rev:text
| - Stopped by here today, first day in Montreal, at the suggestion of the concierge at my hotel.
I walked into Old town, which is enjoyable. And did not have a hard time finding the place. The waiters were very kind and did not mind speaking 50/50 French and English with me. ( I am very rusty) I was seated promptly, and received bread, butter and my drink order pretty speedily.
I looked over the menu, and decided to go with the tapas, which I was told included risotto, some stew, a (Spanish) tortilla, and a mini-open faced style tuna salad crostini. the waiter was pretty much correct, except, to my chagrin, the risotto with chorizo ended up being replaced with some sort of extremely unappetizing calamari. Points off for the inaccuracy of the dish description, and the indescribably bad, extremely heavy, overly spiced, strange textured calamari, which turns my stomach to think back on. The stew was fine, a bit tough, but good flavour. The tortilla was a bit over spiced too, actually (think too much liquid smoke) and the sort of "tuna crostini" that rounded the dish out seemed to have been sitting out for a bit.
The positive was my $5 "green salad" was huge, and the vinaigrette had a lot of interest, not sure what they put in there. It brought out the happy Californian in me to see so many beautiful baby greens. And as I have said, the service was very friendly, and efficient. Strangely, the butter came in little single service plastic tubs, though, which seemed a bit cafeteria style, of such an otherwise trendy spot. Also, The sangria was decent.
I will probably not go back, but that is not entirely the fault of the restaurant, it just seems there are better places around for the price. Would have loved to have tasted the chorizo risotto!
|