If you haven’t been keeping up with my latest series of posts from another recent epic food trip, this posting is the fourth and final posting from my trip to Montreal from Friday 2/25 to Sunday 2/27. So far I have written up my lunch on Saturday 2/26 in the posting Friday For the Foodies: Montreal, Part 1 – Schwartz’s Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen, my lunch on Sunday 2/27 in the posting Friday For the Foodies: Montreal, Part 2 – Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon and my amazing and challenging dinner on Friday 2/25 in the posting Friday For the Foodies: Montreal, Part 3 – Nose to Tail dinner at DNA Restaurant. This last posting is all about my dinner Saturday 2/26 at Au Pied de Cochon.
If you go to Au Pied de Cochon you better be aware of two things. 1) Chef Martin Picard loves meat, especially Foie Gras and 2) The menu is not for the faint of heart or for those with heart conditions.
The one caveat I have to give with this review is that this was a meal where four of us relaxed and enjoyed the food, service and ambiance. I did take pictures of the meal, but I did not write down everything we ordered – and we ordered a lot. I reached out to my fellow diners that night and got some items ID’d but not all of the pictures will have the menu item labeled. Hey, sometimes on these trips you just want to sit down, relax and enjoy the food, ambiance and people you are with.
READ ON for more on Jon’s trip to Au Pied de Cochon…
Last week, I started to recap the epic three-day dining weekend I spent in Montreal with my story Friday For the Foodies: Montreal, Part 1 – Schwartz’s Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen. This week brings part 2 of the weekend, my trip to Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon aka The Sugar Shack.
My retelling of the weekend is not happening in the order I ate however as my meal at Cabane à Sucre was the last of the weekend and Schwartz’s Deli was the second of the weekend. However, once all four of my meals from the weekend are written up you will understand why I did them in the order I did.
Opened in 2009, Cabane à Sucre is a sister restaurant to Au Pied de Cochon which has been open in Montreal since 2001. Both restaurants are helmed by Chef Martin Picard whose unabashed love for Foie Gras has earned him both respect and scorn in Canada. We were lucky enough to have gotten a reservation at Au Pied de Cochon the Saturday night I was in Montreal. One of the friends who I was with tried to get a reservation the day Cabane à Sucre started taking reservations for 2011 but was shut out. We later found out from one of Martin Picard’s partners in Au Pied de Cochon that the demand for seats for the 2011 season (all of 9 weeks) was so high that the entire season booked out in less than 36 hours this year. Luckily for us, the weekend I was in Montreal was opening weekend which meant that Cabane à Sucre was doing a soft opening weekend (less people sat to get the kinks out, get the service down). During our meal at Au Pied we were lucky enough to score seats to the first seating (11AM) of the second day of service for 2011. On the morning of Sunday, February 27th we hired a car and a driver and headed out from Montreal to St-Benoît de Mirabel, Québec (about a 25 minute drive). 35 Minutes later we arrived at what we later would realize was nirvana. READ ON for more on Cabane à Sucre…
