Bonjour! Hope everyone is having a great Easter weekend so far! I woke up recalling for a full week of vacation back in the days when I lived in Hong Kong. Time flies and now I am all grown up and even thankful for a weekend getaway. My friend and I drove to Montréal for the weekend.
*Bon Voyage! We typed in the wrong city in our GPS for Quebec City instead of Montréal. It took us 7 hours to get to Quebec City and didnt find our Sheraton. Quebac City downtown looks much like Markham near Toronto. There arent a lot of tall buildings and other things. We couldnt find our hotel so asked a person in French (Glad my friend speaks fluent!) and he told us we were in the wrong city - we were 3 hours away. So here we were, a 5 hour detour to get to Montréal. FOL-_- Biggest noobs ever.
Anyway we were lucky to make it to Europea for dinner after changing our reservation from 6 to 8:30. It ranks as one of the top 5 restaurants in Montréal that offers fine French cuisine.
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Teaser
Lobster cream Cappuccino with truffle shavings |
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Le Foie Gras
Seared Quebec Foie gras, root vegetable purée, Buna-shimeji and chips. Morel mushroom emulsion, veal jus flavoured with arabica- arpégio coffee |
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Deer
Rack of Venison, Crispy Galette of Root Vegetables, Chioggia cooked in Salt, Juice with Shadbush Berries | |
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Pop Rocks Candy Chocolate
Mini Madeleine |
I had Foie Gras and Deer while my friend tried the Discovery menu.
The Foie Gras was pan fried perfectly yet so moist. Rich in liver flavor. It was also my 1st time tasting deer and it was SO soft. It actually tastes a lot like beef but softer in texture and lighter in flavor. Though my favourite is one of the teasers - Lobster cream Cappuccino with truffle shavings. Clean yet condensed lobster flavor bisque capped with cream cappucino fluff. I die...We laughed so hard when we had those pop rock candies popped in our mouths. We called it 爆炸糖 in Cantonese. Used to love that sh*t when we were in primary schools lol.
Cool thing about Europea is that they serve you random snacks/sweets among your courses of meals. Our 3 course meal definitely turned into a more than 10 course meal. It makes the 3 hour dinner so entertaining!
We went to this famous bagel place the next morning. They offer 18 flavours of bagels and tons of cream cheeses to pick from. We tried garlic, blurberry, chocolate and raisins bagels and they were so good! More bready than our regular Thomas bagels lol. We saw tourists and locals buying dozens and dozens so we each stocked up for our familitas (wait itsnt it spanish!?). After breakfast we were so pissed off spending the sunny day in the car and the rainy stormy day outside wandering the city. We even wanted to come home early but had forced ourselves to go to Notre Dame Basilica to take few pictures, at least to show off to our friends that we actually had fun and been to Montréal wtf.
Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica
116, rue Notre-Dame O
Montreal, QC H2Y 1T2
We have made it here. No regrets la. It is so so so pretty, not the biggest but definitely one of the prettiest cathedrals I have been to. After visiting this place we had no desire to go anywhere because the weather was horrible out. Luckily all the touristy spots in Montréal are really close by so we spent the next half an hour driving around the city to take pictures (instead of physically driving and parking and walking). How smart!
Chinatown, Bell Center, Palais des congrès de Montréal, somewhere somewhere. Yea yea yea we were done (so shallow). We parked near St Catherine because we wanted to go shopping and stopped by this crepe place for afternoon tea.
I have never tried the combo of Nutella and Cheese so I was curious of how it tasted in a crepe. Honestly I was in awe how matchy together they taste. The moka (mocha) was So yummy, best I have tired in years. I loved the full mouth of chocolateness!
The street we parked on was so pretty! Tons of bars and cute boutiques (stand against the really gloomy weather). We then spent 3 hours shopping on St. Catherine but discovered that Boston has much more choices and better prices for anything :P
At this point we were both so homesick wtf. We decided to come back to Boston early. The 'detour' to Quebec city on the 1st day was ridiculous that made our 4 hour drive back feel like nothing lol. We swung by this Mediterranean kebab place called Amir for snacks. Their cold dishes were excellento! We had fun chatting on the way back.
Argh, I wish I had more time there beacuse there were couple places we still didnt go to (blame the weather!) such as the poutine place Eva recommended. Though I am so glad to have a friend who speaks fluent French to keep me company the whole time. Not sure what to do without her! Driving around Montréal and finding parking on the streets are also super easy which made our trip much more flexible and manageable.
Hope you all are having a great Easter weekend so far too! Let me know if youre doing any fun stuff as I am spending half of my day eating chocolate, pretending to be a bunny and hiding in the jungles wtf.
