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| - We ate here during a visit to Montreal this summer (August). Hating rejection, I e-mailed a week or so in advance for a reservation, and they phoned me back to confirm. After a day of hoofing it around the city, we walked right past this place twice since it doesn't have a sign. However, upon calling them for help we found it right there in plain sight. We were seated promptly and then sat there forsaken and forlorn for about ten minutes, my pet peeve. The reason for this was apparently that there was just one waitress for the front seating area and she took all the time needed to explain dishes and answer questions for each table, hence the wait. (Some self-absorbed diners love to inordinately monopolize servers with their inane queries instead of using the internet.) Anyhow, if you did your five minutes of homework, you know to order: pork and foie gras. We started with the delicious fried zucchini blossoms and a simple salad, then on to the stuffed pig's foot with foie. It was awesome, and awesomely rich. My wife, who is near-vegetarian, threw herself with gusto into disassembling this earthy, collagen-laden treat, served atop mashed potatoes, cooked vegetables and a thick demi-gravy. Whatever magical treatment they did there was absolutely no stink of cochon associated with this trotter, only yummy goodness. Yes, we did finish it, but there was no room for dessert. We had a French red the details of which now escape me. The place is pretty loud and tightly packed. I wouldn't call it comfortable, more down-to-the-business-of-eating, a money mill. A table of Asian tourists nearby provided diversion in the form of ordering and photographing endlessly an entire pig's head (served with a lobster as crown). Wish I had room for more!
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