3am at the Casse-Croûte

It’s a bit past 3am and I’m sitting with a few friends in the Nouveau Palais, a 24-hour diner just around the corner from my apartment. It’s a classic Quebec casse-croûte with plastic booths and wood-panelled walls, a décor so timeless that, when the restaurant was damaged by fire a few years ago, its interior was painfully reconstructed to look just as it did before.

As we sit down, the waitress, a squat woman with a broad chest, narrow waist and constant frown, hands us our menus. Her skin is always tanned a deep orangey brown, even in the depths of winter, and her mood tends to swing from guardedly friendly to frighteningly surly with only the slightest provocation.

“I hate her so much,” mutters one of my friends, who grew up a few blocks away from the restaurant. She likes to annoy the waitress with snide remarks and passive-aggressive questions.

“Once I asked her how often she went to the tanning salon and she freaked out. She was like, ‘Tu penses-tu que j’ai le temps pour ça?’ But it’s so obvious!”

I open up the menu, a small book of photocopied paper, and try to decide what to get. My choices include all of the casse-croûte standards: hamburgers, poutine, souvlaki, fried rice, pizza, spaghetti and, of course, pizza-ghetti, that unbeatable combo of soggy pizza and overcooked pasta served side-by-side.

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Morning Coffee: Bombay’s Zoroastrian Cafes

Zoroastrian carving, Bombay. Thanks to Toreajade.

Bombay’s Zoroastrian community emigrated from Iran about 1,000 years ago and brought their religion along with them–the oldest living monotheistic faith. They are also known as Parsis, because of their Persian origin. Since they cannot marry outside the community, they have retained a distinct identity and appearance. They worship in Bombay’s towers of silence. where sky burials are also performed–a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent years because of the declining vulture population.

Though Zoroastrians represent a mere 0.005% of India’s population, they have had a considerable impact on the country. In the West, the best known Parsi is probably Queen singer Freddy Mercury, who grew up in Bombay. Indians are more familiar with the Tata family, who seem to own everything–you start your day with a cup of TataTea, pay your TataPower bills, drive to work in your TataCar, and make calls on the TataSky network. In recent years, the Tatas have moved outside of India, acquiring Tetley tea, Ritz Carlton Hotels, and Jaguar.

Kyani Café, Bombay

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To Market, To Market

There’s a new market in Montreal. For the next two weeks, and then again next spring, a farmer’s market will open outside Frontenac metro every Saturday between 10am and 4pm. It’s great news for one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods, Ste. Marie, one that has only recently stepped away from an economic and social precipice.

Montreal already has four permanent, year-round public markets — Jean-Talon, Atwater, Maisonneuve and Lachine — and more than a dozen smaller, seasonal markets, including a few that operate 24 hours in the summer. Between the 1960s and early 1990s, though, Montreal’s markets were deeply unfashionable. A number of markets were closed in the 1960s and even the Jean-Talon and Atwater markets, the jewels in Montreal’s market crown, stagnated.

Things began to change in the late 1990s as people became more concerned about what they ate. Two seemingly contradictory tends — the growing popularity of both local produce and “exotic” imported food — made markets the destination of choice for a diverse range of Montrealers. It was not only food that drew them, either. The social experience of shopping at a market, where you can interact with merchants and producers who know a lot about what they sell, in a lively and sensual environment, was a refreshing antitode to the sterility of big-box supermarkets.

Since 2000, a lot of money has been invested in Montreal’s markets. A new market hall built in 2004 nearly doubled the Jean-Talon Market in size and a newly-expanded market in Lachine has also been making a go of it. The number of small neighbourhood markets has been expanding considerably.

Markets can have a remarkably positive effect on their surrounding neighbourhoods for a number of reasons. They’re important public spaces, for one, giving people in the neighbourhood a place to gather and interact. They are economic incubators, giving small merchants, producers and entrepreneurs affordable space to start a business, usually with very low overhead. When those businesses expand, they usually find space in the surrounding area, a trend that can be seen around Jean-Talon.

In a marginal neighbourhood like Ste. Marie, they also give people access to healthy and affordable produce. With that considered, it might be a good thing that the new market at Frontenac metro is a seasonal farmer’s market rather than a less flexible permanent market. When the Lachine Market reopened in 2004, it ignored the everyday grocery needs the surrounding neighbourhood in favour of a more boutique-style approach. It was ultimately reconfigured with a more successful focus on basic fruits and vegetables. Allowing the Frontenac market to evolve gradually might prevent that sort of problem.

On a related note, Le Devoir featured last week two articles on Montreal’s public markets. One, reflecting on the 75th anniversary of the Atwater Market, lamented that farmer’s markets have ceased to be a central part of life in Quebec: “It’s impossible now to a take a photo like the ones made at the beginning of the last century, when you could see Place Jacques-Cartier filled with shoppers, carts and the horses of vegetable producers or cars of growns who had come to town.”

Another takes a close look at the Jean-Talon Market and the changes it has seen since it opened. There’s more variety than in decades past… but no more live chickens.

The Taste of a Japa Dog

In Vancouver, like in most Canadian cities, street food vendors are limited to hawking pre-cooked meat: hot dogs, in other words. But, even within the restrictive confines of the law, innovation is possible, especially in a global city like Vancouver. You can taste as much by wandering over to the corner of Smithe and Burrard. There, across the street from a supermarket and a megaplex cinema, amidst the daytime downtown bustle, is an ordinary-looking hot dog stand. Its hot dogs, however, are anything but ordinary: they are “Japa Dogs,” a new type of street meat invented by Noriki Tamura, an ad salesman who left Tokyo for Vancouver two years ago.

I read about Japa Dog in Maclean’s a week before I left for Vancouver. “Behind the spitting grill, Noriki Tamura keeps up with the crowd, dressing still-sizzling turkey dogs with pale brown miso mayonnaise, sesame sauce and a layer of crispy green radish sprouts,” writes Nancy Macdonald. “His $5 Oroshi packs a motley punch. The bratwurst frank is loaded with an inch-thick layer of finely shaved daikon radish and green onions, topped with wasabi and soy sauce. As the grilled German sausage burns a trail down the gullet, the wasabi delivers its unmistakable kick to the nose. Hands down, Japa Dog marks the single biggest innovation to hit city street meat since Vancouver vendors started hawking the Yves Famous Veggie Dog a decade ago.”

I had to check it out so, last Wednesday, on the kind of bright, impossibly fresh day that only the Pacific Northwest is able to produce, I wandered up to Burrard Street for lunch and bought a Terimayo, a beef hotdog topped with teriyaki sauce, Japanese mayonnaise and strips of dried seaweed. My food vocabulary is fairly limited, so I’ll describe it like this: it tasted Japanese. It was probably the combination of the seaweed and mayo, the former naturally savoury and the latter full of MSG, which combined to create a brothy, full-mouthed umami flavour. The $4.25 price tag was a bit steep, but not terribly overpriced when you consider that the going rate for the most basic Vancouver street meat is $3.50.

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Street Food Freedom!

While Montreal obstinately refuses to allow any sort of food vending on its streets — ostensibly for health and cleanliness reasons — Toronto has convinced the Ontario government to liberalize its street food rules so that vendors may sell more than just hot dogs. Soon, in addition to the several hundred sausage stands and chip trucks that dot the city’s landscape, Torontonians will be able to buy samosas, brochettes, crêpes, Taiwanese fish balls — and pretty much anything else you can imagine — on the street.

Considering the extent of Toronto’s cultural diversity — half of its population is foreign-born — you can pretty much bet that this move will introduce the city to a vast array of street vending traditions from around the world. Immigrant entrepreneurs will finally have a way to build a low-overhead business selling the food they know best; Toronto’s pedestrians, meanwhile, will have access to an international food fair on every block.

In fact, last Friday, a street food festival was held in front of Toronto’s City Hall to celebrate the new rules. According to the Toronto Star, one of the highlights was murtabak, an Indian Muslim wrap that is a popular street snack in Singapore and Malaysia.

Down the 401 in Montreal, however, in a city supposedly known for its laissez-faire attitude, cosmopolitanism and joie de vivre, politicians and bureaucrats claim that allowing street vendors to sell food would put the city’s hundreds of cheap restaurants out of business. Yet Toronto has no shortage of hole-in-the-wall falafel joints, take-out jerk chicken restaurants and inexpensive Korean cafés. Montreal certainly wasn’t hard-pressed for cheap eats back when street food was allowed in the 1950s and 60s.

Like most Montrealers, I’m a fan of the occasional shish taouk from Basha or soggy steamé from La Belle Province. But wouldn’t it taste so much better if you could buy it on the street?

Market Potential

The Calgary Farmers’ Market

Calgary and Lachine are rarely mentioned in the same breath—actually, make that never. The prosperous city of one million and the working-class Montréal borough of forty thousand have little in common but for one thing: new public markets. The Calgary Farmers’ Market and the Lachine Market, both of which opened in 2004, differ significantly in size—the Calgary market could swallow its cousin in Lachine several times over—but with good management and a keen eye for community development, both could radically transform their respective neighbourhoods.

What exactly is a public market? Generally speaking, it’s a place where independent merchants gather to sell many different things—usually fruits, vegetables and other food products; but also crafts, books, antiques and anything else. Unlike an ordinary retail street, it’s centrally managed. Unlike a shopping mall, rents are low, overhead costs minimal and market management is not out to make a profit. Markets make a point of providing an alternative to mainstream retail, and this is accomplished with panache by some of North America’s biggest and best-known markets, including Seattle’s Pike Place Market, Vancouver’s Granville Island Public Market and Toronto’s Saint Lawrence Market.

Above all, markets are public spaces. Market-goers go to meet friends and neighbours and witness their city’s diversity. They go because merchants and vendors know about the products they’re selling, can cater to special requests and can offer recommendations on what to buy and how to use it. It’s the kind of relationship that is impossible to foster with faceless chain merchants, and one that is set amid the exciting sights, smells and noises of a lively, distinct area.

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All the Fruit a Market Bears

Notre Dame St., Lachine’s beleagured main street

The Lachine Market comes as a surprise: a small, pleasant outpost near the end of the Lachine Canal. For years, like the neighbourhood around it, the market suffered from neglect. Now, with a new format meant to better serve its community, it hopes to become a central part of life in the area and reinvigorate its sleepy surroundings.

Lachine’s market history dates back to the 1840s, but it was in 1909 that a permanent public market was built on the town’s main drag, Notre Dame St. By the end of the century, however, the market had faded out of existence, mirroring the commercial decline of Lachine’s old downtown.

Then came the market’s second act: In 2004, the Corporation de gestion des marchés publics de Montréal, which also manages the Jean Talon, Atwater and Maisonneuve markets, proceeded to transform it into a partially enclosed, year-round market open seven days a week. Strung along two blocks of Notre Dame St., between 17th and 19th Aves., the new market consists of a covered flower market and an indoor market hall, the two joined by a small plaza.

Originally, the market hall contained a number of boutiques and merchants, but they were too upscale for the neighbourhood; despite an initial burst of popularity, the market’s business soon declined. By the end of 2006, many of the businesses were ready to leave.

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Morning Coffee #8: The Boss

Milk tea at a cha chaan teng in Hong Kong. Photo by Lisi Tang

It was the Saturday before the Lunar New Year and The Boss was crazy. People crammed inside the small bakery that fronts this old Chinatown restaurant, buying cakes, buns and cookies. Others stood around, waiting for their names to be called so they could finally be seated. Hungry, we pushed through the crowd and gave our name to the host. Then we waited. My girlfriend’s sister decided to buy a box of cocktail and curry buns. As she walked towards the counter, I stared at a large painting of a rosy-cheeked, contented old man that loomed over the bakery, flanked on both sides by festive red New Year banners with gold script. His long white beard flowed towards large pots of gold coins that rested at his feet.

“Who’s that?” I whispered to my girlfriend, Laine.

“Choi Sun wah,” she whispered back. “The, uh, god of wealth.”

When our name was called, we went to the rear of the bustling restaurant where there was a long dining hall with four rows of booths. My eyes wandered to the back of the restaurant, A strangely dour-looking jiu choi mao, or lucky cat, was perched on a ledge near the ceiling, its paw solemnly raised to beckon good fortune. As I stared at the cat, a remarkably fast-moving waitress placed four glasses of tea on the table and slapped down our menus before running off. I opened mine, stomach growling. My eyes widened as I perused the dozens of items: ox-tongue spaghetti, lovebird fried rice, baked Portuguese chicken, Hong Kong milk tea. Ah yes, this is what I had come for: cha chaan teng food.

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Retro Malls and Department Store Kitsch

Like many teenagers in suburbia, I spent too much time in shopping malls. Unlike others, there was a purpose to my wandering. My goal was to find the quintessential department store restaurant. This dream restaurant would have a somewhat dated charm: brown and orange wallpaper, faux-traditional 1970s furnishings, waitresses with Marge Simpson hair, Jell-O cube parfaits, and pumped-out muzak with French horns galore. I scoured the Quebec City region’s K-Mart Kafeterias, Woolco Grilles, and the sketchy department stores in St. Roch.

Then, sometime in 1994, I came across the Sears Café at Place Fleur-de-Lys. It exceeded all my expectations. The walls were dark brown, the lighting was muted and I dined enveloped in the sounds of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass. The furniture was the finest from Sears’ colonial revival series circa 1975. The menu was unreal: you could eat a “veal steakette” and top it all off with Jell-O parfaits in a variety of colours. The daily special even came with its own retractable plastic lid. My dream had come true. I had reached restaurant nirvana.

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The Strawberries Come from California

Most years, in late March, it is strawberry season in California. You might think this would have no bearing on life in Montreal, a nearly 5,000-kilometre drive from the Central Valley, but it does. These California strawberries, as cartoonishly big and underwhelming in flavour as they might be, are the first taste of cheap spring fruit we get. 99 cents for a big box—just ignore how much fuel was used to ship them here and you can almost pretend it’s summer.

My Heimishe Bakery

Every couple of days, I walk to the corner and buy a few things at Cheskie, my heimishe bakery. Of course it’s not actually my heimishe bakery—it’s owned by Cheskie Lebowitz, an affable Hasidic Jew from New York—but I’ve gone there enough over the years to feel a sense of proprietary pride.

As its name would suggest, Cheskie is first and foremont a Jewish bakery that specializes in kosher treats. Its challah bread is expensive but divine. So are the rugelach, which come in four varieties—chocolate, poppyseed, vanilla and cinammon—and are best eaten layer by layer, the better to contrast the crispy exterior with the soft, sweet layers inside. Seasonal sweets like hamantaschen are also exceptionally good. My favourite baked good from Cheskie is not particularly Jewish at all, however: the black and white cookie. A staple of every bakery between New York and Boston, these flat frosted cakes (made famous in the Seinfeld episode “The Dinner Party,” when Jerry vomits because the flavours “aren’t getting along”) are inexplicably absent from Canada. It took a New Yorker like Cheskie to rectify this unfortunate situation.

Although Cheskie is not a place to linger—it’s quite small and there are no seats—part of what makes it interesting is the clientele. About half of the customers are Hasidic, making this bakery a mainstay in Montreal’s largest Hasidic neighbourhood: Mile End and Outremont, home to 6,000 of Montreal’s 11,000 Hasidim.

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Carnaval at Pâtisserie Simon

I was explaining Montreal’s Wilensky’s Light Lunch to a friend in Quebec City last week. I think I used the phrase “wartime-food-shortage charm,” a charm that translates all the way down to the food itself. We all like the fact that Wilensky’s is there, but I’ve never met anyone who’s actually had one of their bologna sandwiches.

“I see,” she said, looking for some way to relate it to Quebec City, “so it’s a little like Pâtisserie Simon.”

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Welcome to Schwartz’s

I was having coffee with a French immigrant recently and the conversation swung towards Schwartz’s. He recalled seeing a group of kids, on a class trip from somewhere else in Canada, lining up to eat there. “When I went on school trips in France it was always about going to castles or battlefields, ‘Napoleon did this and that here,’” he said to me. “Here it’s different. There aren’t any castles; the culture here is a popular culture. People go to Schwartz’s because of that. It’s where you feel the history of Montreal and its immigrants.”

With that in mind, it was about time that Schwartz’s got its own movie. Last night, Garry Beitel’s documentary, Chez Schwartz, premiered at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.

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Morning Coffee #3: Hungarian Pastry Shop

Trying to explain why the Hungarian Pastry Shop is invariably staffed by Ethiopians, or why it sells more Austrian than Hungarian delicacies, is as much an exercise in futility as attempting to dissuade the socialists who scribble incessantly on the cafe’s bathroom wall their clarion calls to revolution. To be sure, were a socialist revolution to break out anywhere in Morningside Heights, uptown Manhattan at its most, perhaps, uptight, it would probably be here and not in the myriad Starbucks lining nearby Broadway. Still, frequenting the Hungarian can be an exercise in observing how gentrification can affect a neighborhood as much internally as imposes pressures from the outside.

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