Friday, July 10, 2009

On the way back from Guinea

It is often said that airplane food is terrible.  It most often is.

Unless you fly First or Business class, domestic flights are indeed feeding you badly, and most often you have to pay extra for it.

But one airline does understand that a nice flight includes a nice meal - no matter where you sit.

Air France.

Here is what the tray looked like when it appeared in front of me:

The menu was printed as follows:

Meal Service

Tabbouleh with tuna

Choice of main course
Curried chicken accompanied by rice with raisins
-or-
Filet of barracuda with sorrel and mushrooms, dauphinoise potatoes au gratin

Cheese

Fruit salad

Crème caramel

Coffee and tea

Beverages

Apéritifs
Upon request

Champagne
Jacquart Brut Mosaïque

White Wine
Vin de Pays d’Oc Chardonnay 2008 La Baume

Red Wine
Vin de Pays d’Oc Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 La Baume

Beer
Heineken

Mineral Water

Soft Drinks
Schweppes (Indian Tonic)
Schweppes (Agrum’)
Pepsi
Pepsi Max
7up

Fruit Juice
Fruité

Coffee and Tea
Nescafé

Brandy and Liqueur

This was probably the best meal I’ve ever had on a commercial flight.

Even though the tabbouleh was low on parsely and mostly made of couscous, and the tuna was from a can, it was not bad.  The baracuda was tender and moist, the potatoes were nicely done. The cheese, a camembert from Président, was half-decent, the bread was fresh, the fruits were alright, and the crème caramel was not the worst I’ve ever had.

All in all, a very decent meal.

Which is a good thing, considering the long layover I had at Charles-de-Gaule. Exhausted, I could not sustain myself in the Food Court, which was closed, and could not bring myself to indulge in caviar from one of the Expensive Duty Free Stores in Terminal 2E.

I had the choice between an Illy coffee shop and an Exki outlet.  I hesitated, passing the time reading, playing some games on the courtesy PS3 machines in the terminal or on my own PSP, and even was able to get some micro-sleep. After hesitating, I finally settled for the Belgian chain.

Exki’s philosophy is to serve high-qualiy fast food, “offering natural fresh produducts (sic) at all the times of the day.”  Their motto? “Natural, Fresh, Ready.”

Their fare is simple: salads, sandwiches, soups.  They claim not to use any additives, and some of their products are organic, such as their bread.

I decided to go with something simple, so I picked the Louise from their Vitalis selection , which was only 376 calories: homemade cooked ham and gouda cheese, served with a honey mustard dressing on an organic bread made with Malt.  The bread was of a very good quality, with nice tasty flakes of cereal.  The ham was also very good, nice and thick.  They were a bit cheap on the cheese, and they could have added more honey mustard as the sandwich was a tad dry.  Thankfully, I had a Coca-Cola to help me out.

Even by airport standards, at 9.60 Euros, this was a pricey meal.


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Posted by The Waffle at 22:25:46 | Permalink | No Comments »

Sunday, March 29, 2009

En caravane, allons à la cabane!

Is there something more traditional in Quebec than a spring visit to a Sugar Shack?  I don’t think so.
A folkloric atmosphere, the comforting warmth of a wood stove, and the odours, from the burning logs, from the wood furniture, and especially the aromas from the kitchen.
There are a few cabane à sucre in the National Capital Region, and this time, la Sucrerie du Terroir drew the lucky number, and 6 of us plus a baby headed over, on a sunny springy morning.
Located in Val-des-Monts, La Sucrerie du Terroir is very traditional, smaller than most shacks, making it a very cozy place. The staff was very friendly, and were wearing traditional costumes.  Although they do not sell booze,  you can bring your own.
French ToastsFirst came the French Toast.  

A classic appetizer.

Nothing fancy, just some thick white bread soaked in eggs and milk and fried. 

Covered with maple syrup, they sure started our meal the right way.

All you can eat.

Beans
Then came the main meal, with the beans.
They were nothing special, no meat, making it vegetarian-friendly, just plain beans baked in molasses. 

The texture was nice, but it was a bit bland.

Which is why you smother them in maple syrup.

ll you can eat.

oreilles=""Another side dish - les oreilles de crisse - was a better hit.

Deep Fried Smoked Pork Fat - sorry, Jowls.  What can be wrong with that?  

Actually, they were Bacon Rinds.  

They were quite dry and salty, so to re-establish the balance, you soak them into maple syrup.

All you can eat.

Home FriesOf course, you need some home fries. Potatoes are a classic fare for a sugar shack meal.

These were very small, crispy, a bit greasy.

They don’t go as well with maple syrup, so I focussed on ketchup.

All you can eat.

 

Ham and Sausages
Maple Smoked Ham and country-style sausages were also on display.

The ham was a pre-cooked one, as opposed to an all-natural.  Still good.

The sausage were juicy.  Nothing like meat in a tube.

The meat went down with a nice touch of maple syrup.

All you can eat.

 

The master piece was definitely the omelette.  

Oven baked in a cast iron pan, it was fluffy, with crunchy edges.  

Is stayed warm throughout the brunch.

The great thing was, with maple syrup, it was melt in your mouth.

 

All you can eat.
 
 
Tartelettes For dessert, we got maple mousse tartellettes.
Some of us couldn’t add any more sugar to their diet.
Their loss.  

The sugar maple filling was very sweet, but quite smooth.  

The crust was a bit crispy, a bit moist - showing that they were not super fresh and sat in a fridge for a little while.

I sprinkled a bit of maple syrup to season them properly.

SyrupThe 6 of us had a half-bottle of syrup with our meal.  

I would say we were quite reasonable.  It was a good quality syrup, a nice amber, rich colour.  

Grade Canada B medium.

All you can drink.

 

Toffee

And to digest all this delicious food, nothing like maple toffee on ice.

It wasn’t a cold day, and snow was getting sparse, but it was fresh enough for the delicious instant candy to solidify and remain fairly solid on the stick.

For some reason, I was the only one of our group to indulge.  

 I don’t get it. 

 
I did however spend the rest of the day recovering from the sugar crash.

23$ per person. 

All you can eat.

Money well spent.

 

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Posted by The Waffle at 18:54:01 | Permalink | No Comments »

Saturday, August 16, 2008

By-Election Blitz

Its hard to eat well when you work on a by-election, away from home.

It’s also hard to keep a blog updated.

At any rate, here is what my first week looked like -

Monday, August 11 2008:

Lunch: I reviewed my visit at the Terrazza Trattorria & Case da Carlo here.

Dinner: I wanted to get an an update on Westmount-Ville Marie, so I went with Jerry to the Bâton Rouge near the Bell Centre, in the old Moe’s Deli building.  We shared a Louisiana Spinach Dip before I digged in a grilled sirloin salad.    The dip was warm and creamy and came with sides of salsa and sour cream.  There was tons of chips, tons of dip, its a good think we shared.  As for the salad, it was made of mixed greens, grilled zucchini and roasted red pepper. The 7 oz sirloin was topped with warm walnuts and very lightly-flavored blue cheese. I asked for the blue cheese dressing to be on the side in order not to ruin the salad.  It was pretty good I thought.

Tuesday, August 12 2008:

Lunch: I engulfed a Baconator at Wendy’s.  Too dry.  It needs some bbq sauce to round it up.
Six strips of bacon, though.  Remarkable.

Dinner: I grabbed a few beers with a lightning strike survivor at L’Île Noire, then we went to Les Trois Brasseurs on St-Denis for some choucroute.  The sauerkraut at Les Trois Brasseurs is not anything special, but it is usually alright, and can feed an army.  I had the Royale, which included a frankfurter, ham and some pork shank.  The ham was ordinary, the frankfurter much better, and the pork shank very tasty - although you have to be careful not to eat all the fat or skin.   Les went for the 3 Brasseurs one, below, which included a frankfurter, grilled ham, a smoked sausage and potatoes.  He could barely finish it, which is rare for him, he said.  They served their own beer too, which had to the whole choucroute experience.

La choucroute Royale

Wednesday, August 13 2008:

Lunch: I went to the Suite 701 for a chat with a columnist.  We shared some crab cakes, which were smallish but lightly and nicely oven-fried.  We then both went for the Lobster Club, which was interesting as it came on a flavourful bread.  The side sald was fresh and crispy.

Dinner: I crossed the Champlain bridge to Verdun to meet a friend at le Garage Café in Verdun.  I had the turbo burger while she enjoyed the semi-automatic. My burger was made of lamb, nicely cooked, with a tasty mix of very nicely melted cheese, ementhal and gruyere.  The french fries were also quite tasty, and there was soooooooooooo much.

Thursday, August 14 2008:

Lunch: I forced the local campaign team to go to La Brasserie Renaud.  More about it here.

Dinner: We went for a few beers at Le St-Ciboire, but the food came from The House of Reggae next door.

Friday, August 15 2008

Lunch: We went back to see Manon at La Brasserie Renaud.  Why not?

Dinner: Had a very late dinner at Fresco before going to see Star Wars.  We actually went there because Dominic and I wanted to grad dinner before the 11:30pm showing of The Clone Wars at the Mega-Plex Lacordaire 16.  We looked around, but there wasn’t much else that was grabbing our attention.  We were surprised by the quality of the offerings, and we both went for the Lobster Linguine, which was served with half a lobster, mussels, shrimps and scallops in a crushed tomato sauce.  Quite tasty, although the lobsters were a tad bit overcooked.  As an appetizers, I picked the smoked salmon, which was very nice and well accompanied, while Dom selected the snails, served gratted with lots of butter and garlic.

Saturday, August 16 2008

Lunch: I grabbed a sandwich at Cavallaro Westmount. The place is a neat little Italian grocery/deli/bakery place, and I got Genoa Salami sandwich with an extra grilled pepper to give it a bit of a zip.  They made it fresh before my eyes, asking what I wanted on it along the way.  I enjoyed it with a can of Brio Chinotto.

Dinner: I went with Anne-Marie to L’Académie as everyone else had gone AWOL that evening. As she filled me in on the action in Westmount, we both decided to go for la table d’hôte of the evening. The vegetable cream they served first wasn’t really inspired, but wasn’t despicable.  I went for the Lamb chops, served with a rosemary sauce and it was pretty good.  The meat wasn’t of the best quality I had ever seen, but it was cooked perfectly and very tasty.  AM went for a steak, which she ordered blue.  Well, it was blue, but it was also cold, which is a sign that they keep the meat in the fridge (freezer?) too long before cooking it, or that the fridge is too cold.  Too bad

Posted by The Waffle at 23:12:21 | Permalink | No Comments »

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Beefer’s - breakfast for a gorilla.

After a night of enjoying Alexandria Bay’s lively nightlife, our eightsome was in need of a greasy breakfast before hitting the alleys of the Thousand Islands Country Club. And we certainly could not find a greasy spoon quite like Beefer’s.

A breakfast buffet family restaurant, it is located on the State Route 12 just on the way out of Alexandria Bay, Beefer’s is open six days a week until at least 11h30 or until later if they are busy.  It is closed on Tuesdays, for some strange reason.

And, what do you know, the original “Beefer’s” is back, as Bobby Williams decided that the breakfast business in Alexandria Bay was too good to stay out of any longer.  He apparently “renovated everything and built a new state-of-the-art buffet area that is designed to impress.”  Well, some might be easily impressed, so good job Bobby W. Perhaps you could spend a little more time upgrading the bathrooms, though.  Just a thought.

Beefer's BuffetThe buffet is quite diversified for a breakfast-only place, but it certainly doesn’t have the quality you can find in upper scale hotels. It consisted of scrambled eggs - with or without onions and peppers, home fries - with or without onions and peppers, hashbrowns, pancakes - regular or blueberries, French toasts, pastries, muffins, a toast station, english muffins,  biscuits, fresh fruits, bacon, ham, corn beef hash,  sausages, sausage gravy.

Yes, sausage gravy.

I don’t know about you, but that item,  I didn’t even go near it.  I was actually afraid something would jump out of the grey slime and grab me. Oh, and there was a chocolate fondue fountain too!

For all-you-can-eat, you pay 9.99$, plus an extra 2.00$ for a bottomless drink.  I don’t drink coffee, so I ordered a Sierra Mist, Pepsi’s response to Sprite and 7 Up.  I have to admit it is a very good lemon-lime soft drink, quite refreshing and not too sweet, perfect to balance the fat I was about to consume.

I choose both my home fries and my scrambled eggs with peppers and onions.  The eggs were not bad, considering the mass production, and the veggies added a nice twist to the eggs.  It didn’t worked as well for the home fries, which were way too soft and way to soggy to be enjoyable.  Some of them were even burned, but yet not crunchy.  How that can happen is beyond me.

The corn beef hash were also soggy, but in that case it kind of worked - the moisture coming from the corn beef fat and not exclusively from steam.  The bacon was crisp and not overcooked, and was the highlight of my meal.  Not too salty either.  The sausages were small and a little dry by moment.  Not exquisite, not juicy enough, but nevertheless edible.  The ham was overcooked and chewy because of it.


I cleaned my palate with a serving of strawberries, bananas and pineapple.  No chocolate, I abstained on that one, so I can’t really tell you about it. But it was a very popular items with the kids, I can tell you that much. And, in the end, I survived Beefer’s Gorilla Buffet.  And I got the t-shirt to prove it.


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Posted by The Waffle at 11:35:16 | Permalink | Comments (2)