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| - This past weekend, a New Yorker and her Torontonian friend went to Montreal to ring in 2012. We played the whole weekend by ear, wandering around town on New Years Eve day and spending the evening drinking wine on a mostly deserted and fully freezing St. Helen's Island. After returning to our lodgings at Hotel Zero 1 to warm up and relax, the Torontonian got a hankering for oysters. She'd read about Maestro SVP during previous oyster restaurant researchings, so we decided to give them a call to see if we could make a last-minute New Years Eve reservation. The New Years gods must have been looking down on us, cause Maestro SVP had plenty of room for us and an awesome special menu.
The New Years menu had 4 courses, with a few items to choose from for each course (except the dessert). The menu was totally in French, which presented a tiny challenge considering that my efficiency in French is limited to guessing what things mean based on context clues; however, our waitress was very cool about translating things for me when I got stuck. My friend and I took full advantage of our options and shared our orders. For the first course, we got the salmon and tuna tartare (which came with wonton chips) and the salmon ceviche (which had guacamole on top). Totally hit the spot! We followed that up with baked oysters and cold shredded duck over a bed of shredded carrots, which had a yummy cole slaw kind of taste to it. Then came the main event. We rang in 2012 with a big plate of tasty cold seafood on ice (shrimp, oysters, mussels, tuna tartare, and a lobster) and a complimentary glass of champagne. Then, to top the night off, dessert was a chocolate lava cake with raspberry sauce and fresh whipped cream.
Couple all that with a bottle of Pinot Blanc and some New Years noisemakers and hats, and we ended up having ourselves the exact New Years celebration that we were hoping for (and another customer got herself an engagement ring as well!).
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