| rev:text
| - Obviously, I had to try some Montreal bagels on my first trip to Montreal, it being such a stable of Montreal cuisine! According to online reviews and food blogs, it seemed like the consensus was that Fairmount Bagel was the place to go; however, my friends seemed to think otherwise and were hell-bent on visiting St-Viateur instead. I, being the avid foodie that I am, decided to drag my bf to both of these joints and decide once and for all who made the best bagels in town. Sadly, I must say that St-Viateur was a huge disappointment. At Fairmount, we got deliciously oven-baked, fresh, crispy on the outside, fluffy and warm on the inside, flavor-packed bagels. At St-Viateur, we got hardened, not crispy, not fluffy, cold, bland bagels. My bf ordered a whole wheat and I ordered a rosemary bagel. The whole wheat was a huge disappointment: stale, hard, grainy. I've had better whole wheat bagels in the states! The rosemary was just as much if not even more of a disappointment. The ratio of rosemary to bagel was way off; Rosemary is one of those herbs that overpowers a palate so you don't need much of it to give the bagel a bit of oomfph. This bagel was drenched in rosemary and tasted disagreeable as a result. It was also hard and stale, like the others.
My recommendation: trust the consensus and go to Fairmount Bagels instead. There's a reason every notable food blog recommends Fairmount over St-Viateur, and there's a reason why the line at Fairmount was 3 times longer than the one at St-Viateur.
Food: 2/5 -- very meh
Service: 3/5 -- ok, nothing exceptional
Atmosphere: 3/5 -- open and fairly spacious (more so than Fairmount but then again, they had more customers than St-Viateur)
Overall: 2.5/5 -- decent but definitely shouldn't be your go-to bagel place in Montreal
|