Special lady and I needed a little urban renewal time this weekend so we headed up to Montreal for the weekend. It was a pretty ok trip. I can start off by saying it will most likely be a long time before my wife allows me to pick a hotel for a trip again. I admit she puts more time and thought into decisions than I do. I had the mission this time and did some work but not enough. My choice? Le Hotel St. Marc... not surprisingly on St. Marc street over by St. Catherine. It looked like a funky boutique and had positive reviews on Trip Advisor. Well, it sure as shit was funky. We were welcomed by a girl that barely spoke english or french. To get to our room we went up a staircase and into a kitchen/ dining room that was overly full of junk and looked like my house when we have guests we only kind of like. Sort of clean but not really. We then descended a super tight spiral staircase to our room. The room was very large. It had a 60" TV. And several chandeliers, and multiple surround speakers in the ceiling, and fake stained glass stickers on the sliding glass doors. To top it off? The largest Murphy bed you have ever seen. Oh yeah, they also gave us a key that did not work and when we were out to dinner taped a key that did work to the outside of our door. Glad I left our passports in the room. 1 thumb down. Just pick a different place, you will thank me.
We made up for it w/ a few pretty good meals. We rocked a local hotspot Au Pied de Cochon on Friday night. If you like meat, particularly the weird bits like cheek, hoof and snout this is your place. We had delicious cod fritters, an ok endive salad, a tasty but enormous pork chop, and very solid but cut too small fires (in duck fat). It was a solid thumb and a 1/4 up until unsolicited our server gave us couple large glasses of Calvados. 2 thumbs up for the service my man!!!
Saturday we went to LBsquared spot Sho-Dan for sushi. While not as amazing as our first trip it was still very good fresh tasting sushi and I would recommend it unfailingly. The explosion roll was a little disappointing but still good and the Kiss was very good. Good service, good fish, and apparently THE spot if you are either out on a girls only evening or you are a skeevy single guy looking to pick up said women!
One last thing to mention was the Atwater Marche. This was a huge indoor/outdoor market that had a bit of everything. It is broken into stations and you can do a bite to eat at the pastry and coffee area and then hit up the butcher, the fish guy, the awesome fromagiers, the beer cellar, maybe grab some flowers and finish w/ amazing fruits and vegetables. Everything looked fantastic and I would shop there every weekend if I lived in that city. Even the bakery fare to go was delicious, particularly the still warm almond croissant. Off the hook. If you find yourself in the area, definitely check it out.
One thing not to check out? The Dilemma. It was on HBO last night and sucked balls but not in a good way. Vince Vaughn is really pissing me off right now. Stop making shitty movies, just stop it!!!
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