Montreal becomes a Covid yellow zone as of Monday. Bars are still constrained to serve last call at 11 p.m., but François Legault is leaning on public health for them to allow later opening hours when there are hockey games, and for bigger crowds to be permitted at the Bell Centre. (And yet another piece has Mononc’ Legault saying reopening needs to be gradual.)
…Aaand, the bars will stay open later, midnight for drinks service, doors to lock at 2 a.m.
Workers for Urgences-Santé are on strike as of midnight but are, of course, restrained to keep providing essential services.
Romados has closed for good.
We need a “Montreal institutions you should eat at before they’re gone for good” list.
Unfortunate, but if you really want good Portuguese food make friends with a Portuguese resident of Mile end and they will show you the little family run places that nobody knows about that have awesome food
Good Riddance! They’ve been awful for years! Cheapening out goods, getting rid of experienced workers (most of whom have gone on to work at Piri-Piri ) and replacing them on the cheap… among other less savoury practices. They’re gross in and out..have been since the late 00s.
Been trying to get people to stop wasting their money there for years
I agree with azrhey that they haven’t been as good in recent years. The decline seemed to coincide with the son of the original owner taking over. Still, they were one of the first places to make really good Portuguese chicken and for a time they were arguably the best place to get it. Lots of people I know have fond memories of the place. I myself always kind of held out hope that they would reclaim their former glory, but I suppose it was not to be.
The Official Montreal institutions you should eat at before they’re gone for good:
Phó Bang New York
Daou
Dic Ann’s
Elatos
Chez Ma Tante
Momesso’s
Pizza Nino
Pataterie Chez Philippe
Pierrette Patates
Tripolis
All good choices, @martin! If I could add my 2 cents:
Phó Bang New York is definitely where you want to go for Vietnamese if you’re in Chinatown, but… Phó Tay Hô on Saint-Denis (close to Beaubien) is better Viet IMO.
+1 for Momesso’s. Not only for their sandwiches (which are excellent!), but also for a good espresso.
I have fond (if somewhat vague) memories of Tripolis after a night out on the town, since they were open late (or early, depending on your perspective). The octopus was always a favourite.
In the same vein as the fast food joints in your list, I might add Dilallo Burger in Little Burgundy. The one near Fabre metro is alright, but I prefer the original.
Another hotdogerie I would add is Décarie Hot Dog. Unpretentious to the point of circling back to being pretentious again, but great hot dogs and fries.
Seemed odd that Romados didn’t thrive during the pandemic era, given that it was basically a takeout spot.
People have been saying for awhile that Poule Mouillée is better. I knew a Portuguese guy who swore by the place at Clark and Rachel, but I don’t think it’s mostly chicken there, but other grilled meat stuff.
Dilallo On Notre-Dame is gone. Surprisingly Still a burger joint but it has a new name.
Is Chalet BBQ still open? I haven’t been there in a long time but i’d feel sad if it finally closed.
The other Dilallo Burger branch is still around (Ville Emard).
Where’s resto maven Zeke, btw? Haven’t seen him around these pages in quite a while.
@Kate your Portuguese guy is correct. Rôtisserie Portugalia is far superior and while they have selection of grilled meats it is definitely chicken focused.
Chalet and CSL BBQ both seem to be thriving, thank heavens. @thomas is right about Rotisserie Portugalia. I think you have to call ahead for certain dishes (like 24 hrs in advance). Tried Poule Mouille but it was a little too fancypants…
Can confirm that Chalet BBQ is still going strong. The Dilallo that was on ND was always Resto Meloche, I guess they had some kind of side deal they worked out for the burgers for a while. There used to be a Dilallo in NDG on Sherbrooke but it closed close to 20 years ago.
Chez Doval is my Portuguese grill place go to, just don’t sit on the fancy side.
Elatos is possibly the best souvlaki in town.
Marven’s for kalamarakia.
There is a Dilallo on Papineau and Jean Talon. Agreed on Pho Tay Ho. Add Beaubien Nouveau Systeme for burgers and Dobe and Andy in Chinatown for Roast Duck/Pork and other HK specialties
It does seem like the failure of Romados may have been self-inflicted and not a function of the pandemic or evil landlords. They should have crushed it going full takeout during the pandemic.
While I appreciate the alternatives, do any of them have the fries that compete with Romados? They did something with that spice and the crispiness that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere.
So, I hadn’t been to Dilallo on ND since probably early 2019 (maybe even 2018). Looks like I missed the name change:
https://montreal.eater.com/2019/5/30/18644509/dilallo-burger-notre-dame-meloche-27-kleine-shoppe-move
And the subsequent final closure:
https://www.silo57.ca/2020/09/15/lancien-dilallo-de-saint-henri-ne-rouvrira-finalement-pas-ses-portes
So much for “before they’re gone for good”.
The Journal’s weekend history bit comes and goes. This weekend they look at water main repairs at Sainte-Catherine East and Champlain.
A man who was fished out of the river near the Jacques-Cartier bridge on Saturday after falling from a boat later died of his injuries in hospital. The Gazette’s version of the story from CP says “personal watercraft” – what is that?
Personal watercraft = sea-doo.
https://www.sea-doo.com/content/dam/global/en/sea-doo/MY20/images/live-the-sea-doo-life/The-Sea-Doo-Difference/florida/SEA-MY21-REC-GTI-ACTION-MG0984.jpg
In the French article, they call it a “motomarine”.
Thank you.
I guess maybe skipping across the rapids on one of those things isn’t as safe as it sounds.
They can go quite fast. Some models can go over 100 kph, so if you do a faceplant into the water at that speed it can cause damage for sure. I have no idea if this particular guy was going that fast, but you certainly see them zipping around at those speeds pretty regularly. (I saw one out near Boucherville yesterday that looked like it could have been doing 140…)
Sea-doo and gas leaf blowers will become the most intriguing archaeological artifacts the next thinking species will unearth. Evolved terrestrial octopuses? Medusae?
There’s an unofficial dump in Petite-Patrie near the old incinerator – you can see it clearly on Streetview satellite – and on Saturday people spotted piglets emerging from a van there, and running around. To save the ones inside the van from dying in the heat, either the SPA or the SPCA took charge of them (depending on the version you read).
Not really a dump, I recently bought a bunch of big rocks there for a landscaping project ($20 for 1 cubic metre). There are also piles with sand, brick, gravel etc. A section of the terrain has a mixed pile of rubble that still needs to be sorted, and since there’s not always someone there and the gate is not locked I can see people adding to that. Piglets however? WTF?
Very cute. Good cops at work on a slow summer Saturday in a city of 4 million. We are a lucky people. 🙂
The Tribunal (which replaced the Régie du logement) ruled that Brandon Shiller can’t renovict the residents of Manoir Lafontaine as abruptly as he’d like, but they’ve got to leave over the next seven months anyway.
There was an anti-renoviction demonstration Saturday in Park Ex.
Landlords are learning that if they mess with the fire alarm system in a building enough, the fire service will evacuate the building for them.
Radio-Canada has a detailed piece on planning for the future of the old Royal Vic site. While McGill is going to be using part of it, the rest is meant to become an annex to Mount Royal park.
Je me rappelle cette douce soirée d’été où j’ai tranquillement traversé le boisé au pied de la montagne avec Ariane et Charles-Antoine pour aller leur présenter leur nouveau petit frère Gabriel (l’arrière du Royal Vic donnant directement sur le parc). C’était un moment magique, surréaliste. La cohue du boulevard, le calme de la forêt, la singularité de l’instant ont forgé un des plus forts souvenirs des mes années à Montréal.
@raymond: seriuesement. I really miss working at the old Vic. It truly was an oasis in the middle of town. The only other place that compares is the old marianopolis site. At least the public will still access the Vic site afterwards
That’s a nice vignette, Raymond Lutz.
I never worked at the Vic, but for a time I was a test subject at their Vision Lab. I discovered the back gate described in the article, where you could cross one of the parking lots and slip through into Mount Royal park. It was a nice walk after a couple of hours doing visual testing in a dark lab.
Jack, PQ never happy! But thanks for the link, I’d missed that.
Merci pour le compliment, Kate. Speaking of Marianopolis site, I remember mourning the destruction of a magnificent small woodland Messieurs de Saint-Sulpice ignominiously sold for profit to residential developers. Such beautiful mature trees… (for a few sport classes I played soccer at their foot while attending Collège de Montréal). Religious real estate should the facto become public spaces when unused by their community. It was behind the Atwater Club, when Atwater turns right going uphill. MAISON D’ÉTUDE? Seriously?
I’m pretty sure the CAQ don’t really WANT to give part of the Vic to McGill. But they also don’t want to lose these kinds of heritage buildings/sites. Not to mention there might be legal ramifications if the buildings are used for something other than the public good (healing in particular): “Stephen and Smith attached one caveat to their generous contribution to the City of Montreal: the hospital’s land and its buildings must only ever be used for healing”. Isn’t the land used as part of some emphyteutic lease (might need to fact check that).
That said, no other party came forward to refurbish/reuse the buildings, IIRC. They were too old and too difficult to be repurposed, so the only other option would have been demolition. Hopefully, McGill will be able to do something good with it.
I really hope it stays within McGill and is used for medical reasons and I don’t know why the pq is pissed. The building is already flanked by the neuro on the eastern side and the Allen on the west. It only makes sense to keep it as an extension of the university in some sort of medical capacity
Bérubé holds up a piece of paper for all to see, it’s all folded and beat up, lol.
We all know that he’s wrong about everything he said, but just to underline some especially stupid things there:
(1) this is not a gift, let alone a gift of $1 billion;
(2) this land would not be worth $1 billion if you cleared it and sold it with the right to build wall-to-wall towers, and it’s not worth $1 billion in with these buildings in their dilapidated state;
(3) no other entity even proposed any other use for the area, no other entity afford to keep it used as intended, no other entity is willing to take on the role of caretaker of these patrimonial structures, no other entity would do it so well;
(4) McGill is not the richest university in Canada (U of T’s endowment if 2x greater, and real estate is 10x more valuable; and
(5) the return on investment to the people of Quebec will be higher with these structures in McGill’s hands than in any other hands.
Most people (including most McGill students) thought those buildings were McGill buildings anyway.
“c’est McGill, l’université la plus riche au Canada” seems like something La Presse should fact check, if they want me to take them seriously.
While UofT and UBC, IIRC, have larger endowments, if you control for size, the picture changes somewhat. McGill has considerably fewer students, meaning its endowment-per-full-time-equivalent figure is highest in Canada. Anyway, it’s probably incorrect to say it’s the “richest university in Canada,” but you could at least make an argument in its favour. Remember that the currency of academia is prestige, and McGill has that in spades… of course comparing intangibles is a fool’s errand…
McGill is probably the best instituion in the province to make good use of these buildings, but my memory from my time there was that the school community’s interest in Vic site was kind of lukewarm. I think a lot of professors weren’t keen on walking up the hill, to be honest. At least McGill has a vision for the site and it does apparently have a “space deficit,” so why not? If “bulldoze all the buildings and plant trees” is off the table (imagine the reaction from the heritage crowd), “expand our world-class university” seems OK to me. Of course McGill will need considerably more recurring funding to operate the buildings, so the devil will be in the details. I don’t think anyone should expect McGill to expand its enrolment to occupy the new site, meaning additional funding will have to come outside the “per-student” model that Quebec uses to fund university teaching.
‘selon Taïka Baillargeon, «parce qu’il y avait de grands jardins, c’était très vert, il n’y avait pas tous ces stationnements qu’on voit aujourd’hui. C’était très dans le style écossais de l’époque, c’était les grands châteaux en montagne, très romantiques, avec beaucoup d’arbres. Donc il y avait ce visuel-là, puis on retourne un peu à ça.»
Ça devrait être le but, de rétablir la verdure et la mise en valeur du bâtiment. Dans les années quatre-vingt, j’ai passe un semestre d’été à vivre dans un des dortoirs adjacent. Je me rappelle encore la marche sur la pente dessous l’arche de pierre en allant à ma chambre. J’ai toujours pensé que le “Royal Vic” etait l’un des plus beaux immeubles de la ville et que l’endroit au flanc de la montagne etait magique.
Joey 07:49 on 2021-06-14 Permalink
What’s the justification for the 11pm last call and midnight closing time?
DeWolf 10:37 on 2021-06-14 Permalink
Because only naughty people stay out past 11 (unless there’s a hockey game).
Meezly 18:26 on 2021-06-14 Permalink
People tend to drink more the later they stay at the bar. The more you drink, the less critical judgement you have.