CDN-NDG borough has announced a plan to rework the tricky five-corner intersection where Decarie, de Maisonneuve and Upper Lachine Road converge, but the Gazette is already cuing drivers not to like it.
Updates from October, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The Journal pushes a storyline here that everyone hates migrants, Americans and Québécois alike.
Thomas is quite right in his comment below. The story is about people living near the border, a new instalment being about hearing babies crying as people cross the border in the dark.
DeWolf
Do you think that if opportunistic politicians and right-wing media hadn’t been steadily beating the anti-migrant drum for the past few years, anyone would have noticed or cared about the “explosion of migrants”? Especially in rural Quebec?
I’m not saying it was a wise idea for the federal and provincial governments to bring in massive numbers of temporary foreign workers all at once, and there are certainly a lot of immigration scams being run by dodgy private schools. But the actual day to day impact for most people must be pretty minimal, right?
Think about all the Indian hate that has suddenly appeared everywhere online. There was some hysteria in Ontario this summer about Indians pooping on beaches that was being spread first by clickbait IG accounts and then the tabloid media. You constantly see shady posts on Reddit complaining about groups of Indian men hanging around and intimidating people – not just in one specific neighbourhood or city but all over the place. It’s gotten to the point where seemingly normal people will start ranting about Indians and “international students” (which has become a euphemism for “brown people I don’t like”) in real life. This is yet another version of the yellow peril – a xenophobic panic being fomented for profit and political gain.
thomas
Maybe I miss something, but this article is narrow in its focus. It is only about people who have property at popular border crossings. I’m not sure anyone would like to find human smugglers scoping out your farm as described.
Kate
Headline’s a bit clickbaity, then.
JP
It’s interesting you mention that, DeWolf. I hadn’t heard about some of the things you mention that are circulating.I consider myself privileged and lucky that my whole life I’ve mostly not ever encountered overt, explicit racism as an ethnically Indian person in Montreal, but this summer was the first time that I’ve experienced it overtly: Once being yelled at and called an “esti immigrant” from a driver waiting at a red light while it was green for me and I crossed (he was very aggressive and would not stop, and even continued once he turned onto the street I was walking on; I honestly think he picked on me because in addition to being Indian I’m also a woman, so an easier target for him) and once during a friend’s wedding, a person came into the lobby of the building to start ranting about “les indiens…” It’s somewhat distressing and it’s one of the reasons I stopped going for walks for a little while. I actually felt anxious about crossing at crosswalks and intersections for a few weeks after that, letting drivers pass at crosswalks even if I had the right of way, etc. I know so many groups, cultures and people experience this but it’s been strange to feel vulnerable (not sure if that’s the right word) all of a sudden (i.e., over the last couple of months). I suppose it will pass.
DeWolf
@JP That’s terrible and I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it does pass, but there needs to be a proactive effort to counter it before that happens.
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Kate
The Gazette looks at what it calls a ramen boom by profiling a downtown ramen joint so enthusiastically I can’t help wondering whether this is a sly advertorial. Anyway, the owners of the joint are not Japanese and are described as hoping to innovate beyond actual ramen. Why not spaghetti bolognese while you’re at it?
Short shameful confession: to me, ramen is still the stuff you buy at the Asian grocery in a pouch with wavy noodles and a flavour packet that somehow manages to contain 400% of your daily allotment of sodium. I’ve never had it in a resto, partly because I’m not crazy about the idea of a raw egg on top of my noodles.
Adding the link to a ramen festival that starts Tuesday.
walkerp
The eggs aren’t raw. They are soft-boiled, cooked sous-vide, so that the temperature is consistent throughout, the white holds and the yolk is warm but still runny. Also, you can ask to not have them, but nobody does because they are so delicious.
Mark Côté
I’ve never had raw egg on ramen; I’ve always seen soft-boiled eggs that are often marinated. A really good bowl of fresh ramen is amazing.
Kate
OK, not keen on soft-boiled eggs either.
After I left the Plateau, a ramen resto opened on the block and I probably would have eaten there all the time, but ramen hasn’t reached Villeray yet. In a way, I would worry if it did – this place is already gentrified enough.
carswell
Couldn’t agree more with walkerp and Mark Côté.
There is no comparison between packaged instant ramen and the genuine article.
The good news, Kate, is that you’re in for a treat.carswell
You can ask them to leave out the egg, you know. It won’t lessen the experience by much.
MarcG
The sodium content remains pretty stable between the two.
Kate
Is resto ramen significantly different from pho or the noodles you get at Nouilles de Lan Zhou?
And while we’re at it, can you get chankonabe here anywhere?
Ephraim
Pull out the Samyang 3x Spicy noodles and tell me if that isn’t a twice burn! Every bowl of ramen that I make has to have lots of vegetables added. But there are so many things you can do with them, including using them in other dishes. The sodium is usually in the soup packet, so you don’t have to use all of it. Just think of it as seasoning.
But the restaurant stuff is not the same. Let’s be realistic, anything instant isn’t really the same. No one compares espresso to instant coffee.
carswell
It’s different. The broth is richer — both in texture and in flavour — and it’s an umami bomb. Also, the vegetable additions, which can include things like corn, shift the flavour profile. Plus there’s none of the spiciness (often cloves, star anise, cinnamon, etc.) that is the hallmark of a good phô broth. Also, phô broth is usually beef bone based, while ramen broth is typically either chicken or pork based. And if fresh and well made, the noodles are different too, though closer to Lan Zhou wheat noodles than phô’s rice noodles.
Meezly
Would you rather have soup made from a bouillon cube or from real stock? That’s the difference between resto vs instant ramen – it’s really the made-from-scratch soup base, the foundation of any decent noodle soup, no matter the country it originates from.
Some ramen places specialize in only one type of broth, while others offer a choice, usually between tonkotsu (pork bone), shoyu (soy-based), miso and a spicy version. There’s usually a vegan/vegetarian option that’s mushroom or miso-based.
Sometimes you can choose the thickness of your noodles, like at Kinton Ramen. A good ramen joint will have denser, chewier noodles than instant ramen also can’t replicate.
Speaking of which, there’s a big Ramen Festival coming up. Tis the reason to enjoy a hot steaming bowl of noodles 🙂
Kate
Here’s the link for the ramen festival. It starts today. Also adding this to the original post.
Meezly, I’d rather have real stock. Wasn’t saying I preferred the package stuff, it’s just that I felt the word “ramen” jumped from “99¢ food for starving artists” to “trendy bowls of fancy stuff” pretty fast.
I took this picture in a Chinatown grocery window about 15 years ago. This is my mental image of ramen:
Meezly
Thanks for sharing the link, Kate. Sorry for misreading, the info must have morphed in my brain as I quickly scanned your post and the subsequent comments.
But gourmet ramen’s been trending for some time now, and has basically become part of any city or town’s food scene. The big explosion happened back in the mid-2000’s with Momofuku when David Chang “innovated” ramen. Many Japanese and non-Japanese restauranteurs alike have since jumped on the bandwagon, but claims of authenticity has never really been an issue as Asians have always respectfully appropriated other Asian cuisines. I think Montreal’s always been glacial compared to Vancouver and TO when it comes to catching onto Asian food trends.
CE
I always give the egg to my girlfriend. I’m with Kate on that.
Meezly
I wonder if Montreal’s second wave ramen boom was one of the reasons why KUROBUTA IZAKAYA (formerly RAMEN YA) closed its doors earlier this summer. They were one of, if not the first ramen places in the city. Did the ramen market get too saturated?
carswell
Meezly, that’s the second-floor walkup in Chinatown, right?
AFAIK it was one of the city’s first ramen joints. Ate there not long after it opened. The chef was Chinese. The soup was decent but nothing special and the noodles were dried and from a package, not fresh. After trying the product at competing restaurants that soon started popping up, I never returned.
DeWolf
I wouldn’t even call it “gourmet ramen.” It’s just ramen – like what people eat in Japan. Not particularly fancy although here you invariably have the Japanese surcharge because people somehow think Japanese food is automatically fancier than any other kind of Asian food.
Instant noodles were based on ramen but comparing the two is like comparing Kraft Dinner with pasta made with fresh ingredients. Same family, sure, but only distantly related.
Meezly
@carswell. No, I think that one in Chinatown was Sumo. Ramen-Ya/Kurabuta was on St-Laurent between Rachel and Marie-Anne. It was also Chinese-owned and our go-to neighbourhood spot for the longest time. Their ramen was always consistently good and they expanded to an izakaya when ramen and izakayas had its first wave of popularity in the city. We’re rather sad now that they’re gone.
carswell
@Meezly RIght. Sumo was on St-Laurent too. With that name, Kate might have found her chankonabe there though I don’t recall seeing it on the menu.
Meezly
@dewolf. I’ve only visited Japan once, but from what I understand, ramen in Japan is fast food, like what salaried workers slurp down at the train station on their way back home. But there’s also an art to it, like from what we know from the classic movie Tampopo, but perhaps not so well-known out west. I believe David Chang did help “gourmet-ize” ramen in North America. I remember an interview he did after Momofuku took off, saying it was really hard to price his ramen under $15 let alone $20 because he wanted to use quality ingredients and using slow-cooking methods, but people still saw ramen as cheap fast food.
walkerp
Ramen is interesting because it is kind of a “fast food” but only one that can be prepared fast in a restaurant setting. I’ve made the broth at home from scratch and it takes at least 3 days. Likewise the thin tender pork also requires at least a day of prep and slow cooking. But once you have made those things (and all the other elements that are added), then it is simply a process of assembling the ingredients, so can be put out quite quickly.
That’s why it makes sense to get it in a restaurant and why the home stuff is limited to those dried packets. I have love in my heart and stomach for both.Nicholas
Kate, there’s no need for an egg. I don’t remember having eggs in ramen I had in Japan more than one time, though it was an option regularly, but not an overwhelming option in the menus. It’s a mix and match dish, you should be able to choose the variety of ingredients you want. And while it is similar to other soup and noodle dishes from East Asia, the flavours and noodle type are different enough that it’s worth at least trying.
What I’m really hoping for here is a traditional yakitori place: hole in the wall, no seating, one employee, everyone just standing at a small shelf. 100 SF is all you need, including back of house space.
Mark Côté
Yeah there’s a huge range of ramen shops now. Meezly mentioned Kinton, which is a chain; it’s decent but definitely not bourgeois (I actually ate at one in Laval on the weekend, and it’s in a strip mall with a view of a vast parking lot).
I’ve made this vegetarian ramen recipe a few times and it always gets rave reviews from my guests.
DeWolf
@Meezly It’s fast food only in the sense that it can be served and consumed relatively quickly, but as walkerp notes it’s not easy to make the broth, and assembling a bowl of ramen takes knowledge and skill that isn’t equivalent to throwing a frozen burger patty on the grill.
The crucial thing is that even the cheapest ramen is made from scratch with quality ingredients. On my most recent trip to Tokyo in April, I went back to one of my favourite places where the ramen is only 600 yen ($5.50), but which has excellent chashu and a tonkotsu broth that can only be made by boiling pork bones for many hours. It’s cheap not because the quality is poor but because it’s very simple (just a few slices of pork, noodles, broth and half an egg), and there’s huge turnover.
And of course Momofoku-style ramen with more upmarket ingredients or innovative combinations of things aren’t rare either, and they tend to range in price from 1000 to 2000 yen.
@Nicholas I’ve thought about why we lack the kind of tiny, low-overhead, affordable places you’d find in cities across Japan, and I think it’s because the cost of setting up a restaurant or bar here is just too high to justify such limited capacity. And if such a place did manage to exist, I could easily see it becoming overwhelmed, with lineups down the block. (Just look at the gnocchi place.) There’s a very particular ecosystem that exists in Tokyo where you have so many tiny places that they collectively meet demand even they can’t handle many customers individually. (Then again we now have little Latino food courts on St-Hubert that are filled with multiple tiny food stalls, so maybe it could work in that kind of context.)
Mark Côté
I was just thinking about how, in North America, “fast food” is strongly associated with processed foods made en masse in a factory, which is apparently not true in a lot of the rest of the world.
Jim Strankinga
That’s a lot of ramen discussions, haha. I do love a Ramen or a Pho, don’t even care too much, as long as they are made well. The instant stuff may work sometimes, but nothing beats the real ones.
DeWolf
To bring things back to Kate’s original point, there’s a huge number of instant noodles out there and some of them are actually really good (and not even unhealthy). There’s a Singapore-made type of instant laksa that you can get here that is very tasty and there’s a Taiwanese brand of herbal soup noodles that are really great (I’ve only seen that one at Fu Tai but you can probably get it at T&T too).
Kate
DeWolf, can you name names?
thomas
The laksa that @DeWolf refers to is Prima Taste Singapore Laksa La Mian (available on Amazon) and I agree it is excellent.
carswell
@DeWolf I believe I know the brand you’re talking about but can’t recall the name. IIRC it was actually developed as a way to sell the company’s superior instant noodles and, while not, say, Satay Bros, it’s really very good. But it also has awfully high sodium levels.
carswell
Can’t find a shot of the nutrition facts table but here, via Amazon, is the ingredient list. Lots of sodium/salt.
Enriched wheat • Salt • Sodium carbonate • Disodium phosphate Water • Palm olein • Chili paste (water, dried chili, salt) • Dried shrimp • Shallot • Galangal • Shrimp paste (shrimp, salt) • Turmeric • Turmeric powder • Lemon grass • Laksa leaf • Chili • White pepper • Chili powder • Coconut milk powder [coconut milk solids, Sugars (maltodextrin), sodium caseinate (milk)] • Sugar • Salt • Yeast extract
Nicholas
DeWolf, I think that’s right. In Japan, in general, you can open a business in the ground floor of your home, so it’s very easy to do, so there are a ton, so no place is overwhelmed. Here (not just Montreal), there are a ton of hoops, and most buildings you can’t open a business. Especially with liquor licences, you need to maximize the number of customers. If we only got 4 of them city-wide they’d be a foodie destination, with long lines and tons of ‘gramming. If there were many, and spread out in neighbourhoods, people would stop at theirs on the way home, run into friends and neighbours, etc. It’d be like a fruiterie or bakery, but for restaurants. Also if the counter was full, you could just stand on the sidewalk with your beer waiting for your next skewer, probably something most government liquor agencies would shudder from.
carswell
Voilà. A single service is 45% of the recommended daily sodium intake.
https://www.amazon.ca/Prima-Taste-Laksa-Mian-185g/dp/B00B5NOPT8
DeWolf
@carswell Yes, lots of sodium, although that’s probably true for a restaurant bowl of laksa too. And at least in my case I almost never drink all of the broth in soup noodles, maybe 1/3 at most unless it’s especially delicious and not overly salty.
@Kate Others have noted the laksa, I think these are the Taiwanese noodles I was talking about:
https://www.yingxuanzhuang.com/en/product/ttl-noodle-pack/Ian
My fave instant noodle is Mama brand Tom Yum – so Thai, not ramen…
But for ramen, Kazu really is hard to beat. I’ve had a variety of their offerings, no raw eggs.For Pho, My Canh (Beautiful Soup in Vietnamese, they aren’t lying) on St Larry in the old chinatown is the bomb.
DeWolf
@Ian My Canh was one of my favourites and I went for the first time in about a year this summer and it was… bad. Felt a bit gutted afterwards. I hope it was a one off because it really was one of the best places in Chinatown for pho and also for some other soups like bun rieu.
Ian
Oh no! Was the broth weird?
Hopefully it was a one-off 🙁Kate
Thank you all for the noodle data.
Anton
You guys are all like part of the Ramen Advertorial Complex.
For me it’s pho all the way. Preferred place is Pho Bang New York.
Kate
I like Lyla in Park Ex for pho, even if it’s heretical to visit that neighbourhood for anything but curry.
MarcG
I ate a package of Mr. Noodles nearly every day after school in my teens. A friend told me that they use glue to hold the noodles together so I write a poem about my guts slowly solidifying. True story! P.S. I love that this subject has a record-setting comment count.
Meezly
FWIW, instant ramen is not only high in sodium, but conflict palm oil. Bad for health and the rain forests. I also love instant ramen but have it rarely as a guilty pleasure.
Ian
All hte more reason to go to a restaurant…
@Dewolf it’s been years but as I recall there’s a stretch of good pho around Van Horne on Cote des Neiges. I’m going to make a point of hitting My Canh in the next couple of weeks but if it disappoints I’ll head back to the CDN Vietnamese strip and see if they still deliver the goods.Kate
I’ve heard good things about two Vietnamese places in CDN on Victoria near Côte Ste‑Catherine metro, the Sen Vàng and the Hoai Huong, but I never find myself in that neighbourhood so haven’t checked them out.
CE
I second Lyla for Vietnamese. It’s excellent. When I lived in the neighbourhood, I was glad to have it. I love Indian and Greek food but it was nice to have another cuisine available in close proximity.
carswell
Predictable maybe but I always keep coming back to Phô Lien (Côte Ste-Catherine and CDN). Nguyen Phi on CDN across from Martin Luther King Park is also very good, though their broth is, IMHO, clovier than ideal. Like everything else at Hoài Huöng, the pho is tasty though I usually order other of their specialties (the menu’s quite extensive). Sen Vàng is renowned for its bún bò huê (spicy pho), easily the best in the ‘hood. And though it’s been quite a while, Phô Tây Hô on St-Denis south of Beaubien, used to be very satisfactory if not always enough to tempt me away from Ylan across the street, whose soup was OK but whose other specialties were often excellent.
For ramen and FWIW, my go-to joints are Kazu and Ramen Misoya downtown (the latter is said to have gone downhill since the pandemic, however) and Yokato Yokabai on Drolet and Rachel. Tried the ramen at the CDN branch of Kinto a while back; wasn’t impressed enough with the food to return, despite it’s being the only joint convenient to me, and the staff’s watch-me-do-my-Japanese-waiter impressions were kind of off-putting (hint: don’t sit near the cooks).
DeWolf
@Ian The broth was bland and one-dimensional, there were no herbs and everything just seemed way skimpier than I remember.
CDN is indeed great. My wife goes out there more than I do and last week she took me to one of her favourite places, Pho Hao at Kent/CDN last week. Delicious.
@carswell Pho Tay Ho is still good although I’ve always preferred their bun thit nuong which are extremely substantial and satisfying. Pho Jean-Talon also has/had excellent pho but I haven’t been much since they nearly doubled their prices.
For ramen, my wife and I like Nakamichi, which is a pretty low-key place on St-Laurent in Mile End. They do excellent cold ramen in the summer and it’s one of the few places that serve tsukemen (dipping ramen). Plus it’s owned by Japanese people unlike the vast majority of Japanese-themed restaurants in Montreal. The owners recently opened a café at Bagg/Cuthbert that does onigiri and specialty coffee, but I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet. (It’s kind of a return to roots because Nakamichi started out as a café on Mackay.)
carswell
…watch-me-do-my-Japanese-waiter impersonations…
Apologies for the brainfart.carswell
Thanks for the update and the reccos, DeWolf. Will check out Nakamichi and Phô Hao. The latter’s the one with the awning-covered terrasse just north of the Jean Coutu on the northwest corner of CDN and Van Horne, right?
DeWolf
Exactly! I had the pho with rare beef and tripe and it really hit the spot. Not too expensive and the small size was just right for lunch. (Many pho places got rid of their small sizes when inflation was bad.)
GC
I love that cold ramen at Nakamichi.
James 17:41 on 2024-10-15 Permalink
This intersection is definitely the most dangerous in my daily ride.
The section of De Maisonneuve west between Addington and Décarie was always one-way west until the MUHC super hospital was being built. Only for about the last 10 years has it been 2-way.
Eliminating cars between prud’homme and Décarie is an interesting step but will decrease by a lot the number of cars travelling west on De Maisonneuve (some would say that is good / Gazette will say that it is bad).
Peter McQueen had an idea for a bike bridge that would continue the De Maisonneuve bike path over Décarie and Upper Lachine. The problem I suppose is the cost and how to link up with the existing paths on the eastern side of Décarie.
carswell 20:06 on 2024-10-15 Permalink
It’s about time. Cyclists and pedestrians have been complaining about this intersection for decades and were long treated in the most condescending and dismissive fashion by car-loving councillors and mayors, most notably the disgraced Appelbaum. When biking, I’ll do just about anything to avoid it. I find it hard to envision a perfectly safe intersection for cyclists without a bridge but we’ll see what the city proposes.
BTW, in my experience, Gazette articles won’t display in browsers with an ad blocker but you can get around that by clicking the Reader Mode button on your browser if it has one.
Kate 09:26 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
Wednesday, it’s reported that the city also plans safety improvements to the St‑Pierre interchange in Lasalle, where two cyclists have died in recent years.
carswell, if I find that a Gazette story is accessible, I use their link. I haven’t worked out why some stories are paywalled and others not, but I have noticed that sometimes a story will become inaccessible after a period of time.
I don’t want to direct people to stories that can’t be read, so if a Gazette story is linked here that you can’t get to, please comment about it and I’ll find an archived link.
carswell 09:40 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
The article isn’t paywalled for me, Kate. I just get a persistent popup telling me to whitelist (hate that term) the site, a popup that, along with the shading of the underlying page, makes the article impossible to read. But a click on the Read Mode button not only displays the article but makes it more legible to boot.
Kate 10:31 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
OK, thanks. I’ve replaced the link to the Gazette story above with an archive link in any case.
MarcG 11:16 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
The ‘uBlock Origin’ browser add-on works well for blocking most ads, including the Gazette, without additional fudgery needed.
Kate 11:27 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
Including removing the paywall, MarcG?
MarcG 11:54 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
Yep
MarcG 12:12 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
Doesn’t work for La Presse, though, but the Read Mode trick works.
Nicholas 13:24 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
Good news about both intersections, both being very unpleasant; I’m sort of surprised now that my parents let me ride through both of them as kids. But I don’t see a huge change for the NDG one for safety (though it will help for traffic flow), as the tricky part is actually crossing the intersection, which won’t change unless they make the light cycle such that pedestrians and cyclists only go when all others have a red (but then there will be a long wait to deal with all the other movements). Reducing it to four legs from five will help, but I wonder if a roundabout would help here (though the grade change would make that difficult).
I do think it’s really funny that we spent millions of dollars to build that exit from Decarie onto de Maisonneuve for the MUHC, when there was already an exit to Sherbrooke, and now it won’t serve that purpose. I remember talking about it as a waste of money when it was proposed, but now even moreso.
Also, CTV says the VSP interchange is in LaSalle, but it’s in Lachine, like VSP is. It’s possible they’ll also work on the bridge over the canal (the border) and the intersection with St Patrick, which are both in LaSalle, but the majority of the work and the danger is Lachine.
Orr 18:07 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
That is a big improvement for general active transport safety. I passed through it on several occasions on bike and foot during my kidney donation process (so many tests!) and I had the patience to wait for the pedestrian signal, but it was not a good system at all. 2 deaths and 540 collisions in five years!
Because it is being discussed above as an issue, If you want to read the daily e-version of the gazette, your grande bibiotheque BANQ card gives you access to read the e-paper online at banq digital platform via the pressreader website. Kate cannot link to individual stories via it, as she has mentioned in the past. Nevertheless, it lets you read the gazoo and a wide range of other newspapers and magazines online easy peasy, no paywall hassles, browser cooking cleaning, no ad blockers (which I use an entire array of) workingor not working, forcing reader mode, etc. Just don’t read the comments. Never read the comments in a postmedia paper, never!
MarcG 18:45 on 2024-10-16 Permalink
That BAnQ access also gives you searchable access to the Gazette’s historical archive which is great for research.