classy times in HoMa

Is it really on to New York Montreal? What's with calling Hochelaga Maisonneuve "HoMa"?? It's as stupid as DUMBO (Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Anyway. The east end is still pretty trashy but there's some nice places down Promenade Ontario. I quite liked the Atomic Café and its cool video store but I haven't been there for over two years.

Last Tuesday the husb and I had occasion to be in the East End, and had some time to kill before another meeting in that area. So it was a good opportunity to revisit Promenade Ontario (will they start calling it PO, like the teletubby?). There's a great little square at the eastern end of PO, and I believe they have farmer's markets there. I don't remember cafes near there last time but this time there were two with nice al fresco seating. I can't remember the other café's name but there were more people in front of ArHoMa so we went in there for our little lunch.

This little café was buzzing. Apparently HoMa-ers like their fancy food and freshly baked breads. What caught my eye were these gorgeous looking cupcakes. Imagine a brownie on top of a cupcake? Sugar overload. Not for me, but they sure did look perdy.

I chose a tuna sandwich with alfalfa sprouts, olives and orange slices, served in flax bread in the shape of a fish to boot. This place is out plateau-ing the plateau! It came with green salad for a decent $5.50. The husb choose a croque monsieur with a choice of two salads for an extra $1.75.



Surprisingly, despite the presence of the olives, the tuna sarnie was pretty tasteless, although I felt very virtuously healthy eating it. The oranges were a nice touch but it would have been nicer if they were sharper and if the tuna had more flavour to contrast with. The tuna was low on mayo, which was good, but there wasn't much flavour to pump up the filling. The bread could have done with a better surface crunch. As it was, it was kind of just a lot to chew on. The salad was good though.



The husb's croque came with red peppers, mushrooms and the like under the grilled cheese. I thought it was odd, but he loved it. The bread was also not regular bread, but as he put it, "some kind of eggy, kind of sweet, cakey bread". Which worked for him. I tried the bean salad and unfortunately, it was a sum of its parts, nothing more exciting than that. The combination was not magic.

So this sounds like a bad review but I have to say that I thought ArHoMa was a nice place. The location is really nice and it made me think that Verdun needs a nice square surrounded by cafés too. It had wonderful service, the coffee is fair trade, organic, etc, etc, the atmosphere is great. I'd just try something else on their menu, or even, um, add some salt to that sarnie. Hopefully these gentrified spots and the hot dog joints will co-exist happily.

ArHoMa
15, Place Simon-Valois
Montréal
(514) 526-4662

Last minute dim sum

Oh dim sum again. Now, I know I lead a semi-unconventional life in that I don't have to go into an office every morning, but I have to say it's really unnerving for me to enjoy breakfast/brunch on a workday. It just seems too decadent.

Thursday morning at 830am I got a call from my aunt from Ontario. "Hi, we are in Three Rivers and we're coming to Montreal today. Do you want to have dim sum with us?" Sadly, they choose a really bad day for a surprise visit, but I agreed to meet them at Tong Por Restaurant in Chinatown for dim sum at 1030, with the understanding that I had to leave at noon.

Why would you drive an hour and a half to go for dim sum? "Because we want to see you" said the aunt, "and also for the dim sum." My aunt lives in Mississauga, where there's enough Chinese people for a T&T, the Chinese food is great there, but she considers Tong Por one of the best. Um, ok...

Chaos descended at 1115 when my aunt and my two little cousins finally arrived. As it was still so early and as we were the only people in the restaurant, we were asked to order à la carte, as it were. We asked for rice rolls with shrimp, glutinous rice steamed in banana leaf, Chinese broccoli, turnip cake, tripe, squid, bean curd rolls and some congee for the kids. The table quickly filled up with goodies (far too quickly if they were actually cooking to order), and they were hot (so score one point over Kam Fung).

Tong Por passes the glutinous rice in banana leaf test - the rice was unctuously delicious, very saucy, and filled with a lot of minced meat and a big piece of Chinese sausage. The turnip cake was also good, although it didn't taste like it was fried immediately before serving. It's a shame that they don't have those wagons that fry the turnip cake on request. The Chinese broccoli was very good as well. I personally prefer more garlic on the broccoli, but it was not too salty, and let the slightly bitter taste of the broccoli to come through. Unfortunately the bean curd rolls sat in a sauce that was quite gelatinous, but the rolls themselves were slurp-ly nice. The rice rolls didn't taste like they were freshly made - the wrapping was a bit too tacky and slightly tough, good wrapping should slide down your throat. The shrimps also were a bit tough. Despite this, none of the dishes were too salty, and they did pass the litmus test of the glutinuous rice dumplings. Although it was obvious that the dishes weren't cooked to order, it was 11 on a Thursday, and I'm sure the dishes are fresh and hot on the weekends at peak dim sum times.

I quite like Tong Por. The service has always been very friendly, it's clean, and I like looking at one of the Chinatown gates from the second floor. It's also slightly tucked away and the clientele is made up of a large percentage of Chinese families. A plus.

On my second visit this week, on Saturday morning as my family passed through Montreal once more en route to Ontario, we dropped by and visited them as they finished dim sum. This time, the carts were making their rounds and I saw turnip and taro cake, cut into pieces and fried up with egg, one of my favourite dim sum dishes. We ordered it to take away. It was cold and the waitress wanted to heat it up for us but as we were wrapping it up, there was no need. Still, items like this should be on the cart hot. I didn't try anything else the second time around, but I hope that the other food was piping hot.

But between Ruby Rouge, Kam Fung and Tong Por, I think this is the best of the three. (But good enough to drive an hour and a half into town for? Not really) The other two don't even place. And I ate the taro/turnip cake when I got home, it was delicious. It would have been great fresh off the pan.

Tong Por
43, rue de la Gauchetière East (cross street St-Dominique)
Montreal, Québec, H2X 1P4
(514) 393-9975
dim sum average plate $3.50

Vomitting from both ends

Ai. Sorry for the descriptive title. At least it wasn't me. Luckily, I escaped this horrible fate.

I joined some friends across town to Touski for breakfast this morning. I haven't been there for brekkie for at least a year and it was a (rare) gorgeous day and Touski has a great big backyard full of picnic tables.

I hate to slam any place run by a co-operative, but things are kind of hit and miss at Touski. When I lived close to there, I didn't go very often for that reason. One of my friends said that the last time he came here, he had to wait over 45 minutes after ordering to get his breakfast. How long does it possibly take to cook eggs??

It seems that Touski no longer do table service. Everything is done at the counter. You order, give them your name, they stick their head out of the kitchen door which opens to the backyard, shout out your name when your order is ready, you go back in, to the counter to pick up your food (obvious question: why can't they just give you the food from the kitchen door?)

I got the "Consistant" - two eggs, bread, one "thing", and fruit. You get to choose from a list of "trucs": sausages, bacon, cheese, vege-pate. I made the mistake of ordering vegepate before, three years ago. It was gross and cold, and if I remember correctly, full of alfalfa sprouts. Not the kind of thing I would want for breakfast. So I avoided the pate and went for cheese, which they said is cheddar, but turned out to be a nice mozzerella.



I remember one of the few episodes of a Gordon Ramsay show I saw had him saying to a chef that one of the most basic things for a chef to do is not break the yolk when making a fried egg. And it's also one of the basic pleasures of having a fried egg - breaking the yolk yourself. So I always take a broken yolk as a sign of a shoddy kitchen. Jen's plate had a broken yolk - that egg was hidden under the first one. Classy.


(I always forget to break out the camera when the food comes because I like to dive in -obviously the food didn't come looking like this!)

My breakfast came with delicious bread, kind of yeasty and crunchy, like German bread. Definitely the best part of the breakfast. Unfortunately, the cook forgot to give it to us so I had to ask for it. My eggs were pretty runny up top for sunny side up, plenty of "rooster juice" as another friend called it. Yuck. But at least they weren't broken. The potatoes were not deep fried, which was good, but they were cold and shrivelled, like they were cooked at least five hours ago, which was bad. Still, I was ok.

Then one of my friends jumped up, napkin to her mouth. "Oh my God, I'm going to puke". One of the eggs tasted funny, very funny. She kept her food down, sat back down and decided to eat everything else. Then she disappeared and bum vomited. Mel's stomach started feeling funny. Then she disappeared and vomited. I was freaked out that I was next but luckily, nothing happened to me. Honestly, not worth it, despite the lovely bread. There's not really a reason to head back to that place. I'm sorry to say that, especially as it's a co-operative and the kind of place I would like to support.

I had a 40 minute bike ride ahead of me and I was really worried that I would be in bad shape along the way, but instead I had a great ride back in the sunshine, and stopped off at Atwater Market to get some cheese (at Les fromages du paradis - 3 cheeses from a changing selection for $11.99).

Touski Café du quartier
2361 Ontario E
two eggs, bread, potatoes, fruit, and one "thing" $5.50