Restaurant: Brasserie Elements (Brossard, Canada)

Next up in the food adventures is a long-awaited Friday date night at a restaurant that we’ve been thinking of checking out for a while which has been only opened in the last few years called Brasserie Elements.

Brasserie Elements is for 18 and over as it is focused on its beers and cocktails while it has quite a limited but interesting menu also. You need to be aware of which days the kitchen closes at what time.

I apologize that the menu is only in French but just to show you the limited choices. You can find the menu on their website. Either way, its to get an idea.

Let’s check out what we got!

Drinks

Elements Blonde Beer

Avril Sour

When you go to a brasserie, it wouldn’t be right to not order some kind of drink. The husband likes beers to went ahead to try their house brew blonde beer. I had a sip (because I’m not a huge beer fan) and thought it was pretty decent. Its smooth and pretty good. I had a few items on the cocktail list that I was interested in but essentially got sold on the Avril Sour which is like an Amaretto Sour except it uses a Quebec-made almond-nut liqueur. its small and delicate and tastes really good. With any sours, its always good to keep them well-portioned mostly because its pretty acidic and sometimes the different liqueurs can be too much when the quantity is too much, which is why I’m pretty happy with their flavors, the balance and the size of the drink.

Appetizer

Smoked BBQ Chicken Wings with peanuts and green onions

There were two things that caught my eye in the menu right from the get-go and one of those were this Smoked BBQ chicken wings with peanuts and green onions. They tasted really good. On top of that, I like the concept that they really promote the whole finger food thing so yeah, its casual and fun because there is no elegant way to eat wings without wasting a ton of meat. At least I’m not skilled that way.

Main Meal

Burger Elements

The husband had the Burger Elements which has roasted shishitos, crispy shallots, cheese sauce infused with beer (not sure how to translate that). He really enjoyed it a lot but there was something in it that we couldn’t quite pinpoint.

Pulled Pork Sandwich

I’m a huge fan of pulled pork sandwiches so chances are if they have that as an option, I’m going to choose it. This one had a lot of stuff in it or just very leaky coleslaw along with a good amount of pulled pork and with smoked BBQ sauce. It tasted absolutely fantastic even if it was a completely messy experience. I do say that the coleslaw was a bit too generous which made me not be able to finish up the also very generous portion of fries which was comparable to a mountain.

Overall

Brasserie Elements is a pretty nice place. Its laid back and casual which works very well with the menu it gives and all the kinds of beers that you can try. There’s a good selection of beers from all over and very unique ones that you probably won’t find everywhere. Other than that, the food menu is also pretty good with appetizers, main meals as well as desserts. For a brasserie, they had pretty decent service as the waitress is very attentive to make sure that we were satisfied with our food and drinks and anything else that we needed. However, with a brasserie experience comes a bit more of a noisier atmosphere. The music however was really good, at least to our tastes and the place was split a little bit more in half so the more drinking side definitely felt like they had more speakers than say the more restaurant side. Maybe it wasn’t deliberate but it definitely worked for the better for our preferences.

Recap: Goodfood #21

Welcome to the next Goodfood recap. Its a rare occurrance that we don’t spread out our orders more but this menu, despite some repeats had some of our fave things and other recipes that I was interested in learning as well.

Lets check it out!

Fennel Crusted Salmon Bucatini with Baby Spinach

I can’t say that I’m a pasta expert so I don’t really know the difference other than the fact that it looks like thicker spaghetti. However, we don’t eat fish a lot so we chose this one. This meal was both easy to do and pretty delicious. Fennel powder is less overpowering than actual fennel so the crust around the salmon worked well with the bucatini.

Vietnamese “Com-Bo” with Cucumber, Carrots & Thai Basil

I can’t say I’m a particular expert at Vietnamese food either so I never knew about what Com-Bo was before this. I’ve had the Banh Mi and the Rice Vermicelli and the Pho but no idea what this is but I can tell you that its super tasty if this is any true reflection of it. However, you will notice that cucumbers are non-existent here. They were forgotten from my meal kit. However, when I contacted customer service about it, they were very quick to resolve the problem and reimbursed the price of a meal. I was very pleased with the service. Back to the meal itself, it was a really nice simple one. It was quick to make, except the chopping the carrots part. If I had to prepare the cucumbers too, then it would definitely have gone over the time they had asked for. However, the rice worked with the sauce and crisp-tender carrots added a nice contrast to the beef strips. It just came together really nicely.  This is so simple that I actually would cook this on a regular basis.

Pork Burgers with Sauteed Mushrooms, Swiss Cheese and Chive Mayo

As usual, burgers are my husband’s tasks. Its nice since I got to keep going with some of the garden work while he put this together. We weren’t quite sure whether we had it before but I’m fairly positive that we’ve talked about it before. Still, chive mayo is yummy. The pork burger spices are delicious. Its an awesome summer meal. I’d absolutely use pork patties more.

Peanut Butter Dumplings with Sesame Green Beans

Our vegetarian meal of the box and also one of my fave meals that we’ve had before are these peanut butter dumplings. They are absolutely fantastic. Its not too hard to make and the sauce is so delicious. Last time, I talked about us ending up just pan frying it on all sides or asking my husband to at least. However, this time, I followed the instructions and cooked it the way it was supposed to be cooked to see the difference and honestly, I have to say that we’re a little split. My husband liked it both ways but enjoyed the pan fried on all sides and I also liked both but thought this version  was a little better. I’ve been having a massive dumplings craving so I’m just happy these were part of this box. 🙂

Overall, a very awesome box! All the recipes delivered in my opinion.
The peanut butter dumplings are repeats before they are my fave, as well as the pork burgers.
For the new ones, I do prefer the Com-bo more than pasta, but I’ve also liked Asian food over Italian food.

Recap: Goodfood #9

Goodfood is a nice routine for us now. Its actually motivating us to cook more regularly even when we don’t order the box. I do have to say that I’m feeling like our lifestyle is becoming more balanced and healthier.

Last week’s box was a bit of some more experimental choices for us however that is also the charm of this experience.

Squid Ink Pasta Puttanesca with Haddock

Squid Ink Pasta Puttanesca with Haddock

I’ve only had squid ink pasta once before in Hong Kong surprisingly. However, I do like it and this dish is pretty good. Its fairly simple to make plus haddock is one of those fishes that we like to eat but never make enough of since salmon turns out to be our default fish to buy and cook. This is a simple dish and I think perhaps one of the few meals in these boxes that I made very easily and almost on par with the time they said would take on the recipe card.

Fajita Bowl with Refried Beans & Fresh Tomato Salsa

Fajita Bowl

The husband chose this one. Suffice to say that its not my favorite meal by far. It was somewhat of a pain to make as it took a lot of coordinating multiple tasks at the same time. Its not complicated though and the chicken tastes delightful. It does pack a little heat in the spices for both the chicken and the peppers. However, the refried beans did turn out tasting better than I had expected them to which is always a plus.

Black Garlic Ramen with Shiitake Mushrooms & Bok Choy

Black Garlic Ramen

The vegetarian meal of the box is the black garlic ramen. Black garlic is also the highlight ingredient that was highlighted for this box. While I didn’t read a lot into it since its been busy, at first glance, it feels like a soy sauce infused garlic. However, I love to choose the oriental noodle meals here because I’m Chinese and it saves me from having to go to the Chinese supermarket which is almost always full of people whenever I have time to go. Back to the meal, simple to make and put together and packs a lot of lovely flavors and tastes so very good.

Provolone-Stuffed Burgers with Rosemary Oven Fries & Aioli

I know that this was a provolone stuffed burger but I let my husband decide on it and for the fact that I can’t have the stuffed cheese, he just made the patties and added the cheese on top. The aioli sauce is pretty good. I would have liked to know how much lemon juice instead of saying the remainder quarter as all lemons will have different amounts so ours turned out quite sour. The balance was lost although it was easy to  see that if there was less lemon juice, it would have been great. The fries also were really good. I never thought of crisping garlic and rosemary as a topping so it was fun to learn that. My husband is the burger connoisseur and he loved this one a lot.

That’s it for last week’s Goodfood box!
A lot of hidden gems here. Some delivered better than others but overall, efficient and tasty meals.

Battle of Ingredients #5: Fall BBQ & Moon Festival Edition!

I know its a little early to take a break from the horror marathon and it’ll resume tomorrow. However, Battle of Ingredients is our monthly segment and our gathering just happened this past weekend. I promise it’ll be a short and sweet one and one that matches perfect with today which is Midautumn Festival, mostly referred to as Moon Festival!

A warm and maybe slightly cooler welcome from me and my cohost, Phoebe from Starry Traveler’s Road to the next Battle of Ingredients. Due to our love for the previous BBQ session and the weather being still decent, we decided to do another BBQ event. 

This time, we took it to mostly basics. Mostly because we realized quite last minute that no actual plans were formulated. Also, we were both busy with personal life stuff so the final menu looked like this.

I made burger patties. Actually, because I was in a lot of pain that day, my husband being the champ that he is helped me make the patties. We got medium lean minced beef and used eggs and spices and he made the patties. He also took on the grill master role in the evening. So our event became a lot more relaxed than it usually would be. We bought the Italiano burger buns and got some cheese, gouda and lactose-free swiss.

Phoebe pulled the stops this time and brought her take on the veggie foil pack that I had tried out last time. This time, her’s had bell peppers, zucchinis and also added in two to three slices of prosciutto. The prosciutto being on the top spread its salty flavors to the veggies, making it no necessary to spice it at all.

Phoebe also found on Pinterest a way to roast corn on the grill. It simply required snipping off the top part. It turned out perfect! She also brought on to try roasting eggplants on the grill as well. Most of us weren’t very into eggplants and didn’t normally cook them so in my opinion, they weren’t done too good. Definitely something to further into bettering our skills at or maybe its just better to cook them in another way.

Aside from that, this time was almost like a potluck as our friends also brought some chicken breast along with tzatzki sauce (not sure how you spell it).

We ended with our dessert.  Our friends,who is always responsible for beverages, brought the Pepito Rose Sangria and some light fruity coolers. While I forgot to take pictures of it, I brought some garden fruits like raspberries and a lot of ground cherries. Aside from that, we also had an early celebration of Moon Festival, or Midautumn Festival which most people know for eating moon cakes, a little chinese pastry with lotus paste normally.

Phoebe found a pastry shop in Chinatown called La Patisserie Chow that makes their own moon cakes and we were interested to see how they were so she bought the box with their bestselling four flavors.

• Double yolk White Lotus Paste
• Double Yolk Green Bean Paste
• 5 Stars Mix (5 different nuts, sweet melon and tangerine)
• Golden Double Yolk Paste

Our biggest issue was that each one wasn’t labelled. We easily could identify the white lotus paste one which was a win for both me and Phoebe. The nuts got an okay where it was good but not great. Then we have a mystery one which I personally suspect is the Golden Double Yolk Paste that my husband and our friend liked. Then there was one that unanimously was pretty bad. I’m guessing its the green bean paste but it wasn’t labelled so I don’t really know.

Chow Pastry Shop is pretty commendable to have their own moon cakes. Huge applause for that. However, its better to label the variety one way or another even if the ingredients are also labelled super vaguely. I think this one could be hit or miss. Its definitely not like the ones you’d buy from the big brands. Phoebe posed a good question about how we usually do eat from the big brands and maybe traditional moon cakes with any preservatives and in their natural state would taste more like this. Perhaps one time, I’ll be in Hong Kong where actually smaller bakeries also make moon cakes or I’ll attempt it myself and we’ll see.

That’s it for this Battle of Ingredients!
Thanks for joining us!
November might be skipped because our crew usually does the MTL a Table event.
However, we’ll find a festive return in December for the holidays!

Dinner (or Lunch): Asian Burgers

Gourmet burgers is the new thing in town right now.  You see all these restaurants that offer up these creative burgers with all sorts of fun ingredients.

While I love eating out and seeing all those imaginative ideas, I always feel like making burgers at home is something completely doable.  I’ve been eyeing how to make Asian Burgers for a long time and I’ve been following Chew Out Loud since the beginning of my blogging life.  I probably saved up like over a hundred recipes at this point.  Maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe I’m not.  I’m not going to count.  But, on a Sunday night, we wanted to have burgers and to make it awesome and for celebrating that I got my little baking counter, I was in a wonderful mood and kept my cool and prepped dinner.

My combo was Oven-Roasted Potatoes (that I posted Here last week) and these Asian Burgers.

Asian Burgers

Recipe found at Chew Out Loud

**Note: I did not make the Sriracha Mayo since I can’t handle spicy stuff so we just ate with normal mayo.**

Ingredients and Recipe is in the link above

Substitutes:

• Panko Bread Crumbs replaced with Corn Flakes Crumbs
• Garlic powder with minced garlic
• Toasted sesame oil replaced with normal Sesame oil
• White pepper replaced with black pepper

We didn’t have any fancy bread, just normal white bread, so used what we had on hand. Funny how we wanted to make burgers and didn’t go buy any buns. Haha! Scatterbrained as we are, that’s just how it is.

Let me get this straight.  I’m not a burger person.  I’d much prefer eating hot dogs than burgers. But this Asian Burgers, I’d do it again! Its so juicy and delicious.  Maybe its my whole Chinese me talking about it.  The blend of everything was great and with the wide selection of different sauces, it keeps it moist, not like the usual dry slab of meat that are normal beef patties. The blend is absolutely yummy.

Oh, by the way, all the cooking to perfection is all on the husband’s skills 😉 I take no credit in that part. Haha!

Highly recommend! 🙂

What type of burgers do you like?

Sherbrooke Met La Table: OMG Resto

I love food festivals! Thanks to how much fun the MTL a Table was and our last hiking at Mont-Orford having us check out the Tourism Sherbrooke book that exposed us to this event called Sherbrooke Met la Table. This food event is pretty much what MTL a Table is except on a much smaller scale.  It has 20 restaurants.  Its currently running in Sherbrooke. If you are in that area, its definitely worth a visit.  We had a few restaurants that we wanted to try but in the end, we had a day trip which included booking a lunch and a dinner menu that appealed to us the most. This runs till the end of this weekend.  While its smaller, you will see that the style and menus are much more diverse and has some really great concepts.  I have some in mind that I hope will be there if this event runs again next year. I’m not even sure how long this event has been going for.

Our first choice was for lunch at OMG Resto!  Please note that they don’t always have the same wide variety offered on their menu so my husband took something from the normal menu. Before we get into the food.  You have to see the nice building that its located it. Its in a church.  Get it? OMG?

The inside decor is some of the best I’ve seen. Plus, its Christmas decorations are up so its so pretty!

Wine Rack

OMG Resto Decor

Giant Christmas Tree

Its really nice.  The tree is perfect for its high church ceilings. They had stairs going up and the backdrop was full of those LED pots.  Its a very nice ambiance and comfortable setting.  The wood walls makes it exceptionally home-y. Plus, I don’t usually talk about bathrooms but its a unisex bathroom.  There are four individual stalls and then in the middle was a urinal and you have this door that closes. Its super cool! This restaurant overview is getting really in depth.

Let’s move to the food now before I get too carried away!

Drinks

Mad & Noisy (Beer) & Cocktail: King Kunta

Mad & Noisy is an Indian pale lager.  My husband had it.  We both agreed that it was incredibly bitter. Not really our taste but it is smooth.  Not like a typical beer that I’d taste.

I had the cocktail mixo menu. I can’t remember everything that is in the drink but it had gin, pineapple juice, mint (or basil) and some other stuff. Doesn’t really matter because it taste REALLY  good.  Plus, it had a smaller quantity that other places I’ve been to but its to be tasted and enjoyed slowly, so that was alright 🙂

Appetizers

Met la Table menu: Mini fish cake, lime aioli, arugula with parsley

Les Cochonettes : Pulled Pork mini burgers

Met la table lunch menu’s appetizers was mini fish cakes. I usually have crab cakes so fish cakes was interesting.  I have no idea what lime aioli was. I’m guessing its the sauce at the bottom. It has something of a mayo sort of base.  I wasn’t sure what it was so I didn’t eat a lot of it but it was a good mix with the fish cake.

My husband had these little pulled pork burgers called Les Cochonettes.  There was four but he ate one before I could take the picture. Regardless, these are awesome! And I only took a bite! He liked it a lot too.

Main dish

Condiment rack

Burger de Gars

Met la Table menu: OMG Duck Burger with mango chutney and home fries

Look at that condiment rack! Three types of ketchups! I’m impressed.  When it first set on the table, I was like, now that’s hardcore. Haha!

Lets get back to business. The husband took the Burger de Gars (Translation: A Guy Burger). It had smoked meat, beef patty and bacon among tomatoes, pickes and mushrooms plus strong cheddar cheese. He liked it.  OMG resto age the beef in their restaurant so it enhances the taste of the beef.  The mix was good. His only critique would be that the “strong” cheese wasn’t very strong. Other than that, it was great.  Just a note for cheese lovers/connoisseurs.

Okay, so my burger. Let’s get something straight.  I like duck. I don’t eat it a lot nor do I claim to be a connoisseur or any sort but I didn’t get to taste the duck burger at La Maison du Magret during MTL a Table and this one has mango chutney.  If you missed it from a previous resto review, I LOVE mango.  This combination of duck, foie gras and mango chutney in a burger sounded really good.  Except, it didn’t.  The foie gras taste overpowered everything else. Mixing it with the mango chutney had this weird mix. Regrettably, it was suffice for half of the burger and then it took a little more effort to finish up. What would have been great is if the mango chutney was on the side and maybe found some sauce that would balance it but then when we have foie gras, the point is to taste it.  Its an acquired taste. To be honest, its really my issue because the patty itself was tender and juicy.  It was done very well.  Its just the strong foie gras that I couldn’t get over.

Dessert

Met la Table menu: Homemade donuts with vanilla infused whipped cream cheese

As many of you know, I can’t eat these.  You know, lactose intolerant  and all.  BUT, the resto didn’t know that and my husband didn’t order a serving of dessert but they still gave him a plate as well. Which meant he had double the indulgence 😉 It was very nice of the resto and we absolutely appreciated it with all our hearts. My husband was great because it was totally taste the homemade home taste and the addition of the sauce balanced with the dark chocolate filling was a great combination.

Additional Goodies with our bill!

Lollipops

Overall…

We have our critics of this meal but it was an enjoyable experience.  The food presentation is appealing.  The drinks and cocktails are nice and attractive. I would have loved to try more. The food was great (except my duck burger but thats because I’m not a foie gras lover).  I’m sure that if I had something else, I would love it a whole lot more. The decor and the setup and just the idea of changing a church (previously St-Therese Church) into a restaurant-bar is so weird and wrong but also done so right.  On top of that, the service was fantastic.  Our server was called Guillaume and he was an absolute gem.  Its worth every bit of the experience and if we were to go back to Sherbrooke, I’m pretty sure we’d stop by this place for a meal. Maybe even on one of the nights, they have some awesome performer there (because they seem to have some known musicians going there).

Do you love foie gras or other duck meals? What do you think of this restaurant setting and concept?

Restaurant: Jack Saloon at Quartier Dix30, Brossard, Quebec – Take 2!

Its rare we go to the same restaurants two weeks in a row.  Its rare we go out two weeks in a row while I’m talking about that. But, this week is my birthday weekend and my best friend and her boyfriend had asked to meet up for a dinner double date to celebrate together. After having a rather hard time deciding where to go, my boyfriend suggested a second visit to Jack Saloon’s, especially since we couldn’t try out the burgers last time because of the Groupon deal, this time we could give it a shot 🙂

Let’s look at what this time’s foodie adventures brought for us!

We decided to live on the wild side and my best friend suggested a round of shots on her so I suggested that these shots called Revolver looked the best with a mix of Jack Daniel’s and Apricot brandy.

Shots: Revolver

I personally love apricot brandy so these shots were really good.  Maybe not such a great idea to do a shot on an empty stomach but we all were laughing and joking around, especially since the guys each took a pint of beer which was on special at $5 and us girls took a Smirnoff Ice.

Dinner came relatively soon after.  The deal was on 4 selected burgers.  While the others took those choices, I broke out of the pack and had a massive craving for a pulled pork sandwich and those scrumptious onion rings from the week before. They were calling out to me…

Pulled Pork Sandwich with sides of onion rings

Our sides out swapped so we did the change ourselves afterwards.  You aren’t seeing things, those are actually fries 😉

The pulled pork sandwich was really delicious.  It was cooked right to perfection and it was perfectly spiced and whatever sauce they had on there was mouthwatering.  If you can believe it, this time the onion rings were even better.

Maybe being with good company makes things even better than they already are 🙂

Jack Saloon Cheeseburger with a side of trio fries

The two guys took the Jack Saloon Cheeseburger.  This is my boyfriend’s “plate”.  He has a soft spot for fries so he tries out these amalgamation of fries (I think that’s the word they used in the menu) for combining three sorts of fries: sweet potato, normal and something else that I can’t remember.

From his reaction and lack of talking, I think he was enjoying his burger 😉

Australian-Mediterranean Burger

Next, my best friend chose the Australian-Mediterranean Burger at least I think that’s the name of the burger.  It was like a mountain of veggies full of beets, lettuce, tomato and a double patty hidden under all this.  It took her a while to get through it but she seemed to enjoy it as well.

Jack Saloon is definitely a worthy place for a second visit.  The music is something that I’m not sure I mentioned but some quality stuff there.  There’s a lot of throwback music style and I love that! Its a nice place to hang out with friends and get some decent drinks.  My boyfriend said the beer he had was to his taste although it might be a little light for beer connoisseurs (which he isn’t).

On that note, great company, delicious food, an awesome shot and Smirnoff Ice made this birthday celebration a fun fun event.  Like I said in my vlog, I can’t think of a better way to turn 29.  2015 has really been treating me extra well! 🙂

What do you think? Do you like beer and burgers? What sort do you prefer?