13 weeks in Montreal and on the last night I finally find my style of bar

When I look back at 2010, it’s been one filled with travel, and primarily travel to Montreal. Montreal is definitely a beautiful city, especially in the summer time.  You have over 400 years of history, a history that is warmly embraced and has resulted in a combination of beautiful architecture, amazing food, a wide variety of culture and thanks to French king, more beautiful women per capita than pretty much any other city I have visited.

My one lament though through out my time in Montreal has been the dearth of quality cocktails. Don’t get me wrong, Montreal pretty much has a bar on every corner, ranging from your low end dive bar through to the flashy beautiful people night club that is all about being seen, paying too much for a drink made by a hot bartender, and being packed into a small dark space with music cranked at a level that has you shouting to be heard. Don’t get me wrong, clubs have their place, but I’ll take a chilled bar with a talented bar tender any night.

Which leads me into the tale of my last night in Montreal for the year…

The night started with dinner at a Portuguese restaurant, Chez Michel, followed by drinks on St Denis at bar called La berouf (standard pub but with some fantastic wood work, an impressive collection of scotch and about 30 beers on offer) we then decided to head back to the old port for a drink at Vauvert.

Vauvert is the restaurant and club that is part of the St Paul hotel which has been my home away from home this year. Definitely one of the more popular bars in old Montreal on the traditional party nights of Thursday and Saturday night. It very much fits the mould  of your higher end Montreal bar. House DJ, funky decor, attractive wait staff and the standard drink offerings including the basic array of Tini drinks with an emphasis on either the fashionable (cosmopolitans) or fruity and sweet, all made with an emphasis on fast service and lots volume.

From there it was quick walk down McGill to Le Confessional. This bar is a little more my speed, and it’s been interesting to watch it go through a renovation this year.  The first time I visited in January, it was best described as more of a neighbourhood dive bar that had been there for ever, and hadn’t seen a lick of paint since first opening 20 years ago.  Fast forward 3 months and the interrior was redone. Think plush surfaces, lots of reds, burgendy & dark wood surfaces with chandeliers and mood lighting.  Again, you have the house dj on hand and your standard drink offerings.  My biggest gripe with The Confessional, and it seems to be a popular thing in Montreal, is the use of the electronic pourers for the spirits.  I get  the logic behind it, but when it comes to mixing drinks, it feels wrong and disconnects the human element from the experience of making a drink. But enough of the rant.

After the compulsory drink was consumed, we then decided to head over to L’Assomoir for some more interesting drinks. The problem we had though was that once we got there, they had called it a night.  So in what seems to be a common element for those amazing finds, we resigned ourselves to the night coming to an end and started to head back to the St Paul.

It was then that we wandered past  L’Original. I had actually been trying to get to L’Original all week after having read a write up for it.  The big draw for me was their focus on non mainstream meat offerings, so think venison, duck, Bison etc.  They of course cover your standard beef & chicken offerings but even there they try and mix it up a little bit. 

So we descended the stairs and were greeted with a decor that is if you had to pic a theme, you would say was a modern take on a hunting lodge, complete with wooden moose heads on the wall.

 

When we wandered in we were greeted by one of the owners, Travis, who was more than happy to give us the run down on the menu and the restaurant in general.  The first thing that impressed me about the menu was that it was only two pages, I like to have some choice, but find it overwhelming to be handed a menu with forty pages and a million dishes.  if nothing else, I think about the logistics of a running a kitchen and keeping the ingredients fresh to support that many dishes.  For L’Orignal, the first page is the standards for the restaurant that are always on offer,  (Les Classiques), things like a duck tartare or a Portuguese grilled chicken with chorizo, the second page is the chef’s menu which changes every 2 to 3 weeks.

I then  got into the important part of the conversation and asked about their drink options.

At this point Travis pointed to the chalkboard and offered us a drink, so who am I to say no to a drink?

Chatting with Jane, the bartender, it turns out that the menu is her creation, so asking for recommendations, she suggested the Red Russian and the Polish Apple Pie.  I opted for the Polish Apple Pie (Freshly crushed granny smith apple juice, Zubrowka bison grass vodka and cinnamon) while my buddy Curtis went for the Red Russian (freshly crushed red apple juice, vodka and fresh beet juice).  Neither drink disappointed. The Red Russian had a nice contrast between the sweetness of the apple juice with the spice of the beet juice while the polish apple pie went down the path of mixing the tartness of the green apples with bison grass vodka and the cinnamon for spice.

By this stage it is nudging 1:30am and dinner was a fading memory so we asked if the kitchen was still open and were given a resounding yes!

The bar menu is the companion chalkboard to the drink menu and again we went for the house recommendations. In this instance that was a serve of mini burgers and a bowl of poutine.  For the  uninitiated, poutine is very much a Montreal staple. You take a bowl of fries, add some cheese curd to it and then drown it all gravy. Like any late night food, it’s one of those food that doesn’t seem as appealing during daylight hours and it’s enjoyment is proportional to the amount of alcohol you have previously consumed, and in the interests of full disclosure, it’s not really a food stuff I have ever had much affection for. L’Original has now changed that stance. Their gravy is rich with complex flavours, the fries are done perfectly and the cheese curds are tasty and had a great mouth feel to the whole experience.

The next item to be consumed then was the mini burgers. First up, points to L’Original for not calling them sliders. These truly are mini burgers.  You get a solid patty of minced lamb, topped with caramelised onions and melted aged cheddar on mini burger buns that are fresh and tasty, so forget about greasy sliders, these things are sublime!

From there the house put on a round of espresso & frangelico shots, apparently another Montreal favourite  that didn’t disappoint.

 

So 13 weeks of fruitless searching and what I was looking for was a couple of blocks from where I had been staying the whole time. As the french say, ce la vis!

The other tips I picked up at L’Orignal for drinks were PicaPica and Restaurant Jane. PicaPica being another bar that Jane works at and has done a menu for, Jane (the restaurant/bar not the bartender) apparently does fantastic pizza and does good drinks as well, but they shall both have to wait till another trip and another night ….