On the 12th day of Christmas, I’m craving a dozen Montreal-style bagels
1 Comment
Karen Hamilton
December 21, 2011
On the twelfth day of Christmas, Foodsters drove to me
Twelve Montreal-style bagels
Eleven empanadas
Ten Bella gelatos
Nine Napoli pizzas
Eight deep-fried winglets
Seven meat-filled ‘wiches
Six buns a-steaming
Five Memphis Feasts!
Four poutines
Three Peking Ducks
Two Japadogs
And a steaming bowl of chicken congee.
One of the reasons I accepted Van Houtte’s invite to fly a Foodist to Montreal last month was so that I can see, first-hand, what the bagel fuss is all about. I came home armed with 2 dozen samples from St-Viateur, whose bagels are rumoured to be quintessentially Montrealesque.
Not convinced, I called Foodsters to pick up contenders at a couple of bagel shops for a good ol’ fashioned Bagel Smackdown.
We then served the remainder to our Foodists guests when we invited them chez nous for a Montreal-themed potluck. The results? Our local bagel purveyors stood up quite well to the benchmark from Montreal, to the point where our guests couldn’t identify the supposedly superlative ones from St-Viateur.
Here’s where to start if you’re looking for Montreal-style bagels in town.
Solly’s: eat ‘em au naturel
Look at the photo above and decide which you’d pick up first. We thought that the bagel in the upper-right corner satisfied the hunger in our eyes best, and our readers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagr.am heartily agreed. The cake-like interior was moist and springy; this translated to the most enjoyable chew before bagel met toaster. If you like to eat your bagel fresh from the shop and without dressings, head on over to Solly’s.
Siegel’s: lover of cream cheese
Siegel’s was our top pick for a toasty treat. The bagels were a little too bland and yeasty to eat straight out of the bag, but get them crispy and slathered with cream cheese and they couldn’t be beat. The smoked salmon cream cheese that you can grab at the shop was pretty memorable, too.
PHAT Deli: smoked meat and benny bagel delights
PHAT Deli wasn’t part of Bagel Smackdown but it gets honorary mention here. It’s the first place I wrote about when Tiny Bites began nearly 4 years ago, and it’s the first place that made me fall in love with the bagel. I’m still drawn in every now and then for an Everything bagel with freshly made dill cream cheese.
It’s is also the first place that comes to mind when I’m in the mood for a bagel-style Eggs Benedict. My favourite style of benny at PHAT is chock full of tomato and avocado. The replacement of bagel for biscuit makes this dish a lot more filling than usual, so split it with a friend if you’re a small eater like me.
Where do you go for a bagel fix?
From December 10-22nd, I’m a media sponsor for Foodsters’ 12 Days of Christmas Food Drive. Follow along as I share what my top 12 food and restaurant cravings are this season (with some poetic license to boot).
Categories: Broadway, Downtown, Food, Food Purveyors, Kitsilano, Restaurants, Yaletown
Three things I’ll miss about Fuel Restaurant
4 Comments Karen HamiltonNovember 16, 2009
You may have already heard that Kitsilano jewel Fuel Restaurant will be closing its doors at the end of the month. Many in the Greater Vancouver food community are lamenting its passing even though the people behind Fuel are not truly going away. They’re reopening a few days later as a more casual, Pacific Northwest concept that will hopefully be affordable enough for it to become a regular dining haunt of mine.
I was lunching at Fuel for one last time last week when it suddenly dawned on me that I had never written about what has been my top Kits restaurant pick for the past year. I wish this was less of a eulogy, but better late than never to go over the top three things I love about Fuel.
And who knows…maybe Fuel will listen to this little piece of mine and consider keeping these items around for the next incarnation.
1) Sitting by the open kitchen
There are only two circumstances where I would prefer to sit at the bar for a meal: a) when I’m dining solo and b) when I get to watch my meal being prepared.
The latter is why I prefer to take a barstool seat in front of Fuel’s open kitchen. Like my experience at Atlanta’s Two Urban Licks, eating by the kitchen allows me to watch the staff work their magic and whet my appetite with the sizzle of the grill and the aromas that waft my way as each plate comes together.
It also gives opportunity to converse with the people closest to the food and ask them questions: what’s in season? Where did you source your ingredients? How’d you make that amazing sauce?
2) Business lunch set menus
When I have a client or business partner that I want to impress, I usually take them to Fuel.
They offer $25 and $35 “business lunch” set menus, guaranteed from start to finish to take 45 minutes or less. Fuel won’t rush you if you wanted to dally, but it helps to know that they will accommodate 1-hour schedules and won’t mind when you whip out a laptop while you eat.
I’ve been able to get Wifi access and outlet power during all the business lunches I’ve had, so if you might need these services, ask – it may be something that they routinely offer.
3) Fried Chicken Fridays
The fried chicken special offered for lunch on Fridays is the main reason that I’ve been able to return so often to Fuel without draining my disposable income for the month. The $20 combo includes a beer plus 3 pieces of buttermilk battered chicken, seasonal greens, a butter-laden biscuit, and housemade gravy that I cannot get enough of.
They’ve improved the recipe since my first Fried Chicken Friday visit, now dunking said chicken twice into the buttermilk batter for extra crisp. Should this plate pass over to the new restaurant’s menu in December – and better yet, should this become a regular item not just to be enjoyed on Fridays – I suspect that I’ll become a familiar face at lunchtime in the Kitsilano area.
Fuel Restaurant
1944 W 4th Ave | Kitsilano
(604) 288-7905
Categories: Food, Kitsilano, Restaurants
A tale of two Daniel Boulud cities
1 Comment Karen HamiltonJuly 26, 2009
How often does one get the chance to try the cuisine of a celebrated chef in two different cities in North America?
I imagine that it doesn’t happen often – not unless, like me, you happen to live in one of them and your husband is in love with the glamour of the other.
Here’s our take on the two Daniel Boulud outfits in our hometown of Vancouver and our weekend getaway of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Daniel Boulud Brasserie (Las Vegas)
It was our first night in Sin City and my first day ever in this town of gambling and glitz when we strolled into the plush Wynn for our 6pm seating at DB Brasserie.
The ostentatious luxury that the Wynn oozed was certainly present in this restaurant. We were ushered to a patio table that overlooked a vast pond and an even more expansive waterfall, where we were told by our server, Paco, was the site of a light show and froggy song-and-dance as the evening waned. Puzzled by this description, we shrugged and looked at the menu.
Prices were sky high as to be expected of this town and of a restaurant of this reputation. My husband decided on the 3-course prix fixe. It was affordable at under $40 USD, but the quantities sounded enormous. I opted for 1 dish: a duo of beef containing Boulud’s signature slow-braised short ribs. That alone exceeded Kurt’s order by nearly $10, but I could at least expect to minimize food waste.
I should have just ordered a soup, because the kitchen adorned us with amuses and petit fours anyhow. However, I am incredibly glad that I had ordered the duo, because the short ribs were unbelievably spectacular. Worth every penny that we paid; I only wish it hadn’t been paired with a tenderloin. While clearly of good quality, it was so overwhelmed by the goodness of the short ribs that it somehow detracted from the discovery.
By the time dessert came round, the American portions had gotten to both of us, and Kurt declined the dessert that came with his meal. Paco, perhaps concerned that we weren’t enjoying our food, may have had something to do with the kitchen finding out about Kurt’s 30th birthday and sent him a molten ganache cake with a special message written on the plate. They threw something in for me since I was just sitting there…and then came the petit fours!
Combined with the show on the pond, meeting Chef, and the tremendous customer service of Paco and the rest of the front of the house, we had ourselves a good time indeed.
DB Bistro Moderne (Vancouver)
It was with this extreme experience in our short-term memory that we found ourselves at the Daniel Boulud restaurant in Kitsilano less than 3 weeks later, this time to celebrate our 3-year wedding anniversary in style. [Hmm - that's a lot of 3's.]
Incredibly, DB Bistro held up to its glamourous Vegas counterpart. No crazy hotel or giant pond frog with the voice of Louis Armstrong, but each dish exuded the same quality of taste that we first had in Nevada.
Each dish was again sized for American tastes: much too large for the smaller, multi-course portioning we are accustomed to in the West Coast. For the second time, Kurt declined the dessert that came with his prix fixe menu. For the second time, our server conveyed to the kitchen that we were celebrating our anniversary, adding also that we had homemade pie waiting for us at home.
You’d think that it would cause the kitchen to take a hint and simply send us off with a small plate of petit fours… instead, they chose the lightest of their desserts, wrote “Happy Anniversary” on the plate, and watched as we ate every last bite and thanked them for their thoughtfulness.
One thing’s for sure – if you are in a Daniel Boulud city and you celebrate a special occasion with them, make sure they know of it, because they’ll treat you like royalty.
Categories: Beyond Vancouver, Blogathon 2009, Blogging for Social Change, Food, Kitsilano, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Travel, USA
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Tiny Bites is a food blog that explores all things edible and imbibable in Vancouver, British Columbia. More >
Articles by Karen Hamilton
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