| rev:text
| - The food at Au Pied de Cochon absolutely lives up to the considerable hype, and can be a lot more affordable than it seems if you're aware of how rich most of these dishes are - and by the way, if you don't like the rich, hearty food of Quebecois cuisine then this is probably not the place for you.
The only downside we experienced is although we made a reservation a few weeks in advance we weren't able to get a table before 10:00p.m., and when we arrived we ended up waiting over a half hour longer. Additionally, in the bad weather there wasn't anywhere good to wait. Though we were able to look out over the open kitchen, which was fun, we kept getting asked to squeeze back out toward the entrance. However, the staff were very apologetic and bought us a round of drinks and two orders of tempura zucchini blossoms and the food was well worth the wait.
There were five of us, but only four were foodies. We started with the zucchini blossoms and three orders of foie gras cromesquis (little deep-fried cubes of liquid foie gras), then moved on to the seared foie gras poutine for an appetizer. The blossoms were received well by even the non-foodie, and if you like foie gras you will love the cromesquis and the poutine. The non-foodie did have a cromequis but as he'd never had foie gras before it was, to say the least, a bold introduction. So if, like him, you don't love foie gras (which would be silly, but it does happen) take the opportunity to try another of the many excellent-looking options.
For our entrees, four of us split the pied de cochon and the duck in a can. The pied de cochon is huge and comes on the amazing PDC mashed potatoes, which have Quebec cheese curds mashed into them. The duck in a can is something that's worth ordering just for the experience (they really do come to the table with a can opener and dump it out on the toast and cauliflower mash - you can find videos on YouTube) but it was really delicious as well. It wasn't the dish I was most looking forward to (I was pushing for the melting pot) but it ended up being my favourite dish as well - which is saying a lot considering how amazing all of the rest of the food was. Even though it was only half an entree each and one member of our party fasted (well, apart from beer) for the whole day to prepare for our meal we weren't able to finish it (though we came close).
Which is what led to my comment about the price - yes, we had a round of drinks and zucchini blossoms paid for, but it worked out to only $30/person and would have been only around $40/person without the freebies because we knew going in that there would be too much food if we ordered four entrees. Granted, we didn't drink too heavily (we came from Dieu de Ciel, plus for all the amazing food the PDC beer, which we were drinking, is not outstanding), but the estimates you see online of $80/person makes this seem harder to afford than it is. You can have a couple of glasses of beer and easily stay under $50/each as long as you're willing to share (which was easy to do with all of the dishes we had and the servers were not uncomfortable with at all.)
The fifth member of our party ordered the happy pork chop, but he didn't share, the spoilsport. It was huge and looked totally different than any pork chop I've seen before, but delicious (and it smelled that way, too) but the melting pot is still next on my to-try list.
We can't wait to go back. Definitely recommend making the effort to visit.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)