December 29, 2005 Archives
...as you can see. Well, our family isn't very religious (or not at all), but we'll take Christmas as another excuse to gather and enjoy Good Food.
Well, that'll teach me...
My fave Chinese restaurant, but I don't know why it's the case. Perhaps its un-Cantonese-ness, perhaps because it is new, perhaps b/c it is a refashioned town house. Or perhaps the speciality dumplings that one never really forgets about? But every time I go, I order dumplings, maybe mutton skewers (although we found better ones at other more specialized restaurants), and maybe the cong you bing (oily chives cakes?), and then some new random stuff. The new random stuff tends to be Chinese in the variety I am not used to. You can tell it's Chinese, b/c of the aromas, the looks, but it's not necessarily something I had before (maybe b/c of the vastness of "Chinese cuisine"). So tonight, went with Wee, and decided to tackle a few things picked up from the wall menu: dirty-inducing fried crab, fried frog legs (and now I die) but not spicy/lemon-ish style, and something that goes by "lao hu cai" ("tiger veggies" says the translation on the same ticket on the wall) (and of course some bai cai jiao zi to finish it off, or finish us of).
The fried crab was very dirty indeed. But that gives me the idea that some summer, or sometime around the season of mollusks (?), I shall have a seafood party, in the dirty-yourself genre, complete with the case of live crabs, and the pot of boiling salty water.
In all his Chineseness, Wee didn't know what those "tiger veggies" were. A mixture of cucumbers, coriander, and a few unknown herbs. And, oh, lots lots lots of chili seeds... Maybe... yeah. *g*
Ravioli de Manchuria, on the east side of St-Mathieu between Ste-Catherine and De Maisonneuve, right in the Concordia ghetto.
Went with S to calm craving for a hamburger&fries&beer meal, and chose La Paryse, arguably the best in its genre in Montreal, and voted best by Montrealers. The meat is what's important. Ground beef, the right texture, not too dry-McDonald's-ish, but also not too fake-meat-patty-a-la-BK. In any case, this stuff is beyond the league of fast-food, but for 10-15$ tips and taxes counted, one can say it's a restaurant outing well worth it (by the poor student budget's perspective). I really should've had the double burger with bacon. So this was "La Paryse", on Ontario, a short walk westward from St-Denis, right across the corner where the Vieux-Montreal cegep is (and then, I remember that on the same corner, there was that hats & apparel shop someone mentionned to me a few years ago and which I should've checked if I really wanted to get that hat of mine...).