Montreal: Version Restaurant

Old Montreal, otherwise known as Vieux Montreal to locals and the French, is a charming little area of the city that carries with it quite a European flare. The cobble stone streets, boutique shops and location next to the St. Lawrence River make it a premiere attraction for any sightseer visiting Montreal. On Rue St. Paul Est sits Version Restaurant and Boutique, a restaurant tucked away from all the hustle and bustle of the main street, where except for the fabulous restaurant, Jardin Nelson, a decent meal is hard to find.

Version Restaurant is the epitome of minimalistic modern style. Their dishes they serve their food in is a testament to that. With white ceramic, geometrically shaped oblong plates, your dining experience will be enhanced by more than just the food. I didn’t know this at the time, but Version Restaurant is also a boutique, where you can buy pretty much everything, from the silverware to the tables, chairs and trinkets.

On that particular night, it was hot so everyone including us decided to sit outside. We ordered sangria first, which our server told us was ‘homemade.’ Alcohol is usually not a part of my food pyramid. I don’t actively seek it out and when I do, it must be a drink in where I can only taste a hint of alcohol. This is why sangria is one of my favorites. It’s just like fruit juice with a hint of wine.

Let me tell you, this sangria is one of the best I’ve had in my life. The little fruit shish kabobs on top were delicious as well. If we had known they were $12 a glass, we probably wouldn’t have ordered them. But were on vacation, in Montreal, so we let it slide.

After drinks, we had a light dinner consisting of a vegetarian tapas platter, with four dishes that looked more like art than food. Unfortunately, their website doesn’t have all their dishes listed and that sangria probably impaired my memory to remember what they were. We also had a really great mixed green salad and my favorite: a cheese, grape and almond platter. In my opinion, there is no better dinner then some cheese, grapes and dry cracked bread. A bit of sangria doesn’t hurt either.

We rarely order dessert, but we thought we would anyway. When you’re on vacation, you’re allowed to do certain things you wouldn’t normally do without feeling guilty, like spending more money than usual while shopping and eating ridiculously overpriced meals. Dessert was eaten without much guilt - what a concept! Of course, I never really feel guilty about eating perhaps my favorite dessert, creme bruleé, probably because I rarely eat it.

Version had the queen of creme bruleés, a dish divided into four kinds of the decadent dish, including a maple version and three others that I again, can’t remember and they don’t have listed anywhere on their site. Take my word for it, it was delish.

By the time we had finished eating, it was almost completely dark. When I looked around, I noticed that there were people there who had been enjoying their meals earlier than us. Version Restaurant has the kind of atmosphere that makes it hard for you to get up and leave. You just want to stay there and pretend that you were served amazing meals with amazing drinks at home. Next time you’re in Vieux Montreal and you’re looking for a place to eat, don’t go for the obvious. Take some left and right turns, because the best treasures are the ones that are hidden, like Version Restaurant.

Version Restaurant
295, East St-Paul St.
Montreal, Canada
H2Y 1H1
(514) 871-9135

Montreal: Nocochi

On the corner of Rue Sherbrooke and Mackay in Montreal, sits a quaint patiserrie and cafe called Nocochi. Nocochi, owned by Shahnaz Bagherzadeh is known for it’s homemade Persian-influenced pastries. In fact, “Nocochi,”(Nokhodchi) means “chickpea” in Persian.

Whenever we travel, we always look for tea houses. When we were in Rome, we fell in love with oh-so-calming, but expensive Babington’s Tea Shop at the Piazza di Spagna and in New York, we finally sought out the coveted Teany cafe, co-owned by one of my favorite people on Earth, Moby, and his now ex-girlfriend Kelly Tisdale. I believe Moby gave ownership of the entire cafe to Tisdale recently.

In this case, we were just looking for a great place to eat on our walk back to our hotel, when we came upon Nocochi. The minute we walked in, I absolutely fell in love. The bite-sized Persian pastries, with their unique flavors and textures brought memories back. Though they haven’t lately, my parents always used to buy the packaged versions of many of the pastries that were behind the glass.

The decor of Nocochi is very modern and simple. White tables and chairs that have IKEA written all over them sit on a white tiled floor across the cafe. Prints mounted on the wall feature closeup versions of their pastries along with vases, that are also filled with whimsical colored sweets. Two section of seating area feature a white quilted couch with single color pillows lined against them. The window panes feature Iranian inspired tea sets and tea cups for passerbys to admire as they make their way down Mackay.

Nocochi’s love of coffee brand Illy is evident, from the beverages they serve to the mugs they serve them in. Either way, I didn’t care. I wasn’t there to drink coffee. Tea is what I’m always after.

The sales associates/baristas wear black with muted baby blue aprons. All of them speak English, and quite well.

We were feeling a bit hungry, so we decided to order some food. In addition to selling pastries and serving tea, Nocochi is a full service cafe with a great selection of food. I ordered a tuna melt and Keeg ordered a mushroom pizza.

As Keeg says, it was absolutely del-eesh-oos! The tuna melt was on pita type bread, which I love and the mushroom pizza had the perfect sauce to bread to mushroom ratio. We had apple juice with our meals and we thought we were really full, until we realized that we wanted tea. What else is new?

The afternoon tea menu at Nocochi is available from 2:30 to 6 p.m., while breakfast is available 8 to 11:30 a.m. I got the chai spice tea with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and vanilla bean. Keeg got Earl Grey Cremé with bergamot, cornflower and vanilla.

The tea was brought out loose in individual tea pots and let me tell you, it was so good. It had started raining that day while we were walking and by the time we had gotten to Nocochi, we were pretty drenched. The tea (and the lunch) made everything better. After one cup, we switched tea pots and the Earl Grey Cremé was just as good as the Chai Spice.

While we were there, the patiserrie received shipments with Vivel written on the boxes and Farsi written underneath. I was so intrigued, that when I got home, I did a bit of research and found out that Vivel is the company that Bagherzadeh owns which makes the pastries and supplies them to her boutiques, with Nocochi being the only one in the Western hemisphere. They have 4 stores in the United Arab Emirates and also franchise stores in Dammam and Khobar Saudi Arabia.

Nocochi is unique in that it is the only store I believe that operates under a different name than Vivel and has Swiss chef Jean-Daniel, who brings with him 25 years of experience in the hotel and restaurant industry.

Nocochi Cafe Patisserie
2156 Mackay Street
Corner of Sherbrooke and Mackay
(514) 989-7514

Au Revoir, Montreal

After about 9 days, our trip to Montreal has almost come to an end. Over the course of a week, we learned to efficiently use the Montreal metro system, added a lot of French to our vocabulary, discovered many adorable specialty shops and walked until we got blisters on our feet. For a normal urban city dweller, the walking might have been normal. But for an L.A. girl like me, whose walking consists of going from the parking garage to the front door of the building, it was definitely more than I bargained for. However, I think having the luxury of being able to use the metro and walk everywhere is something I love. If I could use a metro to get to Santa Monica, I cannot even tell you how much higher my quality of life would be.

I will definitely have photos and more stories later, but for now I present, in a short list, things we loved and did not love about Montreal:

Things We Loved

• the weather - it’s pretty much perfect. It’s not over bearing at all. It’s sunny, but breezy. Yep, pretty much perfect.

• good metro system - the Montreal metro system is very easy to navigate, despite all the stops and directions being in French. Getting from one point in town to another doesn’t take much thought and this system would most probably eliminate the at least immediate need for a car.

• cleanliness - Montreal is like all the good parts of New York and Europe put together, minus the trash. This city works hard on keeping its streets clean and we truly appreciated that. No trash, hardly any litter, visible street signs, c’est magnifique!

• cops on bikes - They are literally all on bicycles, a la pacific palisades! It’s really cute and they look so much more approachable and friendly.

•diversity - despite the fact that Montreal is mostly a French city, the diversity in people is amazing. This was evident during the Canada Day parade we witnessed on July 1st.

•the shops - Montreal is definitely a very ’shoppable’ city, unlike Rome, which we found a huge disappointment as far as shopping is concerned. There are familiar stores, like Urban Outfitters, Zara, Gap and even Payless Shoes, and a lot of specialty shops as well that make the traveling experience worth it. Case in point: half eaten gingerbread cookie cutters

•maple syrup - the maple syrup it’s everywhere! In every single touristy shop we went into, lo and behold, there was maple syrup to take home. Eventually, I succumbed and bought some too.

•french - it’s fun not having to sit on a 10 to 12 hour flight just to hear and experience a different culture. I have to admit though, we were both a bit surprised that almost everything is in French, sometimes to the point where we had a bit of trouble, but I learned a lot of new phrases and words in the process. I only felt comfortable replying in French the last few days we’ve been here though.

Things We Didn’t Love
•broken ticket machines at metro stations - in every other country we’ve taken the metro in, we’ve been able to buy a metro card to use over several days. But for some reason, Montreal has decided to close down all its automatic ticket machines, forcing you to line up at the counter where a metro worker hands you a ticket that looks like the kind you get when you accumulate points on Chuck E. Cheese. Then you take that ticket and place it in a glass box right next to the counter. It’s just really unnecessary and ridiculous.

•cash only rules - a lot of restaurants and other places we visited accepted only cash. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. Why do establishments insist on making the lives of paying customers difficult by enforcing rules that aren’t current with the times anymore? Very few people carry cash these days, please do not make my life difficult by demanding I pay in notes. Thanks.

•french - yes, I know it’s on my ‘things we loved’ list, but it got a bit annoying at times. It would have had a different charm if we were in Paris, but I expected things to be a bit more Anglo-friendly than they were. Still, it was ok, I suppose. It’s quite a double edged sword.

•fur - Canadians love fur. Horrible, just horrible. For being such an environmentally conscious and friendly city, this was really surprising. I mean, they have entire shops devoted to the fur trade. Very disappointing.

•unnecessary fees - One sunny day, we woke up wanting to go to the beach. So we went to Parc Jean Drapeau for some fun in the sun. Little did we know, they were charging around $7.50 to get into the beach grounds! Seven dollars and fifty cents! To lay in the sand! Ged oudda heeeeeee

Bonjour, Montreal

Tomorrow, at 7:15 a.m., I board an Air Canada plane to Montreal. A couple hours later, my boyfriend will also board a plane from London, to meet me in Montreal. We haven’t seen each other since mid-October. I miss him a lot, more than any words I can write here now. This is a much needed trip for both us, not only because we miss each other terribly, but because we both really feel the need to just get away from it all. Life is changing, on more ways than one. Or, life has been the same for too long and we’re fed up of it either way.

I’ve heard such great things about Montreal. The Paris away from Paris, they call it. It was not only named the 10th cleanest city in the world by Forbes Magazine in 2007, but was recently ranked 16th in a list of the world’s most livable cities in the 2008 edition of Monocle Magazine. While I was doing some research, I found out that Montreal is a sister city to Yerevan, and that made me smile a bit. Apparently, Montreal has a large Armenian community, about 25,000, so that’s really exciting. There are a number of Armenian schools and churches. It would be nice meeting some Armenians away from the confines of Glendale. Most of them live in Laval, a suburb of Montreal. I have also found a couple Armenian restaurants there, the most significant and blatantly Armenian of them being Massis Restaurant, located in Laval.

The Montreal Jazz Festival will also be taking place while we’re there! I am so ready to get away.

I’ve had a series of horrible events take place in the last 2 weeks where I’ve cried many tears and sulked numerous times. For the past few months I’ve been going to the gym in hopes of getting in shape for the summer. For the amount of hard work I’ve put in, I accepted to see some difference, but that difference barely came. Which makes me think there is an underlying medical condition to this unfair curse. On top of that, a position I was vying for at work was yanked from under me and although I didn’t feel the sting then, this week it has definitely sunk in. But wait, there’s more. For the first time in probably a handful of years, I received a hair cut that really truly ruined my life. I spent the entire weekend crying. That should be enough information for you. I went to the Bokaos Aveda Salon at the new Americana shopping complex in Glendale. For a $100, the stylist, Angelica, gave me a hair cut fit for a Japanese doll. Don’t worry, I got my money refunded to me. Take that, Bokaos Aveda. It was just horrible. Then on the same night, a woman by the name of Diana Ljungaeus ruined my life with her snotty and holier than thou attitude at the SoCal Journalism Awards Gala, an event which I was sent to cover as press.

Work has been unbearable this entire week as well. If there was ever a time I needed to just clear my head, it’s now. I know I’m complaining and I wish so many things were different in my life, but really, I am so lucky to have such amazing family and friends that not only help me out, but most importantly make me laugh.

I always say, that the best things in life are the ones you have to work the hardest for, and I have. I’ve worked hard. I’ve worked hard for the things I love and in the end, the rewards are amazing. Sometimes though, I wish things weren’t so hard. Just the simple things. Like feeling good about myself, for starters. I’m 23-years-old, and there are a lot of times when I don’t feel comfortable in my skin at all. There are times when I hate myself, there are other times when I love myself, but most of the time, I’m never satisfied. And this is a horrible feeling to have, because it not only starts to eat away at you, but it affects other aspects of your life.

My hair will grow back, I got my revenge at Ljungaeus by writing an editorial and I got my $100 back.

But I digress. Back to Montreal. So I’m going to Montreal tomorrow. I’m going to Montreal with the love of my life. And I’m happy. And at this point, I’m going to let everything that’s bothering me disappear, because we both deserve to have a good time, dammit. I will be back, with photos and stories to share.

Photo of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (or Hearts!) by appaloosa via Flickr