Montreal sights and sounds (when we weren't eating)

Frequent visitors say going to French-speaking Montreal is like flying to Europe without the jet lag. But there are plenty of high prices on restaurant meals and gasoline to remind you of the Continent. Regular gas was selling for about $5.25 a gallon in Montreal, an island city like Manhattan with about 1.7 million people.

Restaurant checks at sidewalk cafes in Old Montreal, above, and in the rest of the city include taxes totaling 15%, more than twice what we pay in New Jersey.

In front of City Hall, the media interview a member of the opposition about a corruption scandal.

A McDonald's in Old Montreal. Even in French, the food is of the lowest quality possible.

The entrance to a large public produce market in an area of the city settled by Italian immigrants.

A produce stand just outside the market.

Bison hamburgers and duck hot dogs are among the offerings at this stand in the market.

Children from a day camp enjoy the lake in Mount Royal Park.

Bistro SAQ was one of the pop-up cafes in the Place des Arts, the vast open plaza where many free concerts were given during the 10-day Festival International de Jazz de Montreal that ended last Sunday.

Venues ranged from the main stage, above, to Club Soda, below, a nightclub setting where we saw the wonderful jazz singer Gregory Porter, backed by a quartet.

Porter mysteriously wraps a scarf around the sides of his face and under his chin.

Le Dixieband, above, and Hot Club de Ma Rue, below, are two acoustic bands that performed in Lounge Heineken.

Elizabeth Shepherd, a bilingual singer from Ontario, also performed at Club Soda.

On the main stage between performances.

In Montreal, the subway or metro boasts some beautiful stations and rail cars that ride on rubber tires.

Montrealers love their outdoor cafes. To escape the city's bitter winters, residents can retreat to a vast network of underground stores, restaurants, food courts and movie theaters linked by the subway, such as a three-level mall with 110 stores and restaurants, entrance below.

The Holiday Inn in Montreal's Chinatown is topped off with pagodas.

On June 30, we saw a Jewish wedding at our hotel, the Hyatt Regency Montreal, where both the bride and groom were women.

A modern part of Montreal.

A monument in front of Notre Dame Cathedral commemorates the French victory over the Iroquois, a native tribe, more than 3 centuries ago.

An Iroquois warrior.

In the rear of the old cathedral is a modern chapel.

Why I never eat fast food

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my mother put a great, homemade, kosher meal on the table every night, including a plate of cut and washed lettuce, cucumbers and celery. In 1958, she self-published a cookbook. We rarely ate out and takeout was limited to bagels or an occasional coal-oven cheese pizza from Coney Island, part of our weekly meatless meal. We also ate fresh fish that I picked up at a local market every Friday.

I ate forbidden bacon for the first time at a Key Club convention in upstate New York and non-kosher steak and hamburgers while I was a graduate student in journalism in Missouri in the late 1960s. As a general assignment reporter in Hackensack, I sometimes started my day with an Egg McMuffin. But I am proud to say I have never eaten a McDonald's or Burger King hamburger and the one time I tried a burger at a new Wendy's in Paterson in the early 1980s, I got sick the next day.

Now, the local daily newspaper has published a promotional column and two stories about the opening of a fast-food Sonic Drive-In in Hasbrouck Heights that proved so popular on the first day that employees had to wave off cars. For the record, far more people flocked to Whole Foods and Fairway to buy high-quality food when they opened new markets this year in North Jersey.

There is a growing body of evidence that some ground meat used for fast-food hamburgers contains cow feces -- in other words, customers are literally eating shit. None of the food served in fast-food restaurants could even remotely compare to the Sephardic dishes I grew up eating, dishes I continue to long for.

If I want a burger, I buy organic or grass-fed ground beef and make it myself, adding spices that are used in Middle Eastern kebabs. And I continue to dream of my mother's small meat-and-egg omelets that I used to pop into fresh pita halves. In the summer, this sandwich needed only a thick slice of Jersey beefsteak tomato to make a satisfying meal. (This post was revised.)