Biological

Recently read Yann Martel's latest book, Beatrice & Virgil, and it was great!

Recently saw French movie De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté and it was beautiful!

Recently went to La Banquise and had a novelty poutine (fries, cheese, BBQ sauce, sour cream, guacamole and tomatoes) and it was delicious!

Sorry, feel more or less like blogging these days.

Sleepwalker

I'm going to one of my favorite restaurants tonight, and this prompted me to do a round-up of all of my favorite restaurants. After all, I have been writing about restaurants for some time now. So, let's start with the ones that are more

On the expensive side

Le Piémontais: This is the one I'm going to tonight. Fine Italian food. We always eat the same thing: veal with cream pasta, and it's to die for. They also give us free chicken at the beginning, and the bread is always good and warm, which is always a great thing. It's really kind of expensive, though.

M sur Masson: It's expensive, but the portions are huge, and it is always delicious. We have a great relationship with the staff. I love the salad with the half-cooked egg! I have a previous post on this restaurant here.

La Porte and Laloux: Also expensive, smaller portions, but really delicious. My posts on those restaurants are here and here.

On the medium side

Dima: Really far, but killer appetizers. Syrian food. Previous post here.

On the cheaper side

M & M Legend: I'm not even sure of its proper name. We keep calling it "the pink restaurant". It used to be a very sketchy-looking place with pink walls in Chinatown. It has recently been renovated, and now my friend doesn't like it as much because he says it has sold out and that the prices are higher than before. It could be true, but it still is pretty cheap. There are Chinese buns, some more dessert-like and others with meat. The portions are huge, so it's a great place for eating with friends.

And, why not? My favorite fast food places

I love Thaï Express. It's what I eat when I'm depressed. I like the taste of McDonald's, KFC and Taco Bell, although I feel terribly guilty once I'm done eating at those places. And on the Canadian side, I like Harvey's and Tim Hortons. At Tim Hortons, I can get great coffee, great bagels, and great donuts when I feel like splurging.

I started with pretty well-rated restaurant and ended with McDonald's. Classy.

Take It Or Leave It

I'm pretty much done with classes, so it's back to Having A Lot Of Time To Read time. For a long time, I tried to find the edition of Salinger's Nine Stories that I wanted, but I finally gave in and bought a different edition. I wanted to reread it before tackling the only Salinger I hadn't read yet,Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. (I bought it last summer in Vancouver: it has been sitting on a shelf ever since.)

My rereading of Nine Stories was unsatisfying. Understanding those stories correctly would require me to read exterior analyses of them. I'll probably do that sooner or later, but I wish I didn't have to.

Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters was more satisfying. It is the detailed story of Seymour Glass' wedding day. It is often very funny. With this story, I decided Buddy Glass was my favorite of the Glass children. (Zooey is not bad either, and Boo Boo is cool, too.)

Unfortunately, I was very bored with the beginning of Seymour: An Introduction. The narrator goes on and on about very abstract ideas. I eventually realized that the narrator was actually Buddy Glass, whom I had previously been proud to proclaim my favorite Glass child. The story got better, though. It became a detailed portrait of Seymour Glass, Buddy's older brother. Seymour Glass annoys the hell out of me, though. But it is endearing to see how much his brothers and sisters love him. It is equally endearing how Buddy always doubts what he is writing.

I have now come to the conclusion that my appreciation of Salinger's work, from my favorite to my least favorite, goes like this: Franny and Zooey, Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, Seymour: An Introduction, and Nine Stories. The Catcher In The Rye goes into another category entirely, the category of Books I Have A Love-Hate Relationship With. It probably stands alone in its category, actually.

(I have to mention, though, that the stories in Nine Stories are still all enjoyable. I tried to rank them from my favorite to my least favorite, and I realized that I actually kind of like them all. I usually like either the beginning or the end of the story only, though. I like the beginnings of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and of "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut". "Just Before the War with the Eskimos", "The Laughing Man" and "Down at the Dinghy" are terrific stories. I liked the end of "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor". I didn't like the end of "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes." I didn't like the beginning of "De Daudier-Smith's Blue Period", but its end is terrific. "Teddy" is an interesting story.)

The edition of "Nine Stories" that I wanted is pictured below.

Windowsill

Yesterday I watched a terrific movie. It is called Entre les murs, and its American title is The Class. It is a movie that feels like a documentary, as it is based on a book written by a French high school teacher and this teacher plays a version of himself in the movie. We follow him through a year of teaching a class mostly filled with ethnic students from a less fortunate part of Paris. The classroom scenes will feel very familiar to any viewer, as they reflect something everyone has gone through: high school. It is interesting to watch these fifteen-year-old students who all seem to think they rule the world and to remember that we had similar feelings at that age. The movie is a great reflection on education. Both the students and the teacher are not perfect: they both have great moments, and they both have obvious flaws. There are times when one wants to scream at the teacher: "That is not how you should do it! I know a much better way of dealing with this student!" The movie is very funny at times and truly heartbreaking at others. A great moment.

Come Here

Whoo! Lots of catching up to do. Recently, I went to a fancy restaurant, I read The English Patient, I saw The Informant!, a cute French romantic comedy, and Hable con ella. So skip ahead to any passage that might interest you.

The restaurant: I went to Europea, the kind of restaurant that gives you tiny portions in enormous plates, but they gave us plenty of freebies in between the apetizer and the entrée, so it was fine. Actually, there were so many freebies that I just couldn't wait to get my entrée. First, we had to choose between olive bread, white bread and parmesan bread. I had olive bread, which was delicious. They also gave us breadsticks with olive oil. Next we had a parmesan and goat cheese chip shaped into a lollipop: our first freebie. The next freebie was a lobster capuccino with truffles: delicious. I had foie gras as an apetizer, then another freebie came along: it was some sort of eggnog with truffle pieces in it. It was kind of weird. Then we had an apple sherbet with ice cider to clean our palate: it was great. My entrée was scallops and crawfish on a risotto bed. There wasn't mushc risotto, though, so I was kind of disappointed. Then came a shitload of desserts. We had lime sherbet with white chocolate, which was really great. Then they gave us cotton candy (?!) and madeleines, which we could bring home. Then I finally got the dessert I had actually ordered, which was chocolate cake with thyme sherbet: it was great. To conclude, they gave us pound cakes which we could also take home. The service was kind of weird at that restaurant. All in all, I don't think I would go back there.

The English Patient: As much as I hated the movie, I loved the book. What the movie did for me, though, was that it allowed me to imagine Juliette Binoche each time Hana's character was mentioned, which isn't a bad thing at all. The book was really sensuous and was a lot more linear than the movie. It allowed me to understand the importance of Kip and Hana's story, which seemed totally irrelevant to me while I was watching the movie.

The Informant!: It was kind of a complicated movie to understand, what with its story concerning corporate crime and all. It was funny at times, though.

Prête-moi ta main: If this movie had been made in the United States, it would have been totally unwatchable. The French accent, however, can make up for anything.

Hable con ella: I have seen four Almodovar movies: La Mala Educacion, Volver, Todo sobre mi madre and Hable con ella. My favorite one was La Mala Educacion, then Todo sobre mi madre, then Hable con ella. Hable con ella is still a terrific movie, though. It is beautiful, as all Almodovar movies. That guy really knows how to tell a story. I found this movie particularly sad.

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.