Offbeat Eats

After a flight back into Montreal, I usually like to stop off for a smoked meat sandwich on my way back home, usually ducking into Montreal proper for this. But a handful of minor delays at CDG resulting from luggage that had lost its tag had us arriving an hour later into Montreal, which mean that the normally bad traffic around the airport had grown to excessive, and going into the city just for a smoked meat sandwich would not have been efficient. Luckily, most residential parts of Montreal have pretty good shops and delis that will also sell you smoked meat sandwiches, so instead of battling traffic, I ducked into Southwest Montreal’s Côte-Saint-Paul neighborhood to check out Les Aliments Félix Mish.

Well, after a bit less than a week in France spent in Grenoble and Paris, it was time to catch a late morning flight home. Wanting to avoid the miasma of an airport breakfast, I decided to grab breakfast on my way to the airport. I was staying near Gare du Nord and Gare de L’est, an area not particularly known for French bistrots and cafes, much of it being more of the cell-phone-cover, beauty supply stores, and coiffures district, but right next to my hotel on the corner of the busy Boulevard de Magenta and rue de Chabrol was a nice little cafe that showed some potential: P’tite Bougnate (“Bougnate” means a woman from Auvergne, in a word that has a most interesting etymology, but that’s a story for another time and place).

After two days of watching cool aircraft, talking business, and talking business while watching cool aircraft at the Paris Air Show, I had a free evening to explore around Paris on a Monday night before having to head back to the airport early in the morning. I decided to deliberately explore part of Paris that I usually didn’t explore in detail, the 3e arrondissement. The quieter half of Paris’ Marais district (known for museum and fashion houses, the other half of Le Marais lying in the busier 4e arrondissement), it’s a mostly residential area in Paris with a few nice boulevards like Rue de Turrene ahd several nice walking parks (Square du Tempe, Hôtel-Salé-Léonor-Fini Garden, and over the border in the 4e arrondissement, Place des Vosges). A few blocks north of Place des Vosges, I found a splendid spot for dinner, Chez Janou.

My travels in France had me spending a spare weekend in Paris (quelle horreur!), and on Sunday morning, after a stroll through the north end of downtown Paris, ending up in Montmartre, I realized I was starting to get a bit hungry, and I set off looking for a decent breakfast or brunch. The Parisiens definitely do brunch, but in my case it was still 10:00, which is a bit on the early side; so instead of going to one of the many cafes and bistros around the base of Sacré-Cœur for a brunch, I had a bit of time to wander around some of the quieter corners of the neighbor. I ended up looping through Villa Léandre about two blocks of Sacré-Cœur, a fairly quiet residential area that’s got a fair amount of art deco decor, and that’s where I found Marcel.

One of the advantages of having fairly regular trips to certain destinations like London and Paris is that you can occasionally not worry about finding new places, and just revisit some old favorites. In this case, after several days in Grenoble, France, I had a spare day in Paris before the next portion of my trip (the Paris Air Show), so I spent a day visiting the Musée des Arts et Métiers, walking around seeing the various sights in Paris, and eventually wandering over to the 6ème Arrondissement to check up on some favorites, including stopping for a sampling of rum at La Rhumerie, and then wandering over to revisit one of my favorite informal Paris bistros for an Offbeat Eats Health Check: Bistrot d’Henri.

While I’ve had a more than a few truly memorable and enjoyable meals in my life, I’ve had a few that were truly touchstones, memories that I could return to and remember both the simple enjoyment and the thrill of something new. And I long ago learned that too often those touchstones were fleeting moments that can’t be recreated; returning to the same place, and ordering the same item, often doesn’t work. Too often you experience the pain of nostalgia, revisiting an old favorite and discovering that part of the ineffable nature of the experience is gone due to a change in context: the experience itself has wilted, the company is different, or even the fact that the person you are is no longer the person you were, and instead of striking a chord the experience reminds you of change. But sometimes it does work, and it resonates like a bell, and that brings me to… L’Ardoise.

This particular visit to France was a work trip, with visits to both a partner company in Grenoble, France, and another visit to the Paris Air Show (yeah, life is hard, isn’t it?). This time I took a completely different approach on getting to Grenoble; we fly into Paris Charles De Gaulle and took the TGV down to Lyon, catching a local train to Grenoble. This looked great on paper, but two major hitches in that plan: first, the baggage handlers at CDG took a full hour and 40 minutes to unload the aircraft and deliver my bags, which was just slow enough that I barely missed my train to Lyon. But after an hour and half relaxing with an espresso, I caught the next one, with a surprisingly smooth and efficient trip to Lyon (so, travel hint here: take the TGV: it’s one of the best train services out there). But then the trip from Lyon to Grenoble was interesting: recent rains had resulted in a landslide over the tracks, so they had to route us on a very scenic, but very circuitous, trip through the French Alps via Chambéry. However, we still arrived in Grenoble in time to get settled into our hotel and meet up with our hosts at one of their favorite spots in downtown Grenoble: Brasserie Chavant.

The life of an engineer with international travels means that, in addition to my own recreational travel, I’m often having to dart off to distant locations for work, on a tighter schedule than I’d usually book. In this case, I had to fit a trip to Grenoble and Paris in France in between two other personal trips, and the best overall location for both cost and schedule was catching the red-eye out of Montreal Trudeau International Airport. As I’ve discussed many times here at Offbeat Eats, airports aren’t exactly focal points of good cuisine, and the typical fare is both expensive and disappoint. But every once in a while I’m pleasantly surprised, and this time it was in Area 51 of the YUL airport, between the main screening area and the smaller international departure lounge sits Archibald. This was the perfect opportunity to fortify myself for an overnight flight with that cornerstone of Montreal cuisine, the smoked meat sandwich.

I do a lot of flying for both work and pleasure, and things generally go pretty smoothly. However, every once in a while I do have an event that reminds me how tightly woven and highly-subscribed our air transportation system is when something goes more than a little off. After a nice morning workout at my hotel in Minneapolis, I hopped on the light rail, got to the airport, and was about to board my 9am flight… “Your connecting flight’s been canceled. We’re going to have to rebook you.” The next flight they could get me was… 6pm the next day. Well, I’ve certainly had worse things happen than a spare day and a half in the Twin Cities. I spent most of it hanging around with friends out in Chanhassen, but this also gave me a chance to wander around Bloomington, MN looking for a righteous Sunday brunch before my flight, and that’s how I found Hazelwood Food + Drink.

Almost every time I’ve come through the Twin Cities, I try to get together with my PhD Advisor, Terry, for a meal. He and his wife Nancy are pretty good at finding interesting places to go, a mix of newer spots since I moved away from the area, and newer spots. In this case, they wanted to take me to one of their current favorite spots, Holman’s Table over in St Paul.