On the first of May, some people go a-Maying, some celebrate Beltane, some celebrate the Labor movement, and some riot outside of multinational corporate offices. Manon and I have our own ritual where we arrive in a new neighborhood for the Summer.
This year, we’re in the Villeray—Saint-Michel—Parc-Extension arrondissement, not far from where we were in our first stay in Rosemont.
While we know a little bit about the different neighborhoods and arrondissements of Montreal from past years, the real details of a neighborhood are hard to know from afar. Furnished rentals can be hard to find, so Manon scours listings, and once a candidate is found, we dive into online maps and street view trying to get an idea of the place. But a city is a strange machine with some parts that move fast and others that move slowly. A neighborhood can change slowly or quickly — for example, we saw substantial changes in the Village between our first visit to the Village and our first time staying there, and even bigger changes the second time we stayed there.
So while I vaguely remembered walking through a park near this year’s place, and remembered there were some modernish churches nearby, I didn’t have a strong impression of the area other than it’s conveniently near a metro station.
Yesterday, I went to photograph the modernist church. Security came out to inquire what I was doing. My French was good enough to state the obvious, but not good enough to understand the guard’s long and very rapid response. A second guard came over who spoke some English, and he figured it was probably tolerable if a tourist took pictures of the outside of the building, although he wasn’t entirely convinced.
You can read online about the church, originally Saint-Barthélemy built in 1953. Perhaps I’ll write more about it later on this blog.
But what has surprised me more than slightly tetchy church guards is the foodie-ness of this neighborhood. In a few blocks surrounding us, there are a surprising variety of restaurants, patisseries, and epicures.
Our first lunch was a “trio” special at La Conca d’Oro, where you special sandwich/empanada/Feuilleté aux Épinard, a dessert, and a drink. Oh, but not just any dessert — there’s a wide variety of pastries, cookies, and viennoiseries, but La Conca d’Oro is renowned for its tiramisu. You can guess what we opted for.
Full from our lunch, we weren’t super hungry when dinner-time rolled around. But we’d been moving suitcases and boxes and still had the wear of travel upon us, so we figured we should keep up our strength. Speaking of turn-over, the pizzeria around the corner, Don Tamal / Pizzeria Cubaine, has had numerous name changes in the past two years. The image on Google Maps has a different name than on street view, which is different than Apple maps, or even Open Street Maps. I went to the latest incarnation, where we got a Cuban-style pizza with onions that was far better than it had any right to be.
On a stroll the following day, we passed an Indian restaurant that got our attention. So yesterday’s dinner came from Virsa, where we got a huge quantity of delicious Punjabi food.
So we’ve tried three places here, and all were winners. This does not bode well for that “eat a little less” advice Sylvain’s doctor offered. Especially when you look around the neighborhood and see the opportunities calling out.
In addition to the Spanish restaurant Marisol, pictured above next door to Virsa, the immediate area boasts:
You can expect updates here.