ACZoom  ·  Archive-2016

The home page for Buenos Aires travel tips at this site is: [l:travel/buenos-aires].

• Food (11)
• To Colonia del Sacramento (3)
• To Tigre (5)

What a city!

• Québec Cheeses (15)

  Local cheeses, all purchased from Montréal. Related: the [l:albums/travel/montreal/poutine Poutine!] pages contain information about fresh cheese curds. Cheese Shops

  • [l:node/1154 Fromagerie Atwater]
  • [l:node/144 Fromagerie Hamel]
  • [l:node/1162 La Maison du cheddar]
  • In a pinch and after-hours - grocery stores such as IGA, Provigo, Metro, Super C, etc. There is bound to be a good place to buy cheese from where ever you stay in Montreal.
  Note that the US has some very strange, bizarre, and restrictive food import policies - see [l:travel/montreal/schwartzs-jewish-deli#comment-5229 Meat, Cheese and US Border Crossings comment] for details.

• Jazz Fest (29)

  Summer Jazz Festival. More than just jazz. More details at: [l:travel/montreal/montreal-jazz-festival]

• Poutine! (11)

  A dish unique to Quebec. [l:http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20130531-how-the-quebecois-came-to-love-poutine BBC article: How the Quebecois came to love poutine]. Fries, Gravy, and fresh Cheddar Cheese Curds (fromage en grains) make poutine! An exclamation point seems necessary for this dish. The process of making cheese from milk goes through a step that results in curds. These are small chunks of solid cheese that are not yet pressed into molds for the final aging process. Fresh cheese curds only last a day or two, therefore are only available in places where a lot of cheese is manufactured. Cheddar cheese curds are available widely in Montreal, and it is the key ingredient of poutine. Fresh cheese curds are easy to recognize - they will make a squeaking sound when you eat them. From fast food joints to celebrated chefs, there is no shortage of places to get poutine in Montreal. [l:http://www.montrealpoutine.com/ Montreal Poutine] has good information on all poutine places in that city. Poutine fries should at least start crispy, and have sufficient amount of gravy to smother the fries. The run-down looking Poutine Lafleur has pretty good poutine. This is the standalone place on Rue Wellington and not the chain of the same name. Maamm Bolduc was not as good - not enough gravy or cheese - but many consider it one of the best, so worth checking out. Many places that claim to be famous, or are very old diners that should probably have good poutine, do not. French fries may be limp and not crisp, sauce may be tasteless, and they dish may not be warm enough. So for a short visit, just try the known-to-be-good places, do not experiment. La Cantine, closed in 2012. This bistro on Mont Royal had excellent poutine, in very nice surroundings. The fries stay nice and crispy to the last bite. There is a photo provided below, which now serves as a memory only! Surprisingly, some fast food joints have good poutine too - such as La Belle Province. And Frite Alors! has amazing fries, and good poutine too. 2013: Schwartz's has gotten onto the poutine act: [l:albums/travel/montreal/schwartzs-hebrew-delicatessen/schwartzs-poutine]. It is essentially fine as a novelty item, but the basic poutine elsewhere, and the smoked-meat sandwiches at Schwartz's, are both best eaten without anything else added to either dish.

• STM - Métro and Bus (8)

  Montreal subway and bus system. External link: Photographer [l:https://instagram.com/explore/tags/mtlmetroproject/ Chris Forsyth's #mtlmetroproject]

• Le Petit Alep (10)

  Great good, awesome ambiance. Near Jean Talon metro station.

• Marché Adonis (4)

  Excellent middle-eastern grocery store - large selection of fruits, ready-made food, feta cheeses, tzatziki, and sweets. They now have a home page: [l:http://www.adonisproducts.com/pages/accueil_en.asp adonisproducts.com] DISCLAIMER: please note that this web page has no association with the Marché Adonis business. And this site is not in Quebec, so English readers are the majority here, and French may not be understood by most. Thank you!

• Marché Jean-Talon (8)

  The Jean-Talon market is a couple of blocks east of the intersection of Jean-Talon and St-Laurent, near the the Jean-Talon metro station. Newly refurbished in 2005, visit this place for fresh fruit, groceries, cheeses, bread, fish, desserts. Great food available in the market itself, additionally, surrounding area is Little Italy, which has many good restaurants.

• Schwartz's - Hebrew Delicatessen (12)

  Absolutely the most addictive food in the world, the best smoked-meat in the world.

• Flushing's Chinatown (9)

  Discover a variety of Chinese (and Korean, etc) food on Main St, Flushing - last stop on the #7 Subway line. This is the second Chinatown in NYC, probably because downtown NYC was not big enough to hold all these new restaurants. Good references: [l:http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/29/dining/20080730_FLUSHING_INTERACTIVE.html NYTimes Flushing Interactive] graphic which also has a nice printout to take when visiting, and which links to the [l:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/dining/30flushing.html main article], which also has more tips from the readers in the article's comments section. A later article describes [l:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/dining/10chine.html Dongbei cai, or the food of the Northeast], the area was known earlier as Manchuria. The absolutely great things in this area: Sichuan food - spicy-hot with tongue-numbing Sichuan pepper ma-la experience, awesome lamb burgers with cumin and green chilies (in the Golden Mall, a collection of fast food restaurants in the basement off Main St - details in the NYT article), peking duck in snack form on a small pancake (fantastic Peking Duck, and sold at a window in a restaurant on the street), all sorts of dumplings, and the street stalls with $1 skewers of grilled spiced-meat ("Mongolian Barbecue?"). Finish off with bubble tea. And if you want to avoid eating out on the street, visit the Food Court in the Flushing Mall which has most of the similar foods. Best items here? 1. [l:http://xianfoods.com/ Xi'an Famous Foods] at 41-28 Main St Golden Mall Booth #36. It is confusing to find, enter the basement mall, take the left, cross two/three food booths, take a right, and this place on the left, probably the second/third store on the left. Just follow your nose and look for the sandwiches - their web site has pictures of their food. [Sep 2009] They are now in multiple places in Downtown Manhattan too! Those are easier to get to, still, worth visiting the original location to get a true Chinatown experience and better food (I think). NYT says: "His lamb stew is infused with fresh green chilies and cumin: stuffed into hot, griddled bread rolls, it makes the best sandwich in Flushing." ... "In the food court of the Golden Mall — a grand-sounding name for a basement warren of folding tables — is a man who goes by the name Shi Liangpi". Also good here: "his signature dish - liangpi, a dish of cold noodles in a sauce that hits every possible flavor category (sweet, tangy, savory, herbal, nutty and dozens of others)... in addition to four different sauces, and mountains of bean sprouts, slivered cucumbers and sprigs of cilantro. " My best choices: "N1" - Spicy Cumin Lamb Hand-Ripped Noodles (around $6), and "B2" Spicy Cumin Lamb Burger (around $3). [Prices as of Nov 2011, Flushing location.] Pictures: [l:albums/travel/new-york/flushings-chinatown/xian-famous-foods-41-28-main-st] and the new sit-down restaurant [l:albums/travel/new-york/flushings-chinatown/biang-restaurant-41-10-main-st]. 2. The Peking Duck from the street window at the Corner 28 restaurant, picture present below. 3. The unassuming Spicy & Tasty restaurant at 39 07 Prince Street, just a block or two up from the Main St Subway station. Good Sichuan food - nice and spicy. 4. New World Mall at 40-21 Main St, and another entrance next to Macy's on Roosevelt Ave, right outside one of the subway entrances. This is all brand-spanking new , as of 2011. The mall has a enormous food court at the basement, with a huge variety of Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese etc food. If you like hot-pot - there are multiple restaurants selling hot-pots! This Mall also has the excellent and huge grocery store J-Mart which is also worth a visit. 5. The Flushing Mall at 13331 39th Ave, Queens, NY. Three blocks from the Main St station. The lower level has the food courts - again, here too some menus are in Chinese only but there are pictures to order by. And you can eat in the mall which is good in summer, avoid the street heat and smell!. The food in this mall's food court is certainly unlike any other shopping mall in the US. And of course, it is a mall so has restrooms - certainly one thing that cannot be found on the street or in the Golden Mall. [Nov 2011] Still worth a visit, though I heard this place might be going away? The only problem - many places in this are of Flushing have menus in Chinese only.