The Irish Embassy Pub & Grill

I am an embarrassment to Ireland. How can I be Irish and, well, culturally and ethnically not? All I have is a piece of paper that I've only seen once in my life saying Hey, This Person is Irish. Which reminds me of this goal I had a while back: I should be at least culinarily aware of Ireland.
...but I'm not, really.


So back to history. Over a month ago, I was in Toronto for vacation and we were wandering around downtown after having an extravagantly happy time in Centre Island (THERE WERE BUNNIES!!), and we happened upon a Guinness sign on a building at an intersection, and my mum noticed the word Irish (one of the handful in her English vocabulary). As it turns out, it was The Irish Embassy (Pub & Grill)! Now, it was nearly 4:30 pm, so we decided to have an early dinner. Come to think of it, we might have skipped lunch that day. It's all a blur now.

Of course, Guinness is beer and I don't talk about alcohol on this blog (but I'm going to be legal in the US soon, so, would this change?), but my mum encouraged me and my brother to have a Guinness (Irish culture shot, all in one!) because we were in Canada. I found this extremely comical and absurd. Have beer? With the family? At 4:30pm? In Toronto? So, *giggles*...but no.

Now I wonder whether I should've, because the next time I get to have a Guinness will be in a fortnight when I turn 21.

So, The Irish Embassy! What a place! High ceilings, clear menu, posters of Irish cottages and castles next to the bathrooms, green doors, bar, clean tables, and giant goblets (for the Guinness)! I felt like I was in some sort of wonderland (or maybe I was just tired). There's something vaguely nostalgic about all this, even though I've never actually been to an Irish castle or cottage. Perhaps I'm wondering about the life I could've had. Overall, I had a wonderful experience.

We ordered Irish poutine (what a mix?), cottage pie, and lamb stew.
The poutine had no gravy - it was all mayonnaise, cheese, and salty pig bits. It was tasty and probably the least authentic Irish thing on the menu, which was fine.



Stew. My mum said it reminded her of when she lived in Ireland. I don't like how the flesh was overcooked.



Cottage pie: my favourite! It also came with an assortment of veggies!!

Montreal Day Two

My brother and I went to the Biodome, Olympic Tower, and botanical garden. The garden was an eye-opening experience for me, since I knew so little about the cool plants beforehand. Because the gardens were so interesting, we missed lunch.

CC Cafe Quiche Lorraine ~5$

• Eh. Normal quiche.

Franx Express, ~5%

• Delicious poutine at the Peel RESO, which is this underground area that connects a bunch of metro stops and is stocked with clothes stores and food courts! Not-too-salty gravy, slightly off-tasting cheese curds (due to no refrigeration?),  and ever-crispy fries! The cheese curds were stringy and slightly melted too, at parts. So, poutine can be delicious!
• The guy who sold the poutine to me actually doesn't know much French. He used to live in the US, and then moved here and loves it here.
• Unfortunately, the Peel RESO closes around 6 pm, and we didn't realise that the McGill RESO was the popular one and closes at around 9.

Crepes Gerard $9

• We got a peach melba crepe. It was a canned? peach, one scoop of vanilla ice cream, one strawberry, a handful of almonds, and caramel syrup, all made lovelessly with ungloved hands, 10 minutes before closing. It was a very bland, chewy crepe.

Kinder Surprise from Super C (3.29$ for 3)

• I no longer long for Kinder Surprises. There is no price that can buy back my 5 or 7 or 9 year old's excitement at nibbling at a hollow egg, and snapping open a bright orange capsule filled with plastic parts that can be assembled into a tricycle or something. Sure, the wrapper looks the same, and the milk/white chocolate is just as scanty (20 g...), but this time, the capsule was a mustard yellow one-piece blob! Disappointment!
• To make matters worse, my toy was a piece of paper! Time to stop liking Kinder Surprises on Facebook, I suppose.

Montreal Day One!

My brother and I went to Montreal from the 11th to 16th of August, by bus. We managed to squeeze in nearly all of the important events in four days (the 11th and 16th were spent travelling), and to me, the most important events included FOOD - markets, grocery stores, restaurants, cafes, etc. Unfortunately, it didn't go as well as anticipated, as we didn't make it to a few places. Ah well. As Montreal is such a clean, entertaining place, I expect to go back in the future. As I don't feel like detailing the non-food entertainment, here goes the details about all I ate (in 4 consecutive blog posts), in non-paragraph form with final prices! This summer I've also pretty much been eating animals, and this continued in Montreal. I will perhaps revert back to a "mostly-vegetarian" when the semester starts again and I feel more in control of my life.

We spent a lot of money on food, and tacking on 15% tax + 15% tip made meals much pricier than I am used to. However, we're travelling and trying foods, and that's what matters. Point of life is to eat, right?

Day 1: 12th

Lays Fries & Gravy Potato Chips 1.71$

• These were pretty good!
• 

Café Depot ~8$

• In my question for une boulangerie at 8-9am on a sleepy Montreal Sunday, we ended up here. Unfortunately, this was a chain store (like Starbucks) and nothing was particularly appealing. If I were travelling alone, I would've walked around more searching for a neat local place, but I think my brother was hungry.
• My brother got an iced mocha coffee thing that tasted like green bean ice lolly to me. It wasn't that sweet, and I enjoyed it (but I enjoy most mocha things, so that doesn't mean much). I think I ended up with 1/5 of it because it was too much for him. The ice chunks were too coarsely crushed; We had a round of ice the size of a quarter.
• 
• We shared a slice of blueberry cheesecake that was merely ok. I realised that my standards for restaurant foods have slowly increased since I started learning to cook, particularly regarding desserts. I now look at a lot more food with disdain because I can make a whole batch of [insert dessert] for the same price of a made-weeks-ago-frozen-and-reheated dessert at a restaurant. This isn't true for macarons or baked Alaska yet, though.

Frites Alors! ~40$

• Well! Our second attempt to order in French was foiled again! Everyone can tell that we are not fluent (to zoom forward in time, though, there were two instances in which I spoke all French - badly - buying Metro tickets, and buying maple syrup at the Atwater Market). The waitress was really nice but forgot to give us our second sauce (but gave it to us when we asked her where it was).
• 
• Ever since I read the Wikipedia article about poutine, I've wanted to try it. Unfortunately, cheese curds are difficult to find in the Northeast, and now, I had the chance! I could eat poutine for all meals in Montreal! So, of course, I got the smoked cheese poutine. My brother saw that there was cheval tartare, which is horse tartare, which is horse pieces mashed up with spices and served raw. As we've both only tried raw fish before (sashimi), we immediately decided to order that. Finally, for some reason, my brother thought that it was necessary to order a third dish (sure, we were hungry, but not famished?), so we got fried calamari with amazing Frites Alors! sauce.
• 
• The smoked cheese poutine was a disaster. I didn't like it (although perhaps you would enjoy it). The fries had initially been cooked perfectly, but the cheese curds (or was it the gravy?) were so salty! Over time, the fries became extremely soggy and I felt like I was eating roasted, soggy, semi-mashed potato strips instead of fries, which defeats the purpose of using all that fatty cooking oil. Apart from the excessive peppercorns that added a lingering spiciness, it wasn't flavourful; all the volatile compounds in the gravy were masked by the salt. In retrospect, I probably should've just tried the original poutine.
• 
• The fried calamari was perfect, and the Frites Alors! sauce was drinkable (although a bit spicy). It is always a plus when a sauce is drinkable.
• 
• The raw horse mince (cheval tartare) was...interesting. I tried it by itself, and with bread. It was sour (there were chunks of pickle in it), oily (fatty tasting?), and kind of bland and tacky/gluey. Apart from that bizarre oiliness, there was no discernible flavour. I would not want to try it again.

McDonalds

• Free Wifi.

Moi & Toi Café ~25$

• I wasn't hungry at all (too much food from Frites Alors!) so I didn't even want to eat dinner. However, my brother wanted to have a meal, so we went, and I got Crème brûlée because I've never had it before. It was fine.
• 
• 
• My brother got ratatouille with fried goat cheese (ostensibly) and it came in a cuboid with a square of something that tasted like a mild cheese cracker. I don't remember ratatouille as something densely packed, but, sure, it was fine.
• 
• The meal came with three pieces of baguette.
• The service was quite nice.

Super C ~17$

• I enjoyed visiting this supermarket. I like checking out different cultures' supermarkets because they stock interesting items, whether in pairs, or on sale, or even merely the size of the items. For example, there was a whole cheese section (no cheese counter though), with picnic sized artisan and fancy cheeses, while the generic cheddars and stuff were in a different section of the store. There were small tins of tomato sauce (150g?) as opposed to the big tins at our stores. The baguettes were skinny, the beer was easily accessible, and there were a whole bunch of fruits and vegetables that I had never tried before.
• We got 5 Mars bars, one Dairy Milk Hazelnut bar, one Crunchie bar, 3 Kinder Surprises, 125 g Camembert cheese, one small baguette, and some juice.
• 
• We tried the Camembert and baguette that night (even though I wasn't hungry, and I didn't really have an appetite either), and it was quite good. The rind was pretty tasteless and a bit chalky, while the cheese was soft, mild, and creamy.