Looking for weekend Montreal recs
Hello Fellow Chowhounders,
We're coming to Montreal for my cousin's wedding in October. We'll be driving in the Saturday morning and looking for a recommendation for a light meal around 3-5pm. We'll be staying at the Sheraton on Rene Levesque. The reception is in Chinatown at 7, 8 or 9pm depending on when they get things rolling. I can't remember which restaurant the reception is at but it'll be a typical 9 course chinese banquet. Since I'm not fond of these banquets (having gone to too many family weddings and birthday celebrations where each course is grease upon grease), I would like to have a light meal beforehand so I can avoid a few of those greasy courses and not starve! Where would you recommend? Anything but Chinese please!
We'll be heading home Sunday afternoon so any recs for breakfast, brunch or lunch would be appreciated too.
Thanks in advance!
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Thanks for the recs. Unfortunately we weren't able to take advantage of your recs this trip but will keep it in mind for the next time we're in Montreal.
We made it into town on Saturday at 2, checked into our hotel by 3 and hustled our butts over to Olive & Gourmando for some fantastic pastries. That valhrona chocolate bread is incredible! So was the espresso brownies, the almond croissant and the butter croissant.
We inhaled half the loaf and the croissants before meeting some relatives for their version of a "light" meal before the reception at Bar-B Barn. I found the ribs a bit too sweet for my liking (much prefer a smoky flavour).
The reception at Kam Fung was as horrible as I expected (I'm so not a fan of cantonese banquet foods, too oily, greasy and bland for my liking, would have preferred schezuan if given the choice!). We disappeared as soon as the last course was served and went to Calories for dessert. I had a chocolate banana cake and it was delicious. Very moist, perfect balance of banana and chocolate and not too sweet. The others had the turtle cheesecake (okay), the ferro rocher cake (very rich) and the swiss chocolate fudge cake (too sweet).
On Sunday, we swung by Schwartz for a smoked meat sandwich before heading out of town. That's always a winner. And we stockpiled as much St Viateur bagels as we could before leaving (about 5 dozen!). When we run out, we'll be back. And then I can have dinner at Queue de Cheval again, I'm still dreaming about that fantastic shrimp I had the last time I was there. Yum!
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cafe Santropol! Not far at all from Chinatown either.
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