My New Years Resolutions in Montreal Food and Restaurants

I have the most expensive bottle of Champagne I’ve ever bought just waiting in my coldest room for an excuse to be popped. New Years Eve 2020 is not that time.

Will I celebrate the end of an overall awful year for the restaurant industry in Montreal? Certainly. But I won’t pop the good stuff, because we’re not through the weeds yet. And any line cook worth their salt knows that the moment you think you see the evening calming down, the last diners paying their bills, that group of post-game partiers will come waltzing in 10 minutes before closing wanting three courses.

Forgive the fairy tale-like nature of the metaphor, since no one will be waltzing in restaurants or out of games any time soon in Montreal, but you get the point.

And since I don’t know what’s coming for some of my favourite places, like Toqué, Pullman, Le Diplomate, Le Blossom and L’Express anyway, I’m just going to tell you what food resolutions I’ll be making personally, assuming the country keeps on trucking without a vaccine for at least half of 2021 as expected.

Food Resolutions

1. I will stop messing up my homemade tempeh. I got cocky. I successfully made tempeh a couple times in my dehydrator and then figured I had it down. My next batch was a disaster. It was either too warm or too cold and the fermentation took days to get going, only to yield an acetone flavour, clumps of blanket-like mold spores and enough fear in me to throw out the whole batch. In 2021, I will be better. I will re-read all the instructions for each batch. 2021 has no place for hubris.
2. I will cook more beans in general. I ordered tons of organic dried beans, grains and dried fruit from Yupik a couple of times during the pandemic. When you order more than $100, the delivery is free. Rice doesn’t go bad, you know. I did get through my first order, so now I’m working through the second, but my motivation has diminished. Pressure-steamed chickpeas are amazing, but my digestion doesn’t love them. And there are only so many vinaigrettes a person can make, or be inspired by, I suppose (though preserved lemon on du puy lentils was a winner).
3. I will make my own preserved lemons. Not just for marinated lentils, but for couscous and braised meats and general joy. It’s easy, after all, and I have time. Don’t we all? Think of all those extra hours now that I don’t waste away evenings at wine bars or slicing minuscule pieces of quail while trying to share small plates at Pullman. I might also make my own Champagne mustard (pictures above), since I won’t be drinking the stuff much. (I will be drinking more affordable Cava and other sparkling wines instead, which is really what you should use to make mustard anyway).
4. I will drink less blueberry vodka. Not that I drink a ton of it now, but I do infuse my own with my handpicked blueberries from the summer and I recently got a bottle of Pur Vodka’s latest flavour creation with wild blueberry and yuzu. It’s a delicious headache waiting to happen, so I’m going to be careful. I’ve fortunately (and unfortunately) almost finished my own infused blueberry vodka. Well, not the vodka, but the fruit. That’s a sneaky way to drink. The inebriation sneaks up on you when you least expect it. You don’t feel it until you’re more than a little far gone, because those berries were just so juicy and sweet and lovely and…wham!
5. I will order sustainable sushi at least once. I keep almost ordering a platter from Ryu or selection all the sustainable, gluten-free options from Saint Sushi or giving myself a break and getting the not-so-sustainable chirashi takeout bowl from Fleurs et Cadeux or the uni-salmon-tuna bowl from Nozy, and then I just don’t. Either I shake my head begrudgingly and scoff at how expensive it is for delivery or I can’t justify going taking an hour of my day to pick up takeout. I hate the idea of having to carry sushi home for 30 minutes. It’s meant to be enjoyed the second it’s made. It’s never going to be any more delicious than the first moment the chef places that carefully sliced piece of fish on top of a not-too-warm-not-too-cold carefully shaped piece of sushi rice. But I do love sushi. And La Mer seems to have stopped having decent specials on fish now that their B2B restaurant sales have presumably plummeted. I don’t blame them. It’s just I can’t afford as much of their quality fish anymore. So next year I’ll suck up the additional costs and additional time requirement and order a bit more sushi.
6. I will make my own sushi more often. This is far more likely. I did make sushi a few more times at home than I ate it in restaurants this past year, and that’s including non-COVID days. There are also tons of fun vegetable sushi options I can make (I’m thinking preserved lemon, yes). And while I do enjoy a lot of the city’s vegan sushi restaurants, I’m not going to go make a ton of lemon and ginger and sun-dried tomato and truffle emulsions for sauces for various rolls. Still, any idiot can make an avocado roll. Any idiot can also go to La Mer and buy sashimi grade tuna. Most idiots can even hack that tuna into slices that resemble sashimi and certainly taste like sushi when placed on top of vinegar-ed rice (for which I highly encourage everyone buy “Sushi for Dummies” which will teach every idiot like my myself how to properly season sushi rice and then some.
7. I will use my barbecue when I’m sad. This might sound like a weird one (“Weirder than ‘I will drink less blueberry vodka,’ Amie? Really?” you ask), but flames make me happy. Not in a pyro way; in a comforting campfire, smoky aroma, caramelized exterior, silken interior kind of way. I always feel very accomplished when I spatchcock and barbecue a whole chicken or grill a peck of zucchini (do zucchini come in pecks like peppers?) or roast a whole fish to restaurant-quality bliss. But it’s a gross job to clean the thing. It’s also probably cancerous to not clean it well. And probably cancerous to use it clean or dirty. But for the joy that it brings me, I resolve to use it more. I’m dreaming of smoky corn and miso chicken and maybe some rack of lamb or ribs. Heaven.
8. I will learn to digest exotic fruit better. My very odd chiropractor who’s much more like a homeopath than a chiro most of the time says I should avoid exotic fruit for a few weeks because it seems to disagree with my body more than local fruit (especially when that local fruit is peeled). Who am I to know what my body disagrees with? She says that ability to get along with pineapple and mangoes might come back after some time off, so I’m hoping 2021 is the year of better digestion of exotic fruit. I’d cheers to that with a piña colada or a mango daiquiri, but I’m not allowed.
9. I will find a white wine that makes me smile. I keep opening bottles and being unsatisfied. I shouldn’t tell you how many bottles are usually slowly sying in my fridge after being opened optimistically and quickly dismissed. There’s something about the acidity or bitterness or overly sweetness of everything I’ve tried recently. I haven’t been loving red wines either lately, but those I do seem to eventually get through (that’s a lie, I most recently roasted a whole rabbit with a cup-and-a-half of an expensive bottle then braised some chicken with more of it). The whites are usually left for marinating chicken and making risotto, but you shouldn’t waste a $30 bottle on that when my water kefir and lemon juice does a better job, at least of the marinating. I had this Greek white a while ago that I was excited about. Nope. It was too sweet. Then a Spanish Xarel-lo. Cloying with a bitter aftertaste. Then a very gently macerated Italian white wine. Like water. I’m not looking for a wine husband. Just a Covid buddy. For now, I’m having plenty of flings with dry sparkling wines, which are keeping me sane, but I miss the comfort of a crisp, dry glass of white.
10. I will smile more. This will come naturally if I eat more sushi, drink more good white wine, making more barbecue and digest exotic fruit better (I really miss papaya…), I’m sure, but it applies outside of food, too. I read somewhere that if you just smile more, even if it’s forced, the forced smiling will make you happier. It will slowly become less forced. Maybe that’s super-awkward laughing yoga.

Eater Montreal’s End-of-Year

Eater also recently asked me some questions for a Montreal year in review and it made me reflect on last year in Montreal restaurants and what I’m expecting this upcoming year. I wrote about my go-to takeout destinations in Montreal from the past year, the most exciting restaurant openings and what I expect for the year to come in food headlines. Here’s a bit of what I said, summarized:

What were your regular go-to destinations for takeout and delivery in 2020?

I’m picky when it comes to takeout and delivery, so I looked for bang for my buck and foods that I either can’t make myself or take too much effort. My favourites are Komomo (Sushi Momo’s to-go operation) and Ryu (because it’s the only sushi place in Montreal that only sells certified sustainable fish). I tried some other places but was always disappointed. Sometimes the fried items had been sitting around too long, skin that was supposed to be crispy was gelatinous and other times things were too salty or too cold. There’s no point kicking these places while they’re down, though. Takeout and delivery are hard! At least with CHK PLZ, Eva, Radish and few other contactless payment and delivery startups, there are some local companies that restaurants can use to actually make money instead of relying on third-party apps for pennies.

What newcomer on the scene excited you this year?

Joon! When I tasted Erin Mahoney’s smoky half eggplant stuffed with lamb at last year’s YUL EAT, it was one of those moments when the world slows down and everything gets a little quieter. I think she has incredible courage and a lot of support for launching during the pandemic, but her Caspian and South Caucasian food is unique in Montreal and the quality is high, so I hope she’s doing well.

What are your headline predictions for 2021?

The beginning of the year I expect to be more of the same: More closures and some openings (especially hot, low-cost, homemade items like what Teochew Foodie and even Fleurs et Cadeaux offer). Ontario can now sell mixed cocktails by delivery, but only with food, so with the recent announcement in Quebec that restaurants can sell alcohol with delivery (but not mixed cocktails, I don’t think), I’m crossing my fingers that bars in Montreal will be allowed to sell…well, anything, but especially mixed cocktails for delivery. Once restaurants open indoor dining again, I’ll expect even more closures, but also a lot of quick service places opening that swooped in and bought or rented now-empty restaurants on the cheap. Hopefully this leaves opportunity for new chef- and family-owned places to launch, too, but I think the whole restaurant industry is hoping that we generally end up with better working conditions, salaries and fairer prices for a more sustainable food system in the future. I, like a lot of other journalists, I expect, will be waiting to see what the new normal becomes.