A Weekend in Montreal

I went away to Montreal with a friend last month. We took the train from Toronto, and it was just a lovely little trip all around – it was the first time I’d been away from our son for so long, and it was nice to have a bit of time away, but still hard and a bit of an adjustment.

After the five hour train ride into Central Station, we walked over to LOV for a late dinner. It was a Friday night, so unsurprisingly, they were busy, but luckily could accommodate us after only a short wait. We basically ordered one of each of their appetizers – i.e., just living the dream.

For me, the standouts were the nachos and the french onion soup. But I liked the brussels sprouts quite bit too. If you live in Toronto, you might be interested to know that LOV is opening a location here as well (aiming for May 2019 at King & Portland.)

After we took advantage of the beautiful weather and walked over to our AirBNB and went to sleep in preparation for an action packed tomorrow.

I’d made reservations at Le Parloir for afternoon tea earlier that week, and it was lovely. Like really lovely. To get there we walked through Parc la Fontaine, and saw people enjoying the day – there is a great looking hill for tobogganing and some random pieces of public art like this Acorn Slingshot.

The funny thing about taking a vacation away from my son, S, was that I kept looking for activities to do with him for the next time we visited together. I made a note of the places we ate that had high chairs or changing tables, even though S doesn’t use them anymore.

So Le Parloir is a cozy tea room, with lovely old wooden tables, and welcoming decor. Every table but ours was full when we walked in, and everyone seemed eager about their tea setting. So was I.

We started with tea – they bring by a basket full of tea samples you can smell and look at. I picked my usual Earl Grey, which was lovely. But in retrospect I wish I would have branched out a bit – or at least tried my old standby lapsang souchong which they also had available (which if you’ve never tried it, has a smokey, almost whisky type flavour.)

Soon it was time to eat. We’d gotten strawberry cream tarts, two cupcakes, a fluffy biscuit with preserves, a pudding type thing, small cucumber sandwiches, marinated roasted mushroom sandwiches, beet hummus, tofu salad, and another sandwich.

They were all lovely though I was especially fond of the fluffy biscuits and tofu salad sandwiches!

Afterwards we kept walking on to our next destination – we were going to go get facials and do the water circuit at Bota Bota – but conveniently, could pop in to Invitation V on the way there. (we would end up come back here again the next day to grab food before our train – it’s close to the via rail station, and has great options.)

I ordered the ceasar salad with a side of fries and I have no regrets. The thing that really stood out about this was the yuba/tofu skin pieces. It seemed herbed and seasoned and pressed into a form then diced. Really innovative, and I feel like that doesn’t happen very often – at least not with things I’m already familiar with like tofu skin. I was glad to have ordered it.

The next time I ordered their omelette and it was something exceptional too. I was expecting just some chickpea thing, or just some tofu thing, but it was so much more. I will definitely come back there sometime.

All in all, a lovely little whirlwind trip to Montreal, and it was nice to check out so many new-to-me places. We were sort of forced to branch out – two of my previously favourite places were closed for holidays – Cafe Dei Campi and Sushi Momo (including their new delivery/take out spot).

Next time, we’ll do it all.