I enter the airport, and then attempt to get through it. One broken automated pathway, one broken escalator, one broken elevator, and two more broken automatic doors later, I start to feel like the Escape from New York character Snake Pliskin in an “Escape from Montreal” movie. I don’t know where all this money that Montreal gets is going, but automation doesn’t seem to be it.
I grab a cab to my hotel (also the name of a Lowe’s theater chain in the States). It was a very last minute deal on Expedia, which fills me with trepidation. By this point, I’ve had enough bad Expediot moments to stop using them.
I check in, and then take the elevator to the seventh floor. The hallway to my room has alternating patches of carpeting and ice white marble. Smart. When you live in snow country, the carpet absorbs the water from your shoes before you hit the slippery marble.
I enter my room, and it is positively baller! Facing the doorway, I even have my own alcove. And my alcove has its own mirror. Sadly, my baller entourage only consists of a backpack and carry-on luggage. But hey, you work with what you’ve got. I say “Let’s roll bitches!” and then drag my carry-on luggage wheels through the thick carpet thinking this would look so much cooler with a rock-star entourage.
I am starving so I look up a place called Joe Beef. It has a two-hour wait. Ok, no to that. But if you’re in a foreign place at the last minute and want to eat at a good restaurant, just choose a place that doesn’t accept reservations.
Le Robin Square is my dining choice. The Tripadvisor website photo looks Chinese, but the description says Canadian cuisine. Luckily (?) tonight there is a snowstorm again and the tourist season is over. So I get to skip the normal one-hour wait. I sit down on a small second floor loft that overlooks the main floor. Except for a a few small tables, painting of a large cheetah stalking me and a tiny refrigerator escapee from a local McGill university dorm, I am alone The restaurant doesn’t have any fancy decorations. It has more of a laid back Brooklyn (hipster) vibe. The owners are two sisters, but the entire Robin family and their extended network of friends staff the restaurant.
I order the “Ultimate Experience” (a beautiful thick slab of pork belly) and a La Pitoune beer (a sexy Quebec blonde of which four more are in my future). The pork belly is amazing, and a few beers in I start to tipsily wax philosophic to the grumpy looking Cheetah. When you pour beer you empty the bottle, dregs and all. But with wine, the placental sediment leftover from its birth is avoided with Oedipean fervor (that sentence alone qualifies as a failed breathalyzer test).
Since I was a bit irrigated with beer, it’s a good thing that I have the upstairs to myself. I drop a knife onto the floor, but being alone, I realize that no one will know so I just keep using it. But a waitress immediately arrives from downstairs with new utensils. She says that the owner downstairs heard me drop the knife and asked her to bring up a new set of silverware. This is a testament to why most successful restaurants are micro managed by their owners. Also, women really do hear everything.
The dessert is good by most standards, but after the phenomenon that was the belly of Monsieur Cochon, it pales in comparison. Sometimes consistently doing an excellent job, night after night, even in an empty restaurant with a tipsy moron upstairs is the hardest thing of all. It takes a passion for success married to a fear of failure that only comes from owners running their own businesses.
As I leave the restaurant, I completely stiff the waitress on her tip. Le Robin Square has a weird policy (for this kind of restaurant) of having you go to the front and pay the cashier. This and those sexy six-inch tall Quebec blondes cause me to forget to leave the lurking second floor cheetah a tip. Sadly the waitress did an excellent job but got nothing.
I grab a cab back and have one final beer at the hotel bar. The TV hanging overhead has an important Newsflash! I expect news of a sudden terrorist attack or natural disaster. No, rather American Vice President Joe Biden is visiting “Ottawa under a shroud of secrecy and speculation.” The V.P. is meeting with “aboriginal leaders and provincial Premiers.” Meanwhile the American press has absolutely nothing on this. After Vice President Biden’s predecessor unloaded a shotgun into someone’s face (while still in office), it has been hard for any V.P. since to seem newsworthy.
Next to me, two locals are having a conversation about hockey. Canadians from Montreal are fanatical in their love of hockey. Want a foolproof assassination method? Put your victim in a closed elevator with a Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens fan. If you don’t want any physical evidence left, use N.J. Devils and N.Y. Islanders fans instead.
The next day I grab an Uber and head an hour outside of Montreal to my next meeting. The Uber driver wants to verify the address (it is in the middle of nowhere). We drive along bleak stretches of flat farmland. The landscape here is punctuated by clusters of houses. Their weathered faces are huddled close together for warmth. No tents line the driveways. The trees that dot this country road are tall, thin and grey. All are barren.
Canadians from Montreal are fanatical in their love of hockey.
We cross a half-frozen river flowing next to a stark, white church. It thrusts upward from the ground like a thrown spear. The land here is reminiscent of the movie “Fargo.” As we drive by a “Fruits et Legumes” farm stand, my driver asks me what’s out here? I reply “un abbatoir de foie gras” (a foie gras slaughterhouse).
In Which I Grapple With the “Cruelty” of Foie Gras
My meeting today is with Monsieur Olivier Nassans of Les Fermes Hudson Valley. They are the largest foie gras producer in North America. Foie gras is French for “fatty liver” and there are few foods that are more controversial. Hell, I work in food and I’m not (yet) completely confident whether foie gras is moral or not.
On one side of the argument you have P.E.T.A. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Who is going to argue with a mission statement like this? Their work in alerting the public to the horrors of milk fed veal was noble. They state on their “About Peta” website page “PETA focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time” the food industry being one of the four.
However I don’t agree that “meat is murder.” To be clear, the English Oxford dictionary defines murder as “The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” Cows killing cows seems more in line with the idea of murder using this trusted definition.
I am meat. One day I will die and my remains will be eaten. Are the living organisms that then consume me immoral and evil? No, they are simply the garbage men of nature. So I don’t agree that all meat consumption is wrong because it requires the murder of an animal. For an act to be criminal, there must be both Actus Reus (criminal act) and Mens Rea (criminal intent) present. Watch an African cheetah take down a Thomson’s gazelle. That act of survival is about as premeditated and bloody as it gets.