he reads and buys. He buys a shitload of books, and he makes me want to buy a lot, too. I love to read his views on reading. Reading fills me with despair too, sometimes.

I'm done with Nick Hornby for now. He makes me want to read Dickens... We'll see how that goes.

On an entirely other subject, I also saw The Ugly Truth recently. It was so bad. Katherine Heigl plays an uptight bitch, and Gerard Butler is very disappointing.