Les Infidèles

Address: 771 Rachel
Phone:514-528-8555
Website: http://www.lesinfideles.ca
This is a great little plateau BYOB. The menu is pretty classical french bistro with many standards on the menu (confit de canard, sweetbreads, etc.). On our recent visit, three of us started with an excellent plate of smoked fish – standard salmon accompanied by some excellent trout – both cold and hot smoked. For a main, I forewent my usual duck and tried the halibut special which was very good – done with a simple sauce accented with a few small tasty shrimp. The other mains (a filet mignon and rack of lamb) were similarly nicely done. Overall, although I wasn’t totally blown away, I’d rate it as quite good and worth a return visit.
Price: Not unreasonable – $30/40 a head before tax/tip
Beer: Blanche de Chambly in the big bottle

Sans Menu

Address: 3417 Notre Dame W.
Phone: 514-933-4782
Reviews: None
Sans Menu is a great little St. Henri bistro. It is a small operation – no more than about 12 tables and, although you’ll be hard pressed to find a review online, it has an excellent reputation for good quality at a reasonable price. The emphasis is on simple French bistro meals. As per the resto’s name, there are no printed menus – the menu du jour, written on a small chalkboard, usually gets propped up on a chair next to your table. I’ve enjoyed the confit de canard here a few times, and the last time had some excellent monkfish. Not quite the experience as better known places like Lemeac, but I’ve never had a bad meal here.
Price: Moderate $200 for four with beer/wine included
Beer: Warsteiner

Pizza Mia

Address: Atwater Market
Phone: (514) 935-0333

OK, time to start blogging again. Lunch today at Pizza Mia in the Atwater market. Quite simply, they make some of the best pizzas in Montreal. They’ve got a light but solid crust and the topping combinations, particularly for the square pizzas, are fantastic. The calabrese and arugula square is unbeatable. The only hitch- the are open market hours and no delivery.

Price: Cheap. $7.50 for a square and a pop
Beer: Boylan Root Beer goes great with the ‘za

La Colombe

Address: 554 Duluth E.
Phone: 514-849-8844
Reviews: montrealfood.com, Martiniboys
We had a business dinner here a few weeks ago. The atmosphere of this resto is quite nice – although it is a small place, it feels large. Everything on the menu here seems to have a bit of a sweet touch to it. No matter whether its the poisson du jour or something a little more meaty, the sauce for each had a sweet touch – a little maple here, a bit of caramelized sugar there. Overall it was reasonably good, but having eaten at Le P’tit Plateau the week prior, it seemed to be lacking just a little something. Probably worth a return visit, although not obviously so.
Price: $220 for four including tax and tip.
Beer: La Montagnaise (Brasseur La Tour a Bieres)

Le P’tit Plateau

Address: 330 Marie-Anne E.
Phone: 514-282-6342
Reviews: Amazingly, there are none that I can find
Le P’tit Plateau is a Montreal BYOB institution. They’ve been serving great food in a great atmosphere for eons. A recent visitor from Germany was in town and wanted a taste of the local cuisine. P’tit Plateu didn’t let him down. I had a great confit du canard while our visitor had the fois gras follwed by some great venison. As usual, everyone left satisified. About the only bad thing you can say about the place is that they only have two seating times for dinner – 6:30 and 8:30. If you get the early seating, you have to be out before the next crowd and if that doesn’t work for you you’re out of luck. But its a small price to pay. It’s probably the best BYOB in the city.
Price: Usually $50-60 a head after tax and tip
Beer: Blanche de Chambly

Café Ferreira

Address: 1446 Peel
Phone: 514-848-0988
Website: http://www.ferreiracafe.com
Reviews: MontrealFood.com, MartiniBoys
Ferreira is one of the best Portuguese restaurants in the city. Its renown for its great food and service. On a recent visit (on someone else’s generous tab), we started with a mixed plate appetizer to share. This was a great way to start for those who can never make up their mind, with a delicious selection of sardines, octupus, calmari and quail. The sardines, in particular, were a real hit – delicate and not overly fishy or oily. For main plates, Ferreira is famous for its porcini crusted black cod in port reduction. Two of my dining companions branched out and sampled a new black cod dish, served over a risotto. Good, although not quite living up to the legendary port reduction. My dish was the hit of the night – whole cooked Portuguese dorade. For a fish lover, this was an absolute delight – meaty yet light at the same time. The dessert didn’t quite stand up to the rest of the meal (the molten chocolate cake was slightly overdone) but was still very good. Overall, you won’t go wrong with Ferreira for a fine dining experience. Just be sure to bring your wallet.
Price: Expensive. With most main plates starting at $30, a bill of $80-$100 a head is easy to hit with tax, tip and a few drinks included.
Beer: Sagres – a light Portuguese lager.

Alex H

Address: 5862 Sherbrooke W.
Phone: 514-487-5444
Reviews: MontrealFood.Com
Alex H is a rare BYOB resto in NDG. From perusing the MontrealFood review, its obvious that this place has jumped around. It was a BYOB, then licenced, then not, then moved from Monkland to Sherbrooke. I had a business dinner here just recently, and this time I was the guest of honour. I was impressed walking in… the sign on the door said “Bring Your Own Beer” – gotta love a bistro that realizes that good beer can compliment a meal just as well as good wine. The food here is good. Not great, but good. The menu here is a partial table d’hote: you get a soup or salad with your main and can get an additional small appetizer for only a few dollars extra. I started with a small appetizer of escargots, followed by salad and magret de canard. I’ll give them good marks for the escargots. They came in a tomato/creme based sauce, not your usual garlic and butter. Overall the mix worked well. A smoked salmon appetizer also drew good reviews from the seat next to me. The salad was simple greens – nothing special, nothing awful. The magret de canard was reasonably good, done with a spiced cranberry sauce (little resemblance to what you find on the Thanksgiving Day table). The veggies accompanying the main were uninspiring – just some steamed carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. The desserts were well done – both the apple crumble and the chocolate cake were good. Overall, this is a moderately good resto. The setting is nice and the food is good, but nothing special. But you also aren’t overpaying – most meals were in the $20-25 dollar range with the salad/soup included.
Price: Moderate – probably $30 a head plus tax and tip assuming you have either an appy or dessert.
Beer: Blanche de Chambly in a big bottle

La Paryse

Address: 302 Ontario East
Phone: 514-842-2040
Reviews: Midnight Poutine, Hour, MontrealFood
Having tried M:Brgr just after it opened, I thought it might be the best in the city, but I had yet to try La Paryse. We had planned to go to the latter before a Beck concert in October, but it was a Monday night, the one night of the week La Paryse is closed. Finally we made it there on a recent evening, after a 5 á 7 on St. Laurent. Arriving at 8pm, the place was full, but turnover was quick enough that we got a seat within about 5 minutes. I ordered the standard burger with bacon. It arrived looking like a piece of art… nicely constructed with care but not overly fussy (see Midnight Poutine picture). It comes loaded with all the standards (tomato, pickle) and some not-so-standards (mozzarella instead of cheddar or swiss, mushrooms, and some mayo). Overall, sloppy and delicious! Across the table, the pinto-bean veggie burger was also good, although it got a little lost in all the accoutrements. The fries, however, were close to perfect. So overall, how does La Paryse rate next to M:Brgr? The M:Brgr meat was like chomping into butter – super tender – and was the star of the show. At La Paryse, the meat is good, but its the flavour of the whole package that is impressive. Overall, for my money, La Paryse wins the best burger. But its only by a split-decision, not by knockout, and the former champ wants a rematch.
Price: Inexpensive. $35 for two for a couple of burgers, fries, beer, wine, tax and tip.
Beer: Blanche de Cheval Blanc

Brasseurs de Montreal

Address: 1485 Rue Ottawa (Griffintown)
Phone: (514) 788-4505
Website: http://www.brasseursdemontreal.ca
Having sampled the beers from this new microbrewery, I was itching to hit their resto-bar in Griffintown. It’s in an industrial building directly attached to the brewery, so it doesn’t have the cosy feel of some of the other good brewpubs in Montreal (Dieu de Ciel, Reservoir), but it was a good place to have some food and watch a hockey game. I would have thought down in this corner of Griffintown in mid-winter it would be dead, but it was surprisingly busy the evening we went and will probably get busier as some of the new condo projects go up in the Griffintown area. We had a simple meal on our visit. I had their sausage plate, which was quite good, including one sausage infused with cheese. Across the table, the poutine was not faring as well. It should probably be labeled “poutine” on the menu, as the cheese curds had been replaced with a broiled on cheese and there were a few unidentifiable lumps in the sauce. Although the flavour of the cheese was actually not bad and the fries were fine (in fact quite good when solo), its not a true poutine. Overall, 50/50 on the food on our first visit. Worth a second shot, but we’ll avoid the poutine the next time.
Price: $65 for two with some food and a couple of pints of beer each.
Beer: A blanche, a rousse, an ambrée. All excellent.

La Montée

Address: 1424 Bishop
Phone: 514-289-9921
Website: http://www.lamontee.ca/
Reviews: Montreal Mirror, Lesley Chesterman
La Montée is a new bistro downtown, a reincarnation of La Montée du Lait from the plateau. The theme here is a cross between bistro and tapas, with a series of medium-sized plates on offer, each the size of a healthy entrée or a scaled down main plate. They go for $55 for four plates or $15 per plate. We ordered 2-3 plates per person and were quite satisfied (two is enough unless you’re starving). The dishes were intriguing concoctions, for instance a tuna dish with beet done three ways, endives prepared every which way and an amazing “clam chowder” which was really clams served atop a thick slab of bacon…think pork loin but with a wonderful bacon flavour…. absolute heaven! Also good, from across the table, were a thick cut of steak and a chevre chaud served on a cut of eggplant. Less of a hit was a magaret de canard which, while tasty, was a bit tough. Each plate is paired with a wine selection, although we found that everything went well with a good beer. Overall, good atmosphere and a generally a great place to eat.
Price: $50 per person for two plates plus a drink or two. More if you go for 3-4 plates.
Beer: A rousse and a blanche from Les Brasseurs de Montreal