Food Event: Food Truck Friday in Montreal!

As some of you may know, Montreal has a tradition of kick-starting the warmer months of the years with Food Truck Friday. Since the Drapeau era, The city's by laws have prohibited food trucks, but with this new craze starting to kicking in, things have started to change.

 While restrictions are still in place that bar broke cooks and other people with a certain lack of funds to start in the business from opening a fly by night operation, the food coming out of those trucks is amazing. Here's a small sample of the diversity of the food I had with a couple of buddies of mine.

PDC:

First food truck that we've visited was the food truck of the legendary Montreal institution, Le Pied De Cochon. While the portion were smaller than the one's in the actual restaurant, which are admittedly gigantic, prices are cheaper, and food is absolutely delicious. 

We had the amazing Poutine au Foie Gras, which includes goose liver in the delicious mix of Fries, Cheese curds and Gravy. While this dish is traditionally a really classic Quebecois dish, usually eaten after many drinks, this refined version wasn't a one dimensional, fast food version of the dish. Covered in a rich gravy monté au fois gras, this delicious, albeit rich concoction became an instant hit within the group.

This was then followed by the obnoxiously rich combination of the "Beigne Cochon", which kinda mixes the boundaries between sandwich, hot-dog and dessert. It's a Hot-Dog that has a Donuts as a bun, with a big fat sausage, some mushroom and pork belly as topping, and as a sauce, a donuts frosting. Personally I found it too fat and relatively fell short of what I was expecting, but it was decent.

We've decided we wanted to continue to get even fatter, and ordered a delicious, custard filled, banana and chocolate tasting dessert from PDC. It was gut-bustingly delicious.

This was washed down by a delicious Macchiato like brevage from the coffee truck right next to the PDC truck,LaRue Et Fils.

Le Smoking BBQ

Because we are in dire need of calories, we decided we wanted to hit the BBQ truck, which had suspiciously a phone number from Surburbia, le Smoking BBQ.

We had half a rack of ribs and fries. While they were good in the Canadian context, considering this is Montreal, they do not approach the smokiness, the complexity of Southern BBQ. Would I order again: probably, if I am craving BBQ and can't smoke my own rack of ribs, but they were not mind blowing. Props to the fries, they were some of the best I ever had. Tasty, with an amazing texture. 

Le Point sans G. Gluten-free truck

My friend ordered some Chili Con Carne, which was served over a bed of sweet potatoes, from the gluten-free truck. I was admittedly skeptic, how can a place that mention openly they are depriving themselves from one of my favourite substance in the world, gluten, which is found in almost anything, from delicious Chinese noodle to bread, be any good? Well, I was wrong, the chili had a smoky deliciousness to it, the meat wasn't overcook, which I personally think is the biggest sin in the world of meat, and the sweet potatoes complimented the chili perfectly. It was so damn good.

Boite A Fromage: Raclette

The next stop was the Boite à Fromage, which translates to the cheese box. We ordered a raclette classique, an updated version of the old school Swiss dish. Cooked potatoes, cheese, pickles and pickled Onion, a great crowd pleaser. My only problem with dishes that simple is the execution. Gnocchi in tomatoes sauce, Chinese style Egg and Tomatoes, sushi, they have the same problem, the execution need to be flawless to be able to pull this off. This wasn't. This was an ok dish, but not as good as Raclette could be.

Lucille's and L'assomoir, the cherry on the Sunday

This fatteningly delicious meal needed a dessert, but as some of you may know, I'm not a big sweet guy. I  prefer bittersweet and sour desserts, so we opted for tartares and tacos instead.

The fried fish taco from Lucille was apparently delicious, but for 8$, we could get better deals.

The tartares were another story. The salmon and apple tartare was absolutely delicious. Sweet and sour, rich in umami and complexity. It was particularly a welcome sight after the extremely heavy and fattening dish from this afternoon. For 12$, it is also affordable.

The beef tartare was another really big surprise.A great combination of dijon mustard, capers, aged Parmesan, probably an egg yolk, and beef, this was a delicious, classic combination. Simply a great dish.

Admittedly, I started to suffer from palette fatigue, but the food was some of the best Iv'e had at that price, and I was happy.

The entire meal was washed down by a copious amount of Spanish wine, a great wine from Pedralonga, I think it was named Do Umia, 2011, and Vina Illusion, another surprising Spanish wine. They are private importation by Ward et Associés, Symbiose et Cies and LAQV.

In conclusion, this was a really fun day.

TL;DR: delicious food, great city, great view.