About This Blog

I work as a university professor in Montreal. One of the benefits of being a professor is that we get to invite guests from time to time to give a lecture on their research and visit with our faculty. One of the customs surrounding these visits is that at the end of the day, the hosts take the invitee out for dinner. The inevitable question then comes up: Where to eat in Montreal. These days, its also where to eat that won’t break our limited budget. For some reason, I seem to have become the person in our department that everyone goes to for resto suggestions. OK, I seem to encourage this, as I can’t stand eating in poor quality restaurants (unless its poor quality with flair!) and don’t think anyone else should have to. I have built up a list of bookmarks in my browser dedicated to places I’m interested in, but it is getting larger and larger and doesn’t index well.

So I decided to start a blog which would list restos in Montreal. But since I’m not a professional critic (although my spousal equivalent would disagree with that) and also have a limited budget, I thought it might be good to create a semi-meta site which would have my own personal experiences and comments but would also draw heavily from some of the better resto critics and websites in town. These include, in no comprehensive sense or particular order, montrealfood.com, Chef Deck at eatwellmontreal.com, the crew at The Mirror, and Lesley Chesterman and Sarah Musgrave at the Gazette.

The original plan was to tag restos by area, quality and whether I’ve been there or not. But this is evolving into something where I only blog restos that I’ve eaten at and perhaps I’ll put together a link list for places I’m interested in checking out. For convenience, I’m putting together a map for all blogged entries. The map will be multicoloured. Green will be for restos I think are worth a visit. Yellow will be ones I think you should pass on.

A couple of other random things:

I love fish and I eat some meats, but I don’t go in for steak. So don’t expect to see Moishe’s or Queue de Cheval in here. Moreover, my spousal equivalent is a fish eating vegetarian and many restos will have been ones that we have tried together and thus will be good bets for like-minded vegetarians. Stricter vegetarians and vegans – your mileage may vary. My spousal equivalent also has a “poutine clause” in her diet, so there will inevitably be many discussions of poutine.

I drink beer, with a preference for microbrews and other good tasting beers from around the world. I hate wine. Sorry if that offends anyone. Anyway, this means you will see very little discussion of wine lists, quality of sommeliers, etc. (unless I find a beer sommelier…then I’ll rave… or rant). You will find my beer choice, assuming I can remember it, along with most entries.

I don’t plan on going to specific restaurants just to review them, I don’t expect to accept invitations to review restos nor do I intend to trade good reviews for a free meal. This is for my own interest and its my blog so those are my rules. I’ve also decided, for the moment, not to allow comments. You can still write them and I’ll see them, so if you want to let me know what you think about a review or correct something or ask for more information, feel free. The comments just won’t show up under the posts.