Yes, I know I’ve been a bad blogger.
Yes, I know you hate me.
Yes, I will attempt to make it up to you with tons of food pictures.
Well, you may be wondering what I’ve been up to as of late that has prevented me from posting. These last two months have just been really hectic for me. I went to Beijing for a few days and I just recently came back from a trip to Montreal and Quebec City. Now, I’m planning my next trip [yes, already] to Bermuda. I’m sick of cold places!
Enjoy the bundles of food!
Breakfast stuffs from our B&B:
We kept having to take up a table for 4 for all the food the two of us ordered. =X There were bagels, croissants, various jellies and even a passionfruit pudding type topping. They make fresh waffles and french toast on the premises. For day one, I had fruit salad, brie!, croissant with 3 different type of jams: orange, raspberry, and strawberry all made from actual fruit. My fave is the strawberry.
You all know how much I love my eggs. I had eggs scrambled with cheese and bacon on the side. Mmm… crispy bacon. The next day, I had eggs benedict with more bacon. The food quality is good for a small bed and breakfast; I love that the breakfast is unlimited too.
In Quebec City, we went to visit Erico’s Choco-Musee, which is located right outside the city walls. They’ve been in business since 1988.
This museum chocolaterie combo stages antique chocolate molds and casings in addition to various hot chocolate making contraptions (like the one in the red floral pattern that you see above). The chocolatiers here will make you chocolate molds of anything you want out, given you have the time to wait for it to be prepared. I bought a whole bunch of chocolate here for friends back home – they have a lot of unique flavors for their chocolates from lavendar to espresso and everything looks really cute presentation-wise too.
Three hours from Quebec City lies the city of Montreal, and Montreal’s Chinatown if filled with Vietnamese restaurants. I think it should be more of a Vietnamese Town, than a Chinatown. Even some Chinese restaurants have Viet menus.
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I decided with the abundance of Viet choices, we would have Vietnamese food. Oddly enough, there’s a Pho-Bang New York! I wanted to go there, but my friend vetoed the idea because we could get that in New York. So we chose a local Viet joint- My Canh. I ordered some shredded roast pork rolls. The rolls came in a rice paper wrap summer roll style with lettuce, mint leaves, bean sprouts, rice noodles, and the shredded roast pork. The infamous fish sauce is used for dipping. The bean sprouts give the roll a good crunch and the mint gave it a kick since the actual shredded roast pork is pretty flavorless- the uniqueness comes in its texture. I also got the vermicelli noodles with spring rolls, which comes with more fish sauce. Mixed in with the noodles are bean sprouts, mint, cilantro, carrots, daikons, and bits of red cabbage. My friend got a rice combo with a pork chop, shredded pork [yes, more], and a fried egg on rice with salad on the side- which he did not eat.
Le Cochon Dingue. The crazy pig. Quebec City. They had a good 3 course meal deal for Carnaval, however it was for pork and I didn’t want that.
The restaurant is situated in Vieux Quebec, which is in the Lower Town. The Lower Town is accesible by Fornicular, or an elevator from Upper Town. I ordered a pre-fixe meal for $17.95c. It came with soup, my entree, dessert, and a drink. We ordered a pitcher of Sangria, which I don’t recommend because it tasted more of a strawberry juice color and consistency that was not typical of deep red-wine concoction I’m used to. The soup of the day was white bean soup [yea.. not a fan of the bean soup .. I’m more of a bisque/chowder girl]. I also ate my friend’s mixed green salad with pine nuts. The salad could use a few tomatoes and I didn’t like the unknown salad dressing. My entree was a half rack of maple house-smoked ribs with small caesar salad and potato skins. I loved the sweetness of the ribs, but the salad and potato were average. I should’ve ordered more ribs. My friend ordered the steak with the house sauce. The sides were all mediocre.
Au Pied de Cochon aka Anthony Bourdain’s favorite restaurant and restaurant concept. He talked about it in his book Nasty Bits. If you’re in the bathroom at the restaurant, there are a ton of articles with him in the restaurant. He loves the bustling bar type setting with gourmet foods.
This place is foie gras heaven. There’s just sooo much of the goody lying around- it’s sickening! I tried poutine for the first time in my life and it had foie gras in it! Poutine is fries with bits of cheese curds and drenched in gravy. The poutine one from Au Pied de Cochon has foie gras infused in its gravy and has foie gras pieces! It was soo addicting- I loved it. I was so foie gras obsessed that I even ordered the foie gras burger as my entree. It was a big piece of foie gras with goat cheese, onions, lettuce, and tomato and balsamic vinegar on the bottom. There was too much of the balsamic vinegar and the bottom bun ended up soaking a ton of it up, but it was too overbearing. We also got the duck in a can, mainly for the name and the concept. How do you serve and cook a duck in a can? The duck seemed to be cooked with a corned beef and cabbage concoction and a huggeeeeee slab of fat! The fat scared me. Look at the size of the thing! Hidden in between the fat and the duck was a piece of foie gras! Talk about pleasant surprises. Was I all foie-gras’ed out after this meal? Just a bit.. but it only took me until the next day to get over it.
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Stay tuned for… Beijing fooding recaps!
Miss Beancurd's Foodings 