O Canada

We just got back from a week in Montreal, a city unlike any other in North America in that everyone speaks French and a lot of men wear mismatched plaid shirts and shorts, usually with socks and sandals. The women are beautiful and chic but smoke several packs of cigarettes a day, resulting in throaty, really sexy speaking voices.  Of course you could say "I am looking for a houseplant" in French and it would sound lustily seductive.  I was hopeful that the haut cuisine of La Belle France would translate across the Atlantic, but sadly, it does not, except for a preponderance of baguettes and orange marmalade.

To be fair, we didn't take any fancy clothes so our options were limited to sidewalk bistros and casual pubs.  It doesn't matter whether the food is Canadian or Afghan or Japanese, the menus all share one food item peculiar to Quebec (but quickly snaking its way west through the other provinces.) This item is called Poutines, and where it is listed prominently on virtually every menu in town, it is usually followed by two or three exclamation points, as if to say "you've been searching the world over for something fresh and exciting and now you have found the most incredible delicacy, enjoy"!!!

Mmmmm, Cheese Curds

Poutines are disgusting.  They are overdone French Fries topped with oozing cheese curds and slopped with thick brown gravy. Denizens of Montreal are inexplicably mad for them; they are sort of the Sprinkles Cupcakes of Canada. They eat them all day long.  They eat them at breakfast with cafe au lait, at lunch with a spork and a beer, and at dinner with exquisite sterling silver cutlery.  When I ordered my first (and only) poutines and the waiter set the plate in front of me, I trotted out my best high school French and said Excusez-moi, serveur, mais vous avez placé juste à tort le petit-déjeuner du chien en face de moi.  He was astonished that I had compared this mess to the dog's breakfast and insisted that I try it.  I made a big show a taking a huge bite, which seemed to satisfy him, so as he turned his back I delicately removed it from my mouth by hacking it onto the sidewalk.  I poured the rest of it in in a potted fern next to me, which promptly died.

In Old Town Montreal, with its ancient buildings, sorbet shoppes and a Cirque du Soleil tent, we had a wonderful Croques Monsieur (ham and cheese sandwich) with about twenty-five pounds of French Fries.  I made hexing signs at our waiter when he approached me with a bowl of glistening curds and a ceramic boatful of gravy, and he skittered away nervously.  The India Pale Ale I drank with it was delicious and cold.

We went to a place called Dunn's Famous (I was like famous what since it seemed like a dangling

Dunn's Famous....what?

modifier but I was shushed.)  It turns out they are famous for their smoked meat sandwiches.  I asked if smoked meat was like pastrami or brisket or corn beef or something and the waitress just tossed her curls at me and said I'd have to see for myself.  (She said it in French, so she might have actually said something entirely different regarding my diminished mental abilities, not sure.) I ordered the Smoked Meat Reuben and it was exactly like pastrami/brisket/corned beef.  I think Dunn's is famous just for being famous like that dreadful reality show family where everyone's name begins with a K.  You know who I mean.  Don't make me say it.

Piazzetta on Rue Ste Catherine

Piazzetta looked interesting, with its bright red sidewalk cafe and attractive servers.  They had some weird toppings on the menu I'd never seen in a pizza place before, like beef tongue and chicken feet and of course freaking cheese curds, but I went sort of All Italian American and ordered the single serving pepperoni, "fully dressed." (I guess modesty prevails in Montreal to some degree since naked pizza is frowned upon.)  It was a rectangle of crispy flatbread with a modicum of mozzarella, some tasty sliced tomatoes and 12 discs of bland, slightly pink meat that reminded me of Canadian bacon but with less spicy heat.

Honestly, the best meals were the daily breakfast at our guesthouse, called La Conciergerie.  Every morning we welcomed a generous repast of yogurts, fresh fruit, cereal, juices, and muffins, all ratcheted

Ooh la la, Le Petit Dejeuner Etait Magnifique

up by accompanying rarities never found in your more mundane "breakfast included" places. Two days we had boiled, spotted quail eggs, and another time yellow plums from Southern Ontario.  The owner dispatched a lackey every morning to the local patisserie, so we could also indulge in fresh, aromatic croissants, little breakfast tarts and brioche with butter and homemade jam.  I sort of never wanted to leave but I feared another pants fastener debacle and the owner was too nice a guy to be blinded by brass projectile jeans buttons.

All in all, it was a great trip if not exactly a gastronomically adventurous one.  I am glad to be back in Dallas and just starting to think about which inventive, chef-driven kitchen we might be gracing with our presence tonight.  I heard there's a new French place in the Park Cities that we might try.  If they feature poutines on the menu I'll probably make a scene.

Shrill, Party of 12

So, we thought we were going to stay in last night because this is Restaurant Week in Dallas.  You know, sort of the New Year's Eve Amateur Night of Dining that lasts forever in the doldrums of Summer when Olive Garden aficionados decide to trade up for 35 bucks and bring their bratty children to upscale restaurants so they can run wild while they nurse fruity sweet vodka cocktails.  Wow that sounded kinda haughty. Okay I own it, I'm that guy.

More out of habit than interest, I nevertheless speedfinger walked through Open Table and realized RW doesn't start until Monday night so I snagged an 8:15 reservation for two at Sissy's Southern Kitchen.  (I really hate that name.  Saying "meet me at Sissy's at 8:15" is a sure fire way to lose all street cred in the world in which I dwell.  Even thinking it to yourself is somehow diminishing.  I tried referring to it as SSK but D was like "huh?" so I had to say it out loud and I could see all respect for me beginning to dim in his eyes so I started acting all macho and karate chopped a phone book in half and we were good again.)

We arrived at the spectacularly busy front door (neighboring Hibiscus was Deadsville, btw) and told one of the three perky door women that we had a reservation.  She dimpled and asked us to "walk this way."  (I muttered "if I could walk that way I wouldn't need the talcum powder" under my breath but this elicited no laughs as I have used that line approximately 4,013 times.)  She then proceeded to seat us at a lovely table for two in the secondary dining room beside a party of 24.  Seriously?  They were on their third or twelfth round of drinks and the cacophony of great friends celebrating something really important was beyond deafening.  We lasted about 16 seconds and I went back to the hostess stand and asked why we were being punished.  She looked at me quizzically and I patiently explained that being seated adjacent to a private party wasn't very fun for those not invited to it.  She was nice about it and apologized and then led us to a secluded table between the back door and the bathroom.  Thank you.

Our server was sort of checked out, like she was thinking about a term paper that was due on Monday except this is Summer and she was older than most college students so I'm not sure.  Don't get me wrong, she was okay, just absolutely disinterested in the moment, or us, or both.  We ordered beverages because it seemed appropriate and we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.  I had a beet salad with pecans and goat cheese, which was good, and D dawdled with the Sloppy Slaw, which was a ramekin of blue cheese dressing with three leaves of torn cabbage swimming inside it.  Odd. Maybe it's a Southern thing.  Or a Sissy thing.  Snort.

Then an entire hour elapsed.  It wasn't unpleasant, given the choice view of pairs of girls repairing to the ladies room to plump up their hair and pull down their tight miniskirts and jocular shirt guys high fiving their way into the one-seater with frilly doilies and cans of air freshener festooning it.  I wanted to snatch a fried green tomato from the table next to me but the woman seated there had ESP or something and kept guarding it with her jungle red manicured talons and glaring at me beneath her finely arched brows.  Her date was kind of menacing and I came THIS CLOSE to explaining to him that I just wanted to taste a little of her tomato until I realized that might result in my being on the business end of his meaty, violence-prone fist.  The entire restaurant was full of large boisterous parties, all intent on breaking the sound barrier with shrill laughter and booming, hearty guffaws.  I longed for comparatively quieter atmosphere of the American Airlines Center when the Dallas Mavericks annihilated the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals, Game 6.

At last our food arrived.  I had their famous fried chicken, which was garbed in a thick brown burqa of unseasoned coating and pressure-cooked to within an inch of its life. I peeled off the crunchy, greasy outer layers and managed to eke out a few forkfuls of nicely seasoned poultry. The chicken came with 2 gallons of mashed potatoes and one of those stainless steel gravy boats like you see at Denny's.  I had a little and asked for the rest to be Fedexed to the starving children in Africa.  Our server noted the request with no outward sign or acknowledgement of my flat out hilarious repartee.  D had the chicken-fried flat iron steak, which for some reason he thought was chicken but I corrected him twice and he was annoyed but I ended up being right, as usual.  He ate half of it and had the rest wrapped up for our pups' lunch.  Too bad it is still in his trunk and it is 11:45 the next day and 114 degrees in the shade.

The place was absolutely jammed and got even more so as I payed our just north of $60 tab, which is very low on the Dallas continuum of restaurant going.  Perhaps there is a correlation between cheap prices and bustling crowds, I don't know.  But as I left the restaurant and awaited the valet parker, I wondered to myself in a wry, Carrie Bradshaw voice, if Sissy's Southern Kitchen wouldn't be more appropriately named Jim Bob's Grub.

No LA in NOLA

One Can Never Be Too Loose on Bourbon Street

I just returned to Dallas from a four day conference in New Orleans.  I personally love The Crescent City, the City That Care Forgot, for its Spanish/French/Whatev architecture,  upside down cemeteries, the Mighty Mississippi and its churning Delta Queens, the charming people with "dese and dose" accents and megawatt smiles, the smell of Bourbon Street on a hot July night, redolent of high-spirited frat boys who've knocked back a few two many hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's...well maybe that last one, not so much.  Ahh, but the world class Creole cuisine really makes my bons temps roulez.

The conference was for an association of venue managers and was positively jam-packed with intense educational classes, helpful workshops, inspiring keynote speeches, crazy trade show antics and extravagant theme parties (use your wry, ironic inside voice when reading that sentence.) Sadly, there was not a lot of free time in the agenda to explore all the new little chef-driven kitchens and hole-in-the-wall dives that make New Orleans so romantically gut-busting. Finally, on Sunday night, I discovered an evening free and quickly
speedfingerwalked through Open Table, only to find to my immense dismay that none of the places I was anxious to try--Root, August, or Maurepas Food, were available.  Heck, I couldn't even get into Stella, which I'd been to before.  My feet were killing me from walking about 400 miles that day so I lazily just went next door to where I was staying at the Hilton Riverside to a convenient little sanitized enclave of bistros and cafes and ended up dining at Ruth's Chris Steak House.

Red-faced, I feel shame for exposing myself like that in a food blog, and fear I might be shunned by the foodie universe in coming weeks.  (Of course there is nothing wrong with Ruth's Chris except the odd possessive in its name.  Many people mispronounce it and call it Ruth Chris's, but it's actually, puzzlingly Ruth's Chris.  I mean, what the heck is a Chris steak? Is there a breed of cattle called Chris?  Did perhaps a woman named Ruth buy a Steak House named Chris and didn't have the money to change the sign out front so just spray painted "Ruth's" across the top? These questions blur my mind but thankfully don't blunt my appetite. But I digress.) 

Perhaps He Fears Toe-Main Poisoning

The restaurant was jammed with fat white people who had apparently traveled to the Big Easy in July for the sheer pleasure of wearing high-waisted shorts and socks with sandals in the hot stickiness of high Summer. There was also a preponderance of canes; canes are not an unusual sight in the French Quarter, although they are usually sported jauntily by fancy dressed men in pimp hats and spats. These canes looked more like supplemental weight supports, like a third leg but denuded of socks and sandals. Even some of the children had them.

My server was precious. Actually, her name was Precious, or at least that's what her name tag said, and it was entirely appropriate. She talked me into a drink against my will, forcing me to add "easily influenced" to my resume just below "chain restaurant-goer." She told me she had just put a "loaf" in the oven for me and was going to fetch some whipped butter. I looked the other way as I spread it on a slice of crusty, fragrant bread not once, but twice. (I would have felt worse about it if the couple at the table next to me hadn't eaten two entire loaves each. The woman finished up the last one by dunking the end of it in her butter dish like a cop with a donut in a coffee shop.)

The fresh tomato and red onion salad with balsamic vinaigrette was quite the perfect excuse for eating my weight in blue cheese crumbles.  It was followed by a huge slab of prime New York Strip cooked perfectly medium.  It was on a sizzling hot plate spewing off sparks of smoking butter that made an artistic stain on my white shirt reminiscent of Van Gogh's work during his 1888 sojourn to Arles.  I had eaten about half of it when the snap at the waistband of my pants went berserk and flew right into Precious's eye, blinding her for life. She cursed loudly in some swampland patois and I was afraid she was going to summon a spell from Marie Leveaux or else open up a can of Cajun whupass on me.

It was definitely time to go.  I gathered my sagging pants in my left hand and tried to hide the impressionistic butter painting on my shirt with my right as I hastily scrawled my signature on the credit card slip.  I lost my balance on the way out and struck my head on a lamp post.  As I staggered away I could feel disapproving, squinty eyes on the back of my head from all the tourists still inside.

"Some people just don't know any better," they were thinking as they finished up their chocolate bread pudding with bourbon pecan sauce topped with non-dairy whipped cream.