Restaurant: ChuChai (Montreal, Canada)

A random Friday evening outing and a sudden change of plans due to the original spontaneous restaurant visit my friend and I chose had a huge line-up lead us to go check out ChuChai, or according to my friend who had gone a few times before a few years back, a more hip and lounge version of it. I didn’t take any pictures of the decor but you can check out their site HERE.

ChuChai is a Thai restaurant with vegetarian and vegan foods, although to me, I think the menu is pretty much vegan as a lot of stuff worked for me. I’ve never been to a vegan restaurant before and its a nice feeling to know that I can eat everything on the menu even with my lactose intolerance. Of course, with any benefit you get, there is always a premium to be paid for the atmosphere and the vegan angle so just something to think about, for myself, it was pretty much expected.

ChuChai

Appetizers/Tapas

Spring Rolls (1pc – $8)

I’m a huge fan of Spring Rolls. I actually had learned how to do them from my best friend before but then its been years since I’ve done these. However, I always prefer them over the deep fried versions. ChuChai does a good one. It has a nice bite and its wrapped really firmly. The peanut sauce has a little spicy kick to it that really compliments the roll well. The roll does seem to also be a bigger piece than other restaurants.

Main Meal

Royal Pad Thai

Vegan shrimp and vegan duck makes its appearance in this dish. Its been a while since I’ve had any vegetarian or vegan versions of anything. I do think that the vegan duck is better than the vegan shrimp in terms of how genuine in texture. But then, it was a decent taste so seeing as I don’t really go to vegan restaurant to go eat meat and have the meat taste because in my mind, its not about that. The Royal Pad Thai was alright. The noodles were done well and it wasn’t too much sauce and just right. Its a Pad Thai and it tasted like one.

Vegan Duck with Spinach

My friend took the Vegan Duck with Spinach and ordered a bowl of steamed rice to go with it. I had a little taste of it. The vegan duck is really great. The texture and the taste was pretty good. The spinach is also decent. My only deal, also a preference issue, was that the dish itself was really salty. Of course, with a bowl of rice, this might just work really well.

A little something aside from my personal preference is that the presentation for all of the dishes (appetizers, main meals & desserts) were done really well and matched the atmosphere and class that the restaurant itself presented itself as.

Dessert

Fried Banana with Maple Syrup

The dessert menu has a lot of nice little things to it that I would consider trying out. Of course, the one with the most representation is Fried Bananas with Maple Syrup. It tastes the asian dessert and adds a little Canadian twist to it. To be honest, the fried bananas were fantastic. Probably the best part of this entire meal.

Overall…

ChuChai is a decent restaurant. It targets a certain audience that appreciates a nice atmosphere and ambiance and raises the level of how we’d normally view Asian cuisine in general, in this case, Thai food and then giving it a nice little twist of vegetarian and vegan specialty. I won’t say its a challenge to make vegetarian food tasty because its doable and I’ve been to other restaurants that have done it well but vegan food has the impression (from those that haven’t had it before or less frequently) of being a lot of healthy and not so good food so its nice to see restaurants such of these pop up where it not only benefits those with allergies (like myself) but also provide a place to enjoy some good food. In terms of food and creativity and ambiance, ChuChai is a good choice. For my own standards, I think the food is still fairly basic and for that, the premium paid for the vegan angle is a bit on the higher side. If you were to ask whether I’d go back. Maybe, mostly to try out some of the other desserts and some of the tapas/appetizers/soup (they have a lemongrass one which caught my eye).

Additional discussion: The question (which I’m not vegan so don’t know how to answer): would it matter so much to someone who is permanently converted to vegan or is vegan in their eating habits from the start whether there is vegan meat on the menu? Or is it more for the normal person going in for a vegan experience to have an easier point of entry into this type of eating lifestyle?

My Weekly Adventures #64

Last two weeks have been honestly work galore. I’ve never felt so swamped. So right now, I’m feeling this fatigue:

but my inner voice is screaming at the top of my lungs in relief and massive happiness:

With that said, not a ton happened in particular as I spent a lot of the last two weekends at work. It caused disruptions in the blog for the most part. I did manage to go check out some new places around town. So I guess its not completely nothing, right? 😉

Gazo Montreal

One of my college acquaintances opened up this new ice cream/fruit tea shop in downtown Montreal near Concordia University (Guy-Concordia metro) which serves liquid nitrogen ice cream and fruit teas. They had a soft launch on April 19th and my best friend and I headed over after my Saturday overtime to check it out. We both had fruit teas. She had the cheesecake mouse oolong tea (can’t remember the exact name). I have lactose-intolerance so I ended up getting a fruit tea called Four Seasons Oolong Tea Lemonade.

I think the main attraction here is the liquid nitrogen ice cream which will be its main selling point. In terms of fruit teas, they do need some polishing. My oolong tea lemonade pretty much was a lemonade and it seemed like they forgot the oolong tea. Of course, my best friend however said hers tasted oodles of tea (so maybe the organization of tea making needs some work), but then, its still a soft launch so the time to polish up these details.

If you want to check it out, here’s their Facebook page.

What’s Up Channel Debut

Its always time to move onto something new. Sure its a bit of a little harder work than say my old unboxing videos but I think I’m going to enjoy these random chat topics and quick recaps of whats been up. I’ve always liked the What’s Up series on the blog. Sometimes, the backlog gets really long and it takes a little while longer to get to the longer reviews so these kind of give a quick perspective of all my projects.

My husband commented that the first episode was a little long so I’m going to try to keep it within the 10 minute mark for most of them. I do agree that 15 minutes is a lengthy but I wanted to talk about the project itself in case someone not from the blog dropped by. 🙂

Will I get back to unboxing? Maybe. There’s a lot of factors into play but I like to change up projects every once in a while. Its really the only way that I can keep growing and changing especially since its been going on for seven years. For now, I’m not really into it (unless I partner with some company..which I’m not big enough for or if I find a box that intrigues me to try for one time).

Banh Mi MC

This past weekend was huge. My eating schedule was all over the place between juggling massive overtime at work and doing my part in chores and groceries. Trust me when I say that my husband was a real champ in stepping up to take care of a lot of the stuff. As a little treat, we learned that Banh Mi MC had opened. Pho MC is this delicious Vietnamese restaurant that we love to go to and right next door is their extension which sells Banh Mi which are pretty much Vietnamese subs. We got a grilled chicken one. While it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of chicken, its a pretty nice balance of everything. I’m pretty impressed. I’m hoping to check out the grilled pork next time.

Cute Kitty Pic

Its a short post for today. I’m typing this up the night before and I’m yawning so much my eyes are watering so I need to channel in some remaining energy to get something wrapped up to send over to That Moment In since I’ve been MIA over there for 2 weeks, which isn’t good. Either way, I have been doing a  lot of gaming to relax so just need to find the brain power to write up the reviews.

Upcoming:

• Wine Recap (every 10th of the month)
• Music Obsessions (first weekend of the month..as usual)
• Double Feature & TV Binge
• Book review & Book Blitz
• And probably a new What’s Up video…

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
What have you been up to?

MTL a Table 2017: Bistro Brasserie Les Soeurs Grises

MTL a Table is upon Montreal again!! It runs from November 2 to 16. The amount of restaurants seems to have increased quite a bit and has expanded the geography spread a little more to restaurants located a little further than the downtown, Old Montreal and Plateau Mont-Royal area which is the popular spots for restaurants. The menus however were quite a challenge to figure out with less that works for us. With that said, we ended up deciding on going to check out Bistro Brasserie Les Soeurs Grises for dinner. Last year, we checked it out for their brunch menu and it was incredibly delicious so we have high hopes for this one. You can check out last year’s post HERE.

Let’s see what their dinner menu looks like!

Bistro Brasserie Les Soeurs Grises
MTL a Table Dinner Menu

Bistro Brasserie Les Soeurs Grises has a really nice ambiance and is located a quieter part of Old Montreal.

Cocktails

Bloody Caesar

Sangria Blanche

Being a brasserie definitely gives this place at least some guarantees of making a decent drink and for both of these, they were really good. My husband had the Bloody Caesar which he orders whenever he goes out to a restaurant and my typical is white sangria. What is so great about sangria is the fruity taste of it all and how essentially every restaurant can have their own twist. This one is a little stronger with a more obvious taste of the triple sec however, still a very good one.

First Course

Smoked Duck Carpaccio, candied orange, spicy mesclun

Chickpea and beetroot hummus, basil pesto, roasted pepper, grilled pita bread

Smoked red peppers cream, mini grilled cheese au fromage Louis d’Or de Sainte- Elisabeth de Warwick

I’m fairly certain Phoebe will hop on here at some point to check out the post and she will tell you all about the Duck Carpaccio in the comments (along with her choice of the confit duck leg and waffles in the second course). I had the hummus and OMG, was it scrumptious!! The grilled pita was great and it went well with the hummus which was so unique. My husband had the soup and the grilled cheese. The grilled cheese was kind of a tease being so little but he liked it however, him being not a soup person, he did give higher compliments to the roasted pepper cream.

Second Course 

Smoked salmon filet, smoked potato salad, dried sausages with cheese, maple virgin sauce

Grilled waffle with confit duck leg from Brome Lake, onion jam, salad of the day, maple caramel and homemade beer

Poultry, sweetbread pistachio blood sausage, roasted potatoes, crispy onions, balsamic reduction, sauerkraut with wild boar bacon

I had the sausage dish for the second course. Since these foodie adventures, I’ve gained a liking for sweetbread and in this sausage mixture oddly with pieces of pistachio poking out, it was the absolute highlight of the dish. The roasted potatoes were slightly mushy but it tasted really good. My only issue with this one was the sauerkraut however, it isn’t the fault of it and more mine since I have days that I am more in the mood for it and I just wasn’t feeling like it complimented the dish that much. My husband had the salmon and he gave it all a thumbs up. I remember a praise for the roasted potatoes salad.

Third Course

Beeramisu and milk jam with fleur de sel

Pouding Chomeur with maple syrup from “Les Sucres de Mont-Megantic”

Dates stuffed with goat cheese, cranberries and walnuts

Finally, we are at the third course. Most of you know about my lactose intolerance so many times, my dessert option is limited. The only option here was the dates. I’m not a fan of dates and goat cheese (which is the only cheese I can have barring the lactose-free variety). With that said, this dessert option was over the top sweet and made me feel really bad afterwards and I just ate one of the dates. Normally, I have a sweet tooth but the sweetness of the dates actually overpowered the goat cheese making it decent tasting but adding in some extra syrup and not even cranberries to balance the acidity and then the walnuts was just too much for me. However, being too sweet seems to be a big comment on our table even for my friends who took the Pouding Chomeur. However, it seems the star of the desserts goes to the twist on Tiramisu called Beeramisu which my husband said was quite good except it was leaning on the very sweet side at the end.

Overall..I’d say Bistro Brasserie Les Soeurs Grises was pretty good. Sure, the desserts weren’t to our liking but thats just probably because we’re not all immensely in love with extreme sweetness. However, the food was pretty decent and wins for both me and my husband. Definitely someplace we’d consider going out for a date night if we ever have the urge to go downtown (which is almost never unless its festival season).

MTL a Table: Café Griffintown (Montreal, Canada)

November is finally here and with that comes one of our favorite events in Montreal called MTL a Table. I’ve gone the last two years. If you don’t know what it is, MTL a Table is a gourmet event where selected restaurants offer a fixed menu for $21, $31 or $41 for dinner and some even offer brunch. It is the perfect opportunity to try out some new restaurants and not exactly destroy your wallet over it. This year, our group increased and we are doing a triple date. We have three scheduled over the next two weekends.

The first one this year is Griffintown Café. They had a $21 three course menu.

Griffontown Café

Drinks

Russian in July & Long Island Iced Tea

Ginger Beer Bourbon and Bourbon Sour

1st Service: Appetizers

Roasted Winter Vegetable Soup (lactose-free modification)

Roasted Winter Vegetable Soup

So Simple Salad with Mixed Greens and Roasted Vegetables

Appetizers was good. A lot of love to Griffintown Cafe for being able to modify the soup without the lactose. The roasted winter vegetable soup is very good. Only one person took the salad and I think it was pretty good. Everyone else had the normal unmodified version of the soup. Not sure how they felt. My husband enjoyed it and he isn’t exactly a soup person (or a vegetable person at that). The only difference we talked about was that it was heavily spiced with pepper and I mean like actual full pieces of peppercorn. That added a lot of kick to the soup. For the most part, it was delicious until I went screaming for water when I bit into a peppercorn. It was a funny experience and refreshing to say the least. However, the roasted winter vegetable soup is still a winner especially on a chilly day like when we went this weekend, some heat in the foods adds a little extra warmth and coziness to the meal.

2nd Service: Main Course

So British Fish ‘n Chips (Haddock filet, IPA Beer batter) served with fries and house tartare sauce

Espresso Burger (espresso and dark chocolate glazed Griffintown Burger, blue cheese dressing, tomato and maple braised bacon)

The menu has three choices. The third being a mushroom risotto which no one ended up taking. We were half and half with three taking the Fish n Chips and three with the Espresso Burger. I took the Fish ‘N Chips. The meal was a little salty to my taste however, the IPA beer batter was done really well because the crush kind of melted in my mouth as I ate it. Also, haddock is something I usually eat with fish ‘n chips but really would like to have more because I like the texture of the fish. The home fries are cooked pretty well. Yet again, a little too salty for my taste but I eat pretty bland food compared to most people that I know so perhaps its just my individual issue. I should start mentioning in my order to be a little lighter on salt as a personal preference.

As for the burger, the first hesitation most people had was how they’d make the taste of it all work out. It seems like there is a lot going on there. The burger was huge in height. However, the espresso and chocolate was not overpowering, nor was the cheese supposedly from what I gathered as my friends discussed it.

3rd service: Dessert

Oreo Tiramisu

Carrot Cake

The last course was one I was totally exempted from but I ordered the carrot cake for everyone to share and have a taste. The dessert was probably the underwhelming part of the meal according to my husband. He enjoyed the Oreo Tiramisu more than the carrot cake however, it wasn’t anything special.

Overall, Griffintown Cafe is pretty  nice. The restaurant itself is a little cozier in size. We also went on a night where they hosted the Paint Nite event and that minimized the amount of guests at the restaurant itself not a part of it. The service probably also was slower because of it. However, our waitress was very nice. She was a little short with the details but very accommodating in helping me with my allergy issues. It was a really nice place to hang out with friends. The food was pretty good. There are some small personal preference criticisms but its more a matter of individual tastes and habits than the shortcoming of how the food was cooked because it was done well.

If you are around town, perhaps it is a spot you’d like to check out! They even have brunch normally and that is something that has peaked my interest.