More Montreal: Brasserie T!, Vanhorne, Le Petit Alep, Hyatt

Walleye, a freshwater fish, served over crunchy daikon radish, fiddlehead ferns and other vegetables with a spicy chimichurri sauce at Brasserie T! in Montreal, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One of busiest and best restaurants operating during the 35th annual International Jazz Festival is Brasserie T! on the edge of the Place des Arts, a cultural complex that is Montreal's version of Lincoln Center.

Brasserie T! and the companion Taverne F are housed in long, sleek glass-and-metal boxes, with outdoor seating that allows customers to eat lunch or dinner and listen to one of the many free performances.

We made a reservation for lunch on July 1 at Taverne F, which serves Portuguese food, but found it closed in observance of Canada Day. 

We found a table at the nearby Brasserie T!, got a terrific waitress named Sophie and enjoyed a wonderful meal with wine.

At Brasserie T!, my wife ordered pork ribs with a simple salad, below, instead of french fries.

Walleye and ribs

I ordered a freshwater fish, walleye, that I never see on menus in the northeastern United States, and the skin was crisped beautifully.

The meaty fillet was served, skin-side up, over blanched but crunchy daikon radish, fiddlehead ferns, asparagus and other vegetables, all swimming in a spicy chimichurri sauce ($24). A great dish.

I started with a bowl of chilled gazpacho ($7), and sipped a glass of Spanish red wine (also $7).

My wife asked for salad instead of fries with her pork ribs, which were cooked together and served in a barbecue sauce ($21). The meat fell off the bones.

With my wife's soft drink ($4), the bill totaled $82.78 Canadian, including taxes, but not the tip.

Brasserie T!, 1425 Jeanne Mance St., Montreal, Quebec; 1-514-282-0808. Open year-round.

The vegetable of the day at Brasserie T! was baby zucchini, far tastier than their much bigger cousins. 

I started with a creamy, refreshing gazpacho.

A $7 glass of Spanish wine at Brasserie T!

An amuse-bouche was compliments of the chef at Vanhorne Restarant in Montreal -- seaweed chip, mussel and tomato puree.

Vanhorne

A year after we enjoyed a five-course tasting menu of seafood and vegetables at Vanhorne Restaurant in Montreal, we returned on July 2 to find a new chef and a new, inflexible attitude.

Yes. A five-course tasting menu was available for $60, just $2 more than in 2013. But ...

Unlike our first visit, the chef, Jens Ruoff, would not waver from the tasting menu, which included horse meat with hay cooked in butter and beef carpaccio with caramelized onions and cherries.

Yes. Hay. We were incredulous.

Sylvie, our accommodating hostess in 2013, had the day off, and the waiter kept on using the word "perfect," even when we ordered a la carte and he turned down our request for a salad to share.

The salad denial was puzzling, given Vanhorne's focus on "cuisine du marche" or "cooking from the market."

Beautifully composed

OK. We loved the food.

The plates were beautifully composed and flavors, such as the green curry with my raw mackerel appetizer, were intense.

At Vanhorne, an entree of house-made cavatelli, sumac, sage and pistachio in a rich lobster bisque ($22).

Walleye, French green beans, xeres and chanterelles with potato mousse ($28).

My starter of raw mackerel atop couscous with mustard ice cream and green curry ($13). (The mustard ice cream, left, slid off of the fish before I could take a photo.) My wife had an appetizer of lobster, watermelon, frozen yogurt, roasted bread and squid ink, below ($16).

Vanhorne has 30 seats, but only three other customers were being served during our dinner on July 2. During our visit in 2013, the restaurant was nearly full and we chatted amiably with our neighbors. A new, inflexible chef might be the reason for the change in fortune.

You'll find Vanhorne's simple storefront in Montreal's Outremont neighborhood, about 3 miles from downtown hotels.

Incidentals

I drank a glass of French red wine ($9.50), the least expensive on the list, and an espresso ($4).

Our total, including taxes of nearly 15%, was $106.36 Canadian.

Vanhorne Cuisine du Marche, 1268 Van Horne Ave., Montreal, Quebec; 1-514-508-0828. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

The Vegetarian at Le Petit Alep, a Syrian-Armenian restaurant in Montreal, and small Armenian Salad, rear.

Le Petit Alep

Alep, the French word for the city of Aleppo, Syria, is a white-tablecloth restaurant that is open only for dinner.

But next to it is the casual Le Petit Alep, where we ate a big lunch on July 3, the day before we left Montreal for home.

My wife and I shared The Vegetarian ($22), a filling platter with such classics as hummus, muhammara, rice with lentils, stuffed grape leaves and a doughy spinach pie.

We also ordered a small Armenian Salad dressed with oil, lemon juice and dried mint ($5). The food is just wonderful.

Tart, house-made lemonade was $4.25 and a small, sweetened Arab coffee was $2.25.

Our total was $38.52 Canadian, more than you'd expect for a Syrian-Armenian lunch.

A big disappointment was the bread -- mini, unheated pocket breads that were served in plastic bags. I could feel how stiff they were through the plastic.

Soft, pillowy Syrian bread is one of the great pleasures of the table. You can stuff almost any food into them or scoop up dips. 

I see wonderful pocket breads from Montreal on the shelves at Fattal's, the Syrian bakery-grocery-butcher in Paterson, N.J., about 350 miles away from the French-speaking city. 

Why aren't they being served at Le Petit Alep? 

Le Petit Alep, 191 Jean Talon St., Montreal, Quebec; 1-514-270-9361. A Metro or subway stop is about two blocks away.

Le Petit Alep makes its own lemonade.

Sweetened Arabic coffee could have been thicker.

Alep and Le Petit Alep are near Montreal's Jean Talon Market.

Smoked salmon with capers was one of the dishes laid out for dinner in the Regency Club of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Montreal. The rate for a Regency Club room includes a light dinner buffet and a groaning-board breakfast with made-to-order omelets.

Hyatt's Regency Club

We didn't have to eat out all the time.

We booked a king-bedded Regency Club room at the Hyatt Regency Montreal, the headquarters hotel for the International Jazz Festival, and the rate included a light dinner buffet and an all-you-can-eat breakfast.

So, we could have a big breakfast, then lunch and in the evening, rely on having salad, cheese and fruit from the free dinner buffet before we went to a concert.

The Regency Club, a lounge and business center, also serves afternoon tea and desserts in the evening.

A Regency Club salad.

Cheese, fruit, bread, nuts and dessert also are included.

A bowl of shrimp. Only beer and wine are extra. A glass of wine is $4. Soft drinks, Perrier, coffee, espresso and tea are included.

Hyatt Regency Montreal, 1255 Jeanne Mance St., Montreal, Quebec; 1-514-982-1234.


Also see: 

Dining out in Montreal 2013

Two can dine out in Montreal for $18.50 to $106 and higher

Two can dine out in Montreal for $18.50 to $106 and higher

Two of us ate for under $20 at Pho Bang New York, a Vietnamese restaurant in Montreal's Chinatown. I had a filling bowl of vermicelli rice noodles topped with grilled shrimp, peanuts and fresh cilantro, above. 

We spent more than $100 for two courses each at Vanhorne, a restaurant in Montreal's Outremont neighborhood that offers cuisine du marche or "cooking from the market." My wife chose this beautifully composed appetizer of lobster, watermelon, frozen yogurt, roasted bread and squid ink.  

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On our annual vacation in Montreal, we tried with only limited success to control how much we spent on eating out.

Dining out in the French-speaking city can be as sophisticated and as varied as it is in Manhattan -- with prices to match.

This year, we tried a couple of inexpensive ethnic restaurants for lunch as our main meal.

But we also succumbed to the convenience of pricey restaurants in or near the Place des Arts, center of the 35th annual International Jazz Festival, the reason we drove to Montreal.

And we made a special return trip to Vanhorne, a 30-seat restaurant where my wife and I had a wonderful five-course tasting menu in 2013, and spent over $200.

The food was as good as we remembered, but the chef had changed, and he was so inflexible we couldn't even order a salad with our dinner.

Think 'mains,' not 'entrees'

On Montreal menus, appetizers are listed as "entrees" and entrees are listed as "mains."

During our eight-day visit, we ate lunches and dinners for $18.50 to $106, including taxes of nearly 15%, but not the tip. 

I usually left a gratuity of 15%. In Montreal, many restaurants use a hand-held credit-card terminal that gives you the choice of adding a percentage tip or a dollar amount.

Go for the latter (a button under a dollar sign on the terminal screen) to avoid adding a percentage tip to the total of food, wine and taxes of nearly 15%.

And make sure you take a credit card, such as the Capital One Visa, that doesn't exact a foreign-currency transaction fee of 2% to 3%.

All prices are in Canadian dollars, each of which is equivalent to 95 cents U.S.

My wife complained Pho Bang New York served her pho with dense beef balls that were far from hot, above, but she said the anise-flavored broth was good.

Pho Bang New York

Pho Bang New York in Montreal's Chinatown has low prices, but don't expect good service or, if you don't use chopsticks, a clean fork.

This popular restaurant slings bowls of pho, the anise-scented Vietnamese soup filled with noodles, vegetables and your choice of meat.

My wife ordered pho with beef balls ($8.27 plus tax) and I had a filling bowl of vermicelli noodles topped with grilled shrimp and peanuts ($7.82 plus tax).

Our check totaled $18.49. You pay at the register. 

The shrimp with my noodles tasted fine, though they were about half the size of the colossal ones shown in the restaurant's photo menu.

My wife doesn't use chopsticks, but the waiter never brought her the fork she requested.

I got up twice and tried without success to find a clean fork in a receptacle on a table near the kitchen. She said both forks were dirty.

Pho Bang New York is highly rated on Yelp! and other peer-review sites.

Our experience shows how unreliable those appraisals can be. 

Back home in North Jersey, we know where to find great pho, Simply Vietnamese in Tenafly.


  

Garnish for the pho, left, and a bowl of spicy fish broth into which I dipped my vermicelli noodles.

When Pho Bang New York got crowded, a waiter seated a woman and her young son at our table for four.

The dining room ceiling at Pho Bang New York.

Pho Bang New York, 1001 Boulevard St. Laurent, Montreal, Quebec; 1-514-954-2032. Cash only.

An entree of wild-caught cod accented with fresh corn-mango salsa at Bistro Le Balmoral in Montreal.

A glass of Italian wine -- or half-glass to be more precise -- was $9 at Le Balmoral.

Bistro Le Balmoral

Le Balmoral is a non-profit bistro conveniently located on the ground floor of jazz festival headquarters on Saint Catherine Street, near the Hyatt Regency Montreal, where we stayed.

We like the food, but service can be brusque. The menu notes that many ingredients are from Quebec or Canada.

My wife had a Green Salad ($6.50) and a main dish of Chicken Supreme stuffed with mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and smoked sausage ($22).

My pan-seared Cod Fillet was topped with fresh salsa and served over Gingered Black Rice and Vegetables, but the meaty fish could have been served hotter ($21).

With a $9 glass of wine, ginger ale ($3.50) and taxes, our check totaled $71.28.

Chicken Supreme at Bistro Le Balmoral is served with pureed sweet potatoes and a rosemary and dune-pepper sauce. Below, a Green Salad with shaved parmesan.

Bistro Le Balmoral, 305 Saint Catherine St. west, Montreal, Quebec; 1-514-288-5992.

A ceviche of squid and shrimp, with freshly ground black pepper, was my starter at 40 Northh, a steakhouse in Saint Sauveur, a town about an hour's drive north of Montreal.

My wife's pedestrian Iceberg Lettuce Salad was elevated by a rich blue-cheese dressing with pancetta.

40 Northh

Last Monday, we took a day trip into the mountains north of Montreal and stopped for lunch in Saint Sauveur.

At a steakhouse called 40 Northh, we liked the table d'hote or fixed-price lunch menu posted outside.

I started with a Ceviche of Squid and Shrimp, and finished with a grilled Wild King Salmon Fillet and simple fresh cabbage salad ($24).

My wife had an Iceberg Lettuce Salad with a sinfully rich dressing and the 40 Northh Burger with brie, arugula and french fries ($19).

We didn't notice that our lunches included a dessert course, a small chocolate souffle and ice cream, but didn't have room and sent the waiter away when he brought them.

I asked for fruit instead, but the waiter said there wasn't any available. I settled for black coffee. Our lunch check totaled $49.44.

Next year, we might try Saint-Sau, a pub with vegetarian dishes on the lunch menu, or Chez Denise.

The 40 Northh Burger.

Saint Sauveur's main street, Rue Principale, is lined with flower boxes and restaurants.

The cathedral's cool interior is painted in pastels.

40 Northh, 235 Rue Principale, Saint Sauveur, Quebec; 1-450-227-6673. Lunch served Mondays to Fridays.

To be continued with Brasserie T!, Vanhorne, Le Petit Alep and Hyatt's Regency Club.

Montreal: Great food and all that jazz

Crisp-skin arctic char with cucumber flower, mustard and sour cream, above, one of the five courses in a meatless tasting menu served on July 2 at Vanhorne, a modest storefront in Montreal with only 30 seats, below.

Vanhorne offers "cuisine du marche" or "cooking from the market." The tasting menu was $58 (Canadian dollars) per person, but taxes totaling 15% are added to all restaurant checks. The Canadian dollar is worth about 95 U.S. cents.

Our first course at Vanhorne: warm peas, beets, green beans and two kinds of radish in a tiny puddle of butter.

After the arctic char, we were served crunchy broccoli with salty lumpfish roe that rested on dollops of creme fraiche, a rich, thick cream.

Following the broccoli, we had warm, sashimi-like swordfish with grilled cauliflower.

My wife didn't care for the swordfish, even though it was extraordinarily fresh tasting, so I ate her portion, and the chef sent out this wonderful fillet of halibut with a beautifully crisped skin for her. I tasted that, too, and it was a great piece of fresh fish.

Vanhorne served a dessert for people like us who never eat dessert: cherry tomatoes, raspberries, tiny mint leaves and rose petals on sorbet. I left the puff pastry.

The meal started with an amuse bouche of fried lichen and sea urchin. During the meal, we were given complimentary strawberry water and sour cherry juice. And after we paid the bill, Chef John Winter Russell saw us off with another wonderful sorbet.

The colorful, informal interior of Vanhorne, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Montreal is a French-speaking city that moves on its stomach.

Seen from from a passing taxi or bus, every other storefront seems to be a market, restaurant ("resto" for short) cafe or coffee house.

Marche Jean-Talon is a public market selling produce from about 350 farmers and other producers, and the only one I know that offers free samples of vegetables and fruit. 

There were plenty of free samples at Marche Jean-Talon, but no toothpicks.

Parsley from Quebec Province and other fresh produce.

Near the market are stores devoted to local cheeses, charcuterie, wine and other culinary delights.

If you go to Montreal and want to eat well, bring money -- lots of money.

Federal and provincial taxes on restaurant meals total 15%, and if you're not careful, you can be tricked into tipping on the taxes, as well as on the food and drinks.

"Entrees" are what we call appetizers. "Plats principaux" or main plates are what we call entrees, and often they are priced in the high 20s or low 30s in fine-dining bistros and restaurants.

Finding a glass of wine for under $10 isn't easy, and at Vanhorne -- where we enjoyed a 5-course, $58 tasting menu -- I declined the offer of a $21 glass of wine from Oregon.

Butter and cream

With bistro cooking, it's hard to avoid artery clogging butter and cream.

When I told the server at Vanhorne I wanted to try the 5-course tasting menu, but don't eat meat or poultry, she said it would be no problem.

But when I added I'd also like to avoid butter and heavy cream, she laughed and said I shouldn't worry, because the chef uses only a little of each.

Jazz tour

I've visited Montreal on my own in both winter and summer, but this time, I went on a group tour to the Festival International de Jazz, a 10-day celebration of world music that ends today.

The small group, organized by WBGO-FM (88.3), the 24-hour National Public Radio station in Newark, got a combined jazz, food and city tour -- plus behind-the-scenes meetings with festival producers.

Tour members had brunch with WBGO host Michael Bourne ("Afternoon Jazz," "Blues Hour" and "Singers Unlimited") in the Maison du Festival or festival headquarters, above, where I enjoyed fresh fruit, juices and three portions of heart-healthy smoked salmon, but didn't touch the bagel half or cream cheese, below.

The smoked salmon was garnished with caper berries.

The next day, tour members had lunch at a branch of Bourne's favorite restaurant, Pizzedelic, above, a bistro in Old Montreal where we were offered choices from a set menu, including a glass of wine and espresso or tea. Bourne ordered two of Pizzedelic's square pizzas, ate one and asked for the other one to go.

I really enjoyed an appetizer of grilled goat cheese with almonds and cranberries, accompanied by seasoned diced tomatoes, center, and salad.

My entree: Black Tiger shrimp over linguine. Whole-wheat pasta wasn't available.

Dessert was Raspberry Sorbet with fresh mint leaves.

A list of dinner entrees -- with soup or Cesar salad, dessert and coffee -- at Pizzedelic, below. 

We had a hard time finding dinner for 2 for under $100, and when it came to tipping, the use of hand-held credit-card terminals proved confusing at first.

In Montreal, I used credit cards that give rebates, but don't charge a foreign-transaction fee, rather than paying cash.

When I did, the server brought a wireless, hand-held terminal to the table, swiped the card, then asked me to input the tip before printing out a receipt and a copy, and asking for my signature.

Tipping perils

I've always felt tipping is a scam whereby restaurant owners shift the burden to customers to provide poorly paid servers with a living wage.

That sets up a confrontational relationship between servers and customers, and allows restaurant owners to pocket bigger profits.

I wasn't familiar with the hand-held credit-card terminals in wide use in Montreal, and the first two times we had dinner out, the waiters swiped my card and handed me the terminal, asking me to indicate "the percentage" of my desired tip.

What I didn't know is that by indicating a percentage, the tip is figured on the total amount of food, wine and all 15% of those taxes.

At Vanhorne, our gracious host, Sylvie, handed me the terminal and noted I could add a percentage or a dollar tip -- by hitting a key marked % or $ -- so I was able to give her $30 or about 20% of the food and drink total of $149.50. 

Including an $11.50 glass of wine, a $14 flight of freshly squeezed juices, a $4 coffee and a $4 tea, our total bill, with tip and taxes, was $201.89.

A 6-ounce glass of red wine was $8 at Baton Rouge, a high quality steak-and-ribs chain where the waiter offered me mushrooms with my entree, but didn't tell me they would cost extra.

These twin 6-ounce lobster tails with steamed vegetables were perfectly cooked, above, as were the lobster, Black Tiger shrimp and jumbo sea scallops in my dinner, below.

Baton Rouge's twin lobster dinner, including a wonderful Cesar salad, was $40. My dinner, called Jewels of the Sea, was $39.

When I told the waiter I wanted vegetables with my seafood, he asked if I also wanted mushrooms. I said I did, and got this wonderful plate of mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and garlic, then discovered an $8 charge on my bill.

Our July 1 dinner at Baton Rouge was our second in Montreal, and I got bitten by a waiter who offered me sauteed mushrooms, but didn't tell me they were $8 extra.

He said later he thought the extra charge was "understood."

I got bitten a second time when it came time to tip him with one of those confusing hand-held terminals.

When I said I didn't appreciate him leaving out the price of the mushrooms and wanted to tip him only 12% as a penalty, he handed me the terminal and told me to key in my percentage tip.

Of course, by indicating a percentage, I tipped him 12% on the total food bill, plus taxes, or $19.66 on $109.23, bringing the total to $128.99.

F Bar is a branch of a well-known Portuguese restaurant in Montreal, operating out of an elaborate pop-up on the edge of the Place des Arts, a huge open plaza filled with temporary stages for the jazz festival.

After a 7-hour drive from New Jersey on June 30, we had our first dinner at F Bar, where a glass of red wine was $12 and dinner for 2 topped $104. Then, we raced to our first show at the Savoy, where we heard Elizabeth Shepherd, a bilingual singer-pianist from Ontario -- but all the seats were taken and we had to stand at the bar.

We shared an appetizer of buffalo-milk mozzarella and tomatoes ($16), but I was puzzled by the sauce and had to ask the waiter. It turned out that as a non-meat eater, I missed one of the ingredients listed on the menu: black chorizo or sausage.

My entree was served in a pot with a lid: two beautifully cooked fillets of a Mediterranean fish called dorade that rarely appears on New Jersey menus, served over vegetables. Without a spoon, I couldn't scoop up the last of the mashed potatoes and gravy.

My wife ordered a burger with foie gras, but told the waiter to hold the duck liver ($22). She wasn't impressed with the flavor of the beef. The wait between our appetizer and entrees was excruciatingly long.

Vanhorne Cuisine du Marche, 1268 Van Horne Ave., Outremont, Montreal; 1-514-508-0828. Reservations recommended. 

Pizzedelic, 39 Rue Notre-Dame Ouest, Montreal; 1-514-286-1200.

Restaurant Baton Rouge,180 Rue St. Catherine, Montreal; 1-514-282-7444.

F Bar, 1485 Rue Jeanne-Mance, Montreal; 1-514-289-4558. Reservations recommended.

Jean-Talon Market, 7070 Avenue Henri-Julien, Montreal. Open 7 days.

More about Montreal tomorrow