Articles by Josh Davidson
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Fringe Food
Gastronomie en Lumiere
Culinary artistry is back in the spotlight this month, part of a wide-ranging city strategy towards “keeping February fun”—a response either to mid-winter suicides or to the failing economy, I’m not sure. Festival Montréal en Lumière picks up where Igloofest left off, culminating in that notorious late-February climax of creativity: Nuit Blanche on Feb 26.
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Fringe Food
Tasting a Former Time
When Ken Ilasz began baking fruitcake according to a recipe handed down by his Austrian great-grandmother, he had no idea of the profound connections it might hold right here in Montreal.
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Slow Down & Smell the Cooking
Looking Past the Mythology of Sustainable Food
What is sustainable food? Ask that question of a few local chefs, activists or scholars, and you’ll swiftly be dissuaded from trying to define it. The term, it seems, is a less achievable ideal than sad symptom—its very existence a nod to the disastrous state of the global food system.
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Fringe Food
Steak-Frites or Steak-Frites
The last time I visited a restaurant with only two menu options, I was in Penn Station. You had to eat both choices standing up. It was hardly a restaurant and its offerings hardly constituted a menu.
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Dance That Hangover Away
Eggs With a Side of Vibe at Disco Déjeuner
Nouveau Palais owes its recent success to one simple thing. Vibe. It’s a subtle attribute, one many restaurants try too hard at and subsequently fail to achieve. But Nouveau Palais has, by all accounts, nailed it, and though it had hit me on several previous late-night visits, my séjour at Disco Déjeuner this past Saturday simply confirmed it.
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Fringe Food
Let the Chef Headline
As you can probably glean from the name, SAT’s current focus on culinary innovation takes the cozy wintry form of the indoor apéritif: offering a warm dynamism to those bleak hivernale hours of retreating light. A riff off the traditional 5 à 7 happy hour featured at many a brasserie Montréalaise, FoodLab 5@10 offers a weekly thematic tasting menu paired with a carte of natural (mostly Québec) wines, all in their brand-new 3rd floor tech-heavy environment. It’s a freshly-spun selection of small plates, best described as ‘dinner…ish.’
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Fringe Food
An Anarchist Oasis
Nestled inside the labyrinth that is the Pavillon Hubert-Aquin at the Université du Québec à Montréal lies an anarchist oasis. Deep within UQAM’s Human Sciences facility—whose drab layout belies its outspoken revolutionary namesake, Quebec author Hubert Aquin—I have become completely lost. Only the third person I stop shows the slightest hint of recognition at…
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Fringe Food
Delectable Free Screenings
You may find yourselves asking entirely new questions. Questions, perhaps, of a theatrical nature: “Can food perform the same role as a movie star?” Of a social nature: “How can film further food?”Or, most annoyingly to your dearest friends, of a Deleuzian nature: “How is food a becoming-film and film a becoming-food?”
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Fringe Food
Conferences, Concerts and Croque-Croissants
It’s amazing where the 80 can land you. That’s the 80 du Parc bus, one of the most enduring routes on our fair island, chugging hundreds of times daily up and down the eight kilometre stretch linking downtown’s Place-des-Arts with the Métropolitain highway.
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Fringe Food
Everything Is Nourishment, Pt. 2
Tacked on a wall inside the NDG Food Depot’s bustling front office is a massive drawing on a white sheet of bristol board. Large, bubbly coloured-marker digits illuminate the wall with a stark calculation: the average 1 1/2 apartment rental price in Montreal, subtracted from the average monthly welfare check.
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Fringe Food
Everything Is Nourishment
As you walk west down de Maisonneuve Blvd., past Decarie St., following the ragged fence, you come across a slew of auto shops, the odd commuter train, several impatient drivers and a handful of hardy cyclists. But when you reach the corner of Oxford Ave., an unexpected oasis emerges: an otherwise nondescript building turned vibrant.
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Fringe Food
Gourmet, Free, and Right Under Your Nose
It’s midday, and the Hive is bustling. The second-floor student lounge at Loyola campus is filled with a steady crowd of diners, and every couch, table and counter seat is occupied.
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Fringe Food
Gather ‘Round the Table
It may come as a surprise to some Montrealers that accessible, healthy, communal meals have been offered on Concordia’s campuses since long before the now-famous People’s Potato was born.
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Fringe Food
A Saintly Return
What’s the first thought that pops in your head when I say maple? Now: bourbon? And what about: bacon?
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Fringe Food
The Slow Return of Street Food
If you get as hungry as me walking past slews of restaurants out of your price range, you may have even remarked upon such an absence yourself. Montréal’s 64-year-old street-food ban is indeed one of the great ironies of the city’s culinary identity.
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Fringe Food
Concocting Community Since 1999
We had been told that at some unknown point, free food would appear on this table. And so we waited, patiently, for about half an hour whereupon, to our amazement, a pot, ladle and array of mismatched dishes emerged from some undisclosed location, with a smiling, curly-haired man in tow.
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Fringe Food
Hunting for Ramsay on Laurier
Le Laurier Gordon Ramsay does not accept reservations. So I arrived with my dinner companion at 6:30 on a Friday evening, hoping to beat the dinner crowd. We were told we could be seated at 8:00, but to stick around les environs just in case. While we witnessed other diners depart in a huff at such a proposition — one well-dressed woman went so far as to proclaim, loudly, ‘never again!’...
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Fringe Food
Gather ‘Round The Table
The eight people crowded around Shammy Chan’s dining room table are about as disparate a group as one could find, even in Montreal.
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Fringe Food
Your Local Farmers’ Market Remixed
Picture this: it’s a Saturday morning and you arrive at the farmers’ market, basket in hand, to pick out some fresh local produce from a smattering of friendly vendors.