midknife

[midknife]

Spinnache vol. Weight Bear

I remember walking everywhere. To me, it was meditative, the preferred mode of transport, a pleasure. I took pride in walking. It was as much a part of me as my legs which, incidentally, have almost always been strong. And time being of its ephemeral nature, I've always been aware that one day I will not be able to walk. Until then, every step is a gift. 

I touched it for the first time during a random palpatory scan of my lower extremity. I felt a slight rise on the inside of side of my left knee, just under my knee cap. Sure, it concerned me, but I tempered it with an overconfident, "I'm sure it's nothing. Perhaps a harmless calcium buildup." I let it leave my mind.

My hand couldn't forget as easily. I would routinely give a little feel; round and hard, kind of like the top third of a foosball. Over the course of months, it grew slowly and gradually. It didn't hurt and never caused any kind of loss in function. I snubbed it superficially, but not profoundly. I couldn't ignore totally because this lump in my knee was telling me something. It didn't talk. It didn't make noise. But it was there, silently eliciting a response. 

The discovery of this little thing in my knee came at a pivotal time. Before I had children, before I was married. Previously, I worked as a writer in various capacities — a career I enjoyed for the pure distilled ideas, for the fonts, for the unashamed cigarettes and late nights and creation. Near the end, though, there was very little of myself left to give. The tank was empty. I needed to significantly shift my career path to focus my energy on helping people directly to ideally contribute to a better functioning society. I decided to pursue a masters degree in occupational therapy. At that time, career prospects were good; solid jobs with suitable pay and high satisfaction abounded. 

"It's the right thing to do," I said to myself. 

I began the mental and procedural shift. It started well enough. Of course, transitioning to the world of science at a "prestigious" university had a significant learning curve, one fraught with opportunity and ego that made it slipperier than I anticipated. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life. Yet, somehow, I persevered and passed. I succeeded. 

With me all along this road was still the undiagnosed concretion in my leg. Never lessening, I started to worry. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that this could've been cancer. Worst case scenarios started clomping through my mind. 

"I'm going to lose my leg! I'm going to never walk again," I said. "What'll my kids think? I'll be only one peg up on Captain Dan." 

Thankfully, that was not the case. After multiple appointments and many x-rays, it turns out it was an osteochondroma, a common benign noncancerous overgrowth – aka. tumour – of bone and/or cartilage that often occurs at the end of a bone. In my case, it took root at the end of my left femur. While troubling, it was relatively harmless. With a sigh of relief, I had an elective surgery scheduled. 

Months passed. The tumour grew. I had a boy, got married, had another boy. My love for my family grew each day. Despite a battle with the Quebec language police and an surprisingly unwelcoming job market that lasted a year and a half, I finally was certified and employed. I had a new road. 

The surgery was cancelled and rescheduled numerous times for various reasons. I worked and I didn't. My mind wandered. My heart did, too. My hand often found the foosball. I could feel the knots in my knee tighten as if the stress of everything was concentrating on that one spot. The deep dull pain that inhabited my leg grew louder. It echoed through my bones. 

The night before the operation, I couldn't sleep. Eyes wide open 2:30 am, it was not nerves that kept me awake. It was that feeling in my gut that it just was not right. Something was not right. Not with the impending operation, you see. I was ready. Frankly, I was looking forward to getting this thing out. But the brooding feeling stationed the whole situation — it was as if I didn't quite know whose knee this was. 

In the early morning, I went in for surgery. I arrived early, taking the extra 20 minutes before admission to sit outside. The hospital in southwest Montreal is by a canal, from which one can pick up that delightfully murky, depleted ozone waft of urban waterways in early summer morning. Back inside, the anesthesiologist gave me options for pain. I chose the sedation/spinal package because he compared the initial sedation to having a half a bottle of wine. "Make it a Pinot Noir, good sir!" I joked. He said no. 

I remember the hexagonal surgical light above me. It reminded me of some impressive emerald and azure Christmas light display that rich people might have in their foyer. The papery blue curtain on my chest dividing my head from the operation below looked strange in this light. I remember remarking there were nice functional shelves in that operating room. I noticed I couldn't feel my legs. Not long after, they were smashing my leg bone with a chisel and hammer that jarred my floppy doped-up arms from the stretcher. Through my muddled consciousness, I figured this violence was the motion to ultimately dislodge the tumour on my knee from the rest of my being. 

Then the violence stopped. I vaguely remember some person sticking a clinical metal dish near my nose — a purple, wrinkly mass about two inches wide was resting on the north side of the dish, clinking as he panned it around like a walnut in a cheap frying pan. 

There it was. The little lumpy lamprey that had lived in my knee for years, riding me through this chapter in my life that made me feel foreign to myself. Now it was staring at me, still not talking. Where we'd once been connected through bone and silence, now there was distance and sound between us. 

Staring at it for less than one hazy minute, it was whisked away, gone forever. I asked to take it home, but apparently that's illegal. Instead, I like to think they examine it then they burn it. In a flighty moment, I imagined a massive ritual of fire and holy water, raging torches and pagan masks, the walls coating with oily black soot as my deathly tumour carbonized, unleashing forth biblical magnitude demons. Really, they probably just threw it on the pile of gross stuff some intern had to shovel into an industrial incinerator before skulking off to do homework. 

I woke up to the news all had gone well. Eventually, my body thawed and that brings us up to the moment, the one where I am now chopped up, knee bulging and red, with head foggy from painkillers and irregular sleep, my career at another precipice of uncertainty. 

Without going into necessary detail, the career shift did not work out. It left me with debt, anxiety, and insight. I now know the field in its formal setting was in large part unsuitable for me. In many ways, I realize now I was naïve to have blind faith in its inherent promise and my place in it. It is no fault of its own. I think I may have put too much stock it what it could accomplish for me. Perhaps I am too salted to believe everything can be good all the time. Perhaps I've seen too much to buy narrow lines anymore. Since I embarked on this career shift, the jobs have dried up everywhere but where I probably wouldn't want to be, the competition has become more fierce and wily, and it has become a buyer's market for employers. Same as it ever was, I suppose. 

In this moment, I remember I used to walk everywhere. I took pride in walking. My legs have always been strong, individually and in unison. Since I started my new career, I have had to sit more than I would have liked. Not that the tumour stopped me from walking, but it certainly didn't help — it just made it a touch more uncomfortable and worrisome. As a result, my legs have weakened. 

It makes me ask myself what else is askew. Well, I miss the love of pursuit. I miss the air of trees. I miss the freedom to say the bad and funny things in my heart. I miss spit balling. I miss jumping off cliffs and struggling to swim to shore. I miss reveling in the power I am because I feel like I had none. All of these things, in one way or another, involve my left knee. 

It's seven days post surgery. I've removed the bandage. The wound has healed nicely. It's still swollen and a little yellowish grey, but I can bend my knee and bear my weight. It's more itchy than painful. It hurts to stand. 

Russ Cooper  August 18, 2017

[midknife]

Spinnache vol. Nowish

Last summer, I saw my first cicada. Since I can remember, their song was an inescapable texture of summer. Through topical research during pre-internet days and if I remember correctly, they live underground for over a decade before they emerge and begin their lives in the treetops.

Last summer, I truly saw one for the first time. It was dead on the sidewalk. I picked it up and brought it home. I held it carefully in my hand to avoid it being crushed in a pocket as I walked more than five kilometres. When I arrived home, I suggested to my now-wife that we find a small display case and mount it on the wall for our eventual kids to admire. This was a rarity, after all. It explained so much.

The idea didn’t fly with her. However, I put that dead cicada on a shelf high enough she couldn’t see it. It stayed there all winter. I checked on it from time to time. Despite it still being dead, I often looked in its eyes, its big round eyes. I looked at its curdled legs and empty body, its liquid interior long evaporated. Eventually, it disintegrated into two parts thereby eliminating the physical fortitude sufficient to be mounted.

This summer, I moved. If you ask me now what I did with the remnants, I could not tell you. With such a shift, objects are often evaluated as being too big or either rendered inutile. The exoskeleton of my first cicada most likely found its way into the garbage in a flurry of packing and pitching.

I now live further west in Montreal, amidst more aged trees. This summer, I’ve seen the cicadas almost routinely. Many, yes, dead on the sidewalk, but many alive. I watched one walk up an old maple tree. I saw a couple of them screwing on a curb. I found one fresh from moulting its exuviae on a fencepost in my front yard. That particular cicada, I let climb onto my finger and then I brought it to the same nearby maple. I watched it cling to the tree and walk nearly the same path as the other until it climbed so high I lost sight of it.

I suppose the appearance of the cicadas at this point in my life — nearly 40 years — has been on my mind for some time because it has answered a long-sought question. This thing I knew was there... what did it look like? What did it do? What did it feel like bound to my skin? Topically, I now know more.

Since my move, my second son was born. He is a healthy boy. The day he was born, I experienced a sense of calm I had not felt before. In the moments before Evan sucked his first breath, after my wife Marcie had entered the operating room without me, I stood looking out an East-South-Easterly facing window of St. Mary’s Hospital in Montreal towards St. Joseph’s Oratory. It was a bright afternoon. Looking up to the corner of the window not three feet from the operating room, I saw a strip of fly paper behind a crudely mounted empty Ziploc bag box; the box placed there, presumably, to hide the insalubrious sight of dead flies stuck to industrial adhesive. Huh. Anyway, between deep breaths, I checked my pulse a few times. Normal. I was about to have a child and my heart rate was normal. I was remarking to myself about the beauty of the angle of St. Joseph’s mountainous domed roof superimposed on the blue of the late-July afternoon sky when the doctor told me to come in and hold my wife’s hand and look in her eyes as my son was to be born.  

The sense of calm I was experiencing was the counter product of months perhaps years of unconsciousness and ill-addressed hurdles. At this moment, I had a new awareness of universe, myself, and of god. Not the god that says it's a thing, a religion, a saviour, and we are beholden to it. Not that I ever truly believed god to be this but it's easy to see how people can. In that little moment, god was and is the space and the silence and the moment and impermanence and that’s all it is.

I feel I have always known this. But the ability to see it as such has been sheared. In my twenties, I ran away seeking this truth as many of us do. I found it often in a juicy peach or a swim at high noon or falling asleep to strange music. It was a truly blissful time of health and possibility and more. Yet, there was a persistent itch that required numbing. And numb it I did.

For a reason still not entirely clear to me, I was afraid to feel. That raw palpable emotion needed me. I wasn’t able to welcome it fully. Maybe ego forced me to crust over, to grind down the edges to a deadened comfortably concave surface. It was easier that way.

Even now, at this exact moment as I write this, the emotion is uncomfortably sharp and it hurts. I have felt like crying for weeks now. In fact, I have. Not out of sadness, you see, but from finally seeing the world in a different light, one that is familiar and frightening. It’s not easy anymore. I’m leaning into the barbs now. I need to bleed.

To you, Gord. I'll be honest. All the cellphone footage floating around, all the articles, all the glowing accounts from friends who had seen your shows on this tour… I couldn’t watch any of it. I suppose it was in part an avoidance of letting something go, of having to say goodbye to something that accompanied me through many times and, by proxy, say goodbye to part of myself.

I watched you last night. Watching you, however, it didn’t feel like this. Sure, listening to many of those songs put me in places I hadn’t been in years. But that me wasn’t me anymore. It hadn’t been for years. The sense of necessary submission and recognition that all there is is right now and awareness I couldn't accept before became a little clearer in watching your performance.

I have no doubt the Tragically Hip concert of August 20th 2016 will be considered as a pivotal moment in Canadian history. It was two-plus hours and thousands of notes and the raw emotion that helped people around the world understand something new. The world and I saw you breathe with fury and peace and kisses. I hope no one ever knows exactly what you felt that night.

As I walked the neighbourhood with my eldest son Bruce this morning, I watched him touch leaves with kindness and sing to himself without a trace of temporal constraint. The grace of the moment hurt so beautifully. You have helped me, at the very least, lean into a spike and bleed. My perspective has changed today. Today, the world and I are different. Your band did that.

And now that moment is gone. And here we are.

Loves and lobes, Russ Cooper, August 21, 2016

[midknife]

A distinct Société: Or, how to almost get beat up at a restaurant opening

Endless champagne, delightful wee French bites, deep oaky ambiance, girls n' cars, coiffitude far and wide. It was the opening of La Société, Montreal's newest 1920's Parisian brasserie themed restaurant. Take full advantage, we told ourselves, especially if that may include being punched out by rich people.

It wasn't long before I sensed a few lofty glances. Dan was his jaunty British self in perfect one-inch rolled cuffs and a rose oxford. My consultant Spencer with his Mojave gruff and his standard leather vest was a rare bird among the cotton flock. Jealousy? Hopefully.

A creamy banana Cognac cocktail here, a nice slice of strawberry on a spear there, a few Belvedere lychee martinis served by an archeologist... it was looking up. I think I saw Wayne Newton in a cobalt blue jacket sitting with Imelda Marcos. Spencer leans over and says he thinks the guy is Toby Hilfiger. It wasn't. Danny thought Spencer said Tony Himfinger. It wasn't him either.

Amidst the din, our gurgling stomachs must've summoned the lovely waitresses bearing the nibbly bits. Notable, I must say. We make disappear six or seven delightful blobs of fois gras and/or steak tartar perched on little crackery discs. Then, bourbon maple frog's legs. Goddamn, I said to myself. I think those deliciously fatty crunchy sweet smoky bastards just impregnated my mouth. Whatever will be said henceforth, let the record reflect the service and the food here were dynamite.

Between mouthfuls, Danny and I spot Spencer chatting up a lady of about 55 in the lobby of the adjacent Loews Hotel. Maybe Spence thought she was Madonna. Before long, we've joined him and she's coyly yet forthrightly doling out her entire life story complete with roundabout details of her time as an executive in the entertainment business, allusions to her many illuminati clients, and something about Lionel Richie. I told her I played Mike Watts' bass once. She shrugged and sipped her cocktail. All in all, I thought we were getting along quite well. Screw that confounded generation gap!

Hasty. When she asked what I did, I told her I write sometimes, and that I was here on behalf of this blog right here. A shroud of palpable scorn descends. Her eyes narrowed and turned red, her face became the darkness. I'm watching the bile bubbling up before my eyes.

"If you write anything about me, I'll find you and destroy you," she hisses through lips pursed tighter than a bull's arse in fly season.

Whoa holy shit. I reassure her that I'm here for the frogs legs and the liver discs. No luck. It's still full court press. This could get ugly.

What happened next is exactly what friends are for. Right in the middle of the vitriolic venom onslaught being firehosed at me, Spencer pokes his head in and blurts, "You know, you look just like Pauline Marois!"

"Fuck you!" she yells, shoving her bony finger in his grill. And even then, I had no intention of writing about her. However, when a bit of fried oyster with saffron aioli flew out her mouth and landed on my arm as she says she's gonna would murder me right in the face or something, I knew not writing about her would be an impossibility. Hi.

Lady, I don't care who you are. Calling you by name and connecting you to whatever celebrity's name you were dropping isn't going to make this article any better. This said, I won't mention your name - and I should. It was a really funny name - because you actually threatened to hurt me. I'm 6'3" 200lbs and I would never trust some sandblasted old scenester bat when she's cornered.

The immediate company had soured. Obviously, we needed some oysters.

In between slurps of either a New Brunswick or a Vancouver Island, Spencer begins pitching something to a rich guy in loud glasses. At this point, Spence is happily lubricated and affably verbose. But when I see Loud Glasses is getting impatient, I reassure him Spencer is a worthy chat and has something to offer.

The next moment, this guy is yelling at me for having a "corporate smug face." What was going on? I don't even know what "corporate smug face" means, never mind why he's pissed at us. Maybe I did. Anyway, when I see his thick hairy hand rising and we find another finger all up in our faces, I look for Danny for some backup. He's nowhere to be found. He was probably off being pleasant and making contacts. How dare he?

(Again, I should mention this guy's name because it was really goofy, but I won't. Why? I'm scared, that's why. That guy looked like the kind to go full Napoleon and I don't have money for a lawsuit.)

I will admit we perhaps took full advantage of the generous champagne. Perhaps everyone else did, too. Who wouldn't? That stuff is delicious! But my word... what happened? Maybe 20's Paris was really crabby and succulent and La Société has done an AMAZING job. Or maybe we're a bunch of heedless assholes. Could be that bourbon maple frog's legs are a hell of a drug.

I think Aristotle said something like 'an entity is real if its attributes are grounded in reality.' Let's just go with that.

[midknife]

Jerkin' around just got real

When I eat jerky sometimes, I daydream about the conditions that must’ve given rise to the necessity to eat such a thing; fires, a surplus of mammoth meat, fuzzy merkins. If it’s good jerky, I'm transported into the woods and I'm tearing into that fibrous pemmican like an ancient huntsman, reveling in the primal satisfaction of grinding delicious moistureless flesh with my canines.

It also makes me think of that rubbery, manufactured garbage jerky at gas stations in the States. I'll consider it, but I rarely partake as it’s simply heartburn and colon cancer disguised as a salty affirmation of manhood. Yeah, I’ll just take that pack of Camels, thanks.

The truth is that jerky can be done very well and it can be done very poorly. It can be made with necessity and purpose and it can be made with an industrial hatred for your digestive health.

At this point in human history when we don't have to worry about bears eating us in our caves or a lack of actual food where we find it necessary to only eat chemicals and road tar, there is no reason why jerky shouldn’t be spectacular.

I agree. So does Montreal-based JJ Comestibles.

Case in point: their candied bacon jerky. This sweet, salty, ruggedly toothsome treat is the first notable product from the dehydration experimentations of JJ Comestibles’ Jesse James Weber and Marigold Santos. Transplants from Western Canada, the two began making their own in their kitchen after becoming fed up with the lack of quality dried goods in Montreal. Good start, peeps.

And let the research continue. “We can promise you something along the lines of soda pop jerky and beer jerky,” Santos tells me. Got a great idea for a flavour? They even take requests. 

Candied bacon jerky: $12 for a dozen pieces. They also makes an excellent classic beef jerky and a line of granola made with homemade fruit purées.

www.jjcomestibles.com

[midknife]

Chicken out when you smell smoke

Breathe in. Breathe out. Through the nose... it warms the air. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now, what do you smell? Me, I smell chicken. In my neighbourhood, I always smell chicken.

It's not always exactly what I'd like to inhale, but there it is. It's in my face so I might as well suck it up. The smells, the sounds, the constant sensory input...it's part of living in the Plateau - and a fantastic one at that. That's what I think, at least.

Turns out it's not what everybody thinks. The recent news is that the city of Montreal has served fines just shy of $53,000 to two Plateau charcoal grill-wielding restaurants, Le Roi du Plateau and Portugalia, for not adhering to proper island-wide ventilation bylaws. You can read all the wrangly, dangly details in the Montreal Gazette's Jan. 31 story. But in short, they're accused of spewing out copious of smoke du poulet -- so much so that it's affecting the quality of life for nearby neighbours.

The restaurants, which occupy respective corners of Clark and Rachel, are mere blocks from my humble abode. (I live kitty corner from another Portuguese culinary stalwart, Chez Doval.) On nearly any day, I can poke my nose out my door and smell bird. On the haziest days, I can feel it on my skin and smell it in my clothes. It's not necessarily the most pleasant of sensations, but it's a genuine one. And yes, I know this is a health issue and a bureaucratic kerfuffle and an affront to these local businesses. But I'm not necessarily those things right now. I am my nose. I realize now just how much the complex perfumes of my community please me. I remember my first days after moving here almost ten years ago, standing on the corner of Saint-Cuthbert and St. Laurent. The smells of roasting coffee from La Vieille Europe, the greasy spice from Schwartz's, the wood smoke from Jano, the bread being baked somewhere... it hit me like a memory I already knew. I've heard that smell is the most direct link to nostalgia. An unavoidable smell from your past that resurfaces in the here-and-now is almost certain to transport you back to moments you've lived; a form of sensory time travel, if you will. I agree. Many times I've been whisked away to time long ago at the slightest whiff. Breathing deeply, I am Marty McFly.

Sure, come springtime, the fetid pong of thawing garbage and dog shit rivers make the Plateau feel like we live in a seasonal Orwellian experiment. These are but a few of the demonic miasma that are not wholly pleasant... but at least they are authentic. I feel this awareness - very different from the shitty smells, mind you - adds to the pleasure of living here. I consider it memory accelerant.

I can understand if that chicken smoke was pouring in your window on a stifling summer day. Not nice, especially if you're unable to escape it. According to city spokesperson Philippe Sabourin, the city has received 50 complaints since 2008 about offending restaurants in the area. It's a question of quality of air and life. Understandable, absolutely. We're all entitled to a comfortable living situation. But have you tasted that chicken? Goddamn, it's good. I want it served at my funeral.

Regardless, I have to question in some small part; what would be removed if we didn't have access to the heavy sensations we do? Would my days be the same if I weren't snorting vapourized chicken skin?

En fin, you know what? This is the Plateau. We're not here to be swathed in a blanket of restrained comfort. It's loud. It's dirty. It's smelly. It's delicious. Eat it up, man.

[midknife]

I am where I eat

Sure, terroir can be an immensely interesting subject. Some even argue that Quebec has very little culinary sway in terms of the traditional terroir due to a few limitations; among them, a shortened growing season over huge and relatively unvaried landmass, reliance on established French cuisine techniques, and a reputation for the meaty, fatty, and kinda dirty.

Don't get me wrong. Sometimes, there is nothing better than a watery steamé. I've murdered coagulated blocks of poots and fantasized about doing it again and again. To boot, this province wears the national cheese crown, an attribute that keeps my spare tire happy and round. These are the staples that bind us, especially through the arctic nightmare we call winter in Montreal.

For me, cuisine de terroir means Quebec-on-a-plate in a way. But since it may be the atmospheric and cultural conditions that often drive our foodish desires, can we consider these conditions part of the terroir on some miniscule extent? Probably not.

But let's just say we could. Could I taste years of linguistic squabbling or hockey sweat? Would there be notes of that joie-de-vivre that keeps us afloat? Road salt? What about crusty 100% wool? Would my smoked meat be imbued with les Gitanes?

I didn't expect (or want, honestly) any of these things on my plate when I visited Aix Cuisine du Terroir. Located at 711 Côte de la Place-d Armes, it's one of the seven participating restaurants as part of the Happening Gourmand event. This table d'hôte bonanza, running until the end of January, is a crack by the Antonopoulos Group at competing with this month's Restaurant Week events in New York or San Diego. One big difference, however -- Antonopoulous owns all the participating Montreal restaurants rather than the scads of restos with varied proprietorship in the other cities. In any case, I'll take the chance to eat something new and weird. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I've always thought one should know what his or her area tastes like. (Did I just say that?)

My gracious dining partner (who, it must be said, suggested Aix) and I were seated at the circular booth in the corner quite near the front door. I couldn't tell if this was an awesome seat or the penalty box as it did give a view of the entire Aix's pleasantly safe decor, but I could feel the arctic gales on my ankles when anyone opened the door. Atmospheric terroir, perhaps?

To start, her Vol au Vent de Boudin Noir garnered a "pretty good. Not too dry as it often is, and not overpowered by cinnamon." My poultry liver verrine with apple ice cider jelly was sweet and soft and quite enjoyable. Though, now that I think about it, it came with a delightful little salad of radishy sprouts that I probably should've put on the brioche toast. Meh. Winter is no time for vegetables, am I right? Especially in Quebec.

As a main, she had the lamb shank braised with star anise, Beluga lentils with chorizo, maple gremolata. Now, I'm a believer that any braised meat should be utterly butterly soft and flavourful. With one sample bite, I could tell this wasn't. It was tough and a touch bland. It felt hurried. Thankfully, she said, the lentils saved the dish and helped bring out the anise. "Very fragrant, which made up for the lack of seasoning of the meat. The maple sweetness really resonated the terroir flavours, but people need to branch out from this. Not everything from here can be maple," she said. Nonetheless, in the acute depth of winter, outstanding lentils are the perfect ankle warmer.

Me, I had the duck magret, quinoa with hazelnuts, rapinis, and a chicoutai berry 'broken' vinaigrette. It was prepared well, save for its lack of the requisite crispy skin and its under seasoning. The hazelnuts provided the quinoa with an agreeable accented, but was detracted by a cheesy flavour that just didn't jive -- an element that overpowered the vinaigrette.

This lovely little emulsion should have stood out much more. Made from the amber-coloured ground fruit found otherwise known as 'cloudberry' or 'bakeapple', this was the most unique Quebec-embodying ingredient on our table that night; it grows north of the 55th parallel and can withstand temperatures well below -40°C. It's also pretty tart. Sound familiar?

The desserts were the surprise of the night; hers, the chocolate gourmand with maple caramel and fleur du sel, and mine, the crème brulée with honey and thyme. While I wasn't wild on the thyme infusion, it was the perfect egg velvet consistency that made it absolutely heavenly. The staff was remarkably attentive, but service did feel a bit rushed; we had barely finished our mains and not done our wine when our desserts arrived and coffee was suggested. Let a man and a lady finish their wine, huh? Small detail, I'll admit, yet not insignificant.

Did this somehow sum up Quebec for me? How do I answer this without it getting touchy? Let's just stick to the experience and say, all in, it was a 7.5 out of 10. Hearty enough to feel relatively satisfied, but not adventurous enough to leave me wanting. With price tag of $114 (fixed meals of $27 and $37 with three glasses of wine between us), it wasn't quite the supposed deal it perhaps professed to be. Well, I was where I ate.

[midknife]

Dishcrawl Chinatown: History in Four Courses

Dishcrawl, Montreal's Chinatown, November 1, 2011. I probably should give you a proper rundown of all the dishes we ate and how they tasted like a bunch of adjectives. Yes of course, it was about the food. But scratch further down, I find it's about the virtues I attach to dining in general; community, comfort, warmth (figurative or otherwise), and of course, eating something that I've never eaten.

The Dishcrawl idea - one that sees a group of 30+ people visit numerous restaurants over the course of an evening and sample various dishes - has been growing in popularity since being developed in California in 2009. To date, Discrawl has held events in 17 U.S. cities, as well as Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa. And sure, why not? Anybody who likes to eat will jump at the chance to eat at four different restaurants in one night, even if they've already been there. And restaurant owners? I'm not one, but if I was, I'd happily welcome a herd of passionate eaters into my establishment. Win win means great concept.

Win win eat eat, that's what I say. This edition of Dishcrawl (surprisingly, the 16th in Montreal since 2010), had us rolling ourselves around the small neighbourhood nestled in its Ville Marie borough. Our guide was an animated Jason Lee from Shut Up And Eat who had grown up in Chinatown who was clearly excited to show people his neighbourhood and his favourite restaurants. His interest pronounced from the moment he introduced the first morsel, a Dragon Beard candy from Bonbons à la Barbe a Dragon - a little dollop of sweet nuts and syrup coated in thousands of wispy corn starch threads that was like eating a fluffy little dissolving cotton ball. Lee explained what we were eating without missing a beat -- details of which I probably should've written down but I was honed on the lovely honeyed sensation going on in my mouth. Sue me.

At Restaurant Tong Sing, we massacred a Peking duck. We had a simple duck broth with tofu and scallions to start, followed by a chef slicing one of those crispy bastards up in front of us. The juicy meat went into a prepare-your-own wrap with homemade hoisin sauce, green onions and pickled carrots and then went into my mouth. My favourite bite of the night, I must say.

On to Kam Fung, a popular joint inside the complex at 1111 St. Urbain, is where the trip gets a bit deeper. Lee explained to us that the dish we were eating, Wor Siu Gai (a huge patty of chopped shrimp, crab, Chinese sausage all wrapped in an egg roll skin and fried, then sliced) originated in Montreal's Chinatown five generations ago. "You're eating history. And no it's not the spring rolls," he said.

Wor Siu Gai at Kam Fung

It was hard to place. Not salty, not sweet, the texture was something elastic that gave a squishy snap between the teeth. "Tastes like fancy spam," said my dining neighbour Liz Ranger, sous chef at Renard Artisan Bistro. "Chinese surf and turf," said Dustin Gilman, from FoodGuyMtl. When I asked what the brown sauce was covering the pinkish flesh, I was told it a miscellaneous Chinatown sauce. Hmm... but mmm?

On to Callia, a relatively new Hong Kong-style bakery/restaurant, for the mystery portion of the night. We were given a fresh Chinese bun and instructed not to take a bite until we could all do it all simultaneously. The reason: they were testing a new type of filling.

Intrigued. Me, I was expecting something sweet. Bite. Puzzlement. Bite. Someone yells, "Poutine!" He's right. There's poutine inside a bun and I'm eating it.

In my humble opinion, it didn't work. Regardless, is it so farfetched to say that this was the moment the Chinese poutine bun was invented? Did we just witness the birth of an all-new Montreal dish? Can we call it the Chipou bun?

En fin, there wasn't much delicacy in the dishes. This isn't to say the food was big and bold and made head swim, but the flavours tended to blend together. A night of such variety craves contrast. Punch me in the mouth every dish. But that wasn't the point for me. This was about people who love to chat about chow, about eating something new, about awareness about my city. It was a history lesson.

Chinese culture isn't necessarily what comes to mind when one conjures the image of Montreal, truth be told. Walking between restaurants somewhere that evening, Lee explained to me that his was one of the original families who founded Chinatown in the 1870s. His enthusiasm made sense: he was, in essence, welcoming us into his home.

[midknife]

Talking seafood – adventures in restaurant openings and introductions

I was gazing deeply into mammoth Vietnamese shrimp and champagne when I heard him yammering on about the mayor and his apparent love for sizable crustaceans. “This is the kind of stuff Tremblay would absolutely have at one of his parties,” the man somehow said, the words having to wind their way around a mouthful of half-chewed seafood.

He wasn’t talking to me. I was semi-busy scrawling down paltry pretend notes for the article I knew I wouldn’t really write. But I was within earshot and the nosey asshole in me naturally took notice of the rounded Tele Sevalas lookalike standing beside me with a glob of seafood sauce hanging from his chin.

He was prattling on about City Hall and all they could accomplish if they made a bit more sense. I agree. This could be said about any government, granted, but goddamn it that doesn’t make it any lesser of a truth, does it?

He was talking to a tall sinewy Indian man with a thin mustache, a graying wiry Walther Matthau hairdo, and what looked like a cape but was in fact a long slim trench coat jauntily swathed upon his shoulders. The Indian man purported to be a reporter. I know this because I happened to be walking into this restaurant/hotel at the same time as him. I caught his spiel as we both inquired about the drill and about coat check with Ana, the PR touch point. “I’m with the press,” he said pompously. The press. Like it’s 1955. I knew he was bullshitting. So did Ana. She let him in regardless.

It was lavish event to “reintroduce” the restaurant in downtown Montreal that hadn’t quite lived up to its hype when launched a few years prior. “Disney-like,” they called it. Exorbitant mediocre food overshadowing the striking but exaggerated décor. Let’s revamp the menu a bit, build a new boutique hotel, change up the Edith Piaf for creamy acid jazz, and we got a reason to party.

   “You made that guy look good walking in. How do you know him?” she said. Blush?

   “I don’t. I’ve seen him around, though,” I say, watching him stand in his best monoleg figure-four lean chatting up some other lady at a desk over there. This effort was clearly punctuating his tripe.

   “He’s everywhere. I see him at fashion events, too,” Ana said. That doesn’t make him a reporter. A potential freeloader, perhaps. These types of events are full of them, I think to myself—normal-but-not-quite people trying being seen, rubbing elbows, looking for the material for their next series of vacuous tweets. 

He didn’t end up checking his coat. It remained draped about his frame; a choice perhaps for warmth, perhaps because he thought it made him look a little more mysterious. It did complement his look, I must say. And it worked for him, insofar as it got him talking to other oddities at the raw bar.

I couldn’t make out what exactly he was saying—not because of his accent, you see, but because my concentration was hogged by the sight of the big egg of a man wearing horseradish and ketchup on his face. It was frightening to the point of being fascinating, like watching a home burn. Despite the terror, I had to say something to get in on this.

   “So… the mayor likes big shrimp, huh?” I said using all the tricks in my verbal arsenal.  

   “Oh yeah! And he likes ‘em big. Like this!” he hollers, waving around an enormous pink tail with enough meat left to comprise a regular-sized shrimp, then tossing it imperiously into a damp napkin. I shake his hand— like a meatloaf with big bloated sausagey fingers.

He continued talking, stuff about his buddy the mayor, dinner theatre screens in restaurants, millions of dollars, and/or pre-fab instant houses in boxes. (“Think about all those college kids who can’t find a job and need a place live. They buy one of these places for forty grand and they can build a house in their parents backyard…”) I heard that bit, but I wasn’t really listening. My mind was wandering…

To my recollection, I haven’t read much about the dietary preferences of our chosen leaders. How does Harper take his steak? Medium well, I’d assume. Did Lévesque take crunchy over smooth? The long knives could be used to spread peanut butter from a distance, I thought…

When I came back to earth, he was close talking me, the red sauce still jiggling about on his chin. Jesus Christ, I had to get out of there. I only had look distracted and stick out my dwarfish little paw, endure a second or two of ridiculous vice-like squeezing, and step away. We’d already exchanged cards. I only had to step away.

What had I gotten myself into? I thought. I scanned the room for support, someone I could slink over to. No one was in sight. Shit, even Walter Matthau had split. He might’ve been a phony, but a smart one at that. I’d tell you his name, but truth be told, I think I should fear him a bit.

I look to the huge circular trough of Herculean shrimp to my left. I’d really never seen them so big, save for in the fish market with a $5 price tag on each. Needless to say, I ate one that night. A big fleshy mouthful, I think they were enough symbolism to say it all—showy, falsely foreign and somewhat flavourless. I remember thinking this as I walked away. By then, I think the sauce was gone.

I read recently that there is a parasitic crustacean normally found off the coast of California that becomes a fish’s tongue. The Cymothoa exigua, which often goes by the apt nickname of ‘the tongue-eating louse’, will climb in through the gills of its host to drain the tongue of its blood until it dies an atrophic death, then attach itself to the stump. The fish will then use the louse as its tongue, apparently never knowing the difference.

Yeesh…

Russ Cooper November 6, 2011 Montreal, Quebec

[midknife]

Spinnash vol. Five and spry

   “You know why some leaves turn yellow and some turn orange?” I ask my five-year-old nephew Seamus.

   “Because they’re dying for the winter,” he tells me matter-of-fact. He’s right.

   “You’re right, but see the yellow ones? They have lemonade in them. The orange ones have orange juice.”

   “That’s where juice comes from, Unc Russ?” Feeding a supple young mind such a cockamamie story, I feel like the antagonistic father from Calvin and Hobbes. And I’m loving it.

   “Well, not all juice, but forest juice, yeah. Let’s go chew a leaf and see what it tastes like.”

He giggles, and before we can honestly consider the proposition of eating some maturing foliage, he’s a bat ninja or a lion or a zombie mummy.

For him, reinvention happens every ten minutes. For me, it takes every few years — and it’s as invigorating as it is terrifying.

I’ve always said I have long-term ADD. By that, I mean switch professions every four years or so. First, it was outdoor recreation. Then, music. Then, treeplanting. Writing. Caregiving for the physically challenged. Photography. Writing again. Most of these stints overlap with each other, but for some reason I’m unable to stay focused. Why? Because I get bored. And, as far as I know, they don’t make slow-release Ritalin. 

Call me a serial poly-professional.

But frankly, I don’t know if I’d change this, anyway.  I wonder if this is special to – or at least, precipitated by – my generation. My baby boomer parents were the first to have seemingly endless career choices before them, as afforded to them by their depression- and war-surviving begetters. The difference between my begetters and us is that their choices were not necessarily frivolous.

I’ve grown up as a relatively fortunate white kid in Canada. I am bilingual. I am healthy. I have a supportive family. I had Air Jordans. I’ve had the luxury of choosing what I would do for money… or no money. (I have a degree in music from Concordia. Enough said?) 

Things have changed, however. I am not a wide-eyed twenty-something with the world in front of me. I’m 34 with experience and baggage. I can’t make blind judgments about the world and governments and people and music because of what I feel. Sadly, much of the reason has needed to shift from my heart to my head.

This is hard for me to process, I’ll be honest. I’ve always been a feeler rather than an ideologue. I could see the simple beauty in so much because everything was a sensation – a drippy juicy peach, pinchy shoes, car sickness, a floating melody… everything made me hum in my chest and I didn’t know why. I didn’t care to know why. It’s not the same anymore. I think I’ve come to face that I can’t do what I’ve always done. It is bad for my heart.

What I need is magic. Sounds hokey and vague, but I believe it’s what we’re all looking for in some small way: the unexplainable, the uncovered, the exhilaration of knowing nothing. Routine and predictability have a very important role in our lives, but I guess I can’t do it. I will subconsciously sabotage my relative stability because I need to go somewhere I’ve never been. This does not make things easy.

This is what I’m learning as I start anew for the umpteenth time. This time, as with each time, I want to be a part of something that makes my heart sing. (I’m searching for a metaphor here to tie it all together. Maybe something about a slippery door handle or fresh toast. It’s not coming to me. I used to be able to summon such things. Not any more, perhaps.)

Seamus… tell me what it’s like to be five and spry and faced with a world of possibility when you don’t even comprehend what is possible? When there is no choice but all the choice in thee universe? What it’s like being a space tiger with peanut butter lasers?

They say that the every one of the cells in your body is regenerated every seven years. If this is true, this means I have been five different people in my lifetime. That means Seamus is still the same person he’s only ever been. This also means that next year, I’ll be onto my sixth person. Maybe this is what I could blame my long-term ADD on.

Now that’s hope, huh?

Russ Cooper October 19, 2011 Montreal, Quebec

[midknife]

Piggin' Out In the Democratic Republic of Poutineville

I'd never been to an eating contest. The closest I'd come was watching that Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest on ESPN. Hotdog eating: a truer sport does not exist. God bless America. Well, God bless Quebec because now I was going to a poutine eating contest. Hosted by Poutineville, a five-month-old eatery on the Pepsi side of Beaubien, this was not just any eating contest. We're talking pounds and pounds of pounding serious poutine.

Participants in the Défi Poutineville Challenge, teams of two, have one hour to finish 15lbs of poutine crise cardiaque between them; fries, gravy, cheese, onions, hotdogs, green peps, chicken, beef, sausages, bacon, ham, and smoked meat. My very modest (under) estimate figures that each team member was facing 14,375 calories, 633g of fat, and 20,125 mg of sodium. Jesus in th' garden pickin' potatoes...

The quickest team to finish would win $800, second $400. The rules? Simple: leaving chair equals losing. Barfing equals losing. Right. This is not human. I've always found it a bit absurd even the concept of such an event. Well-fed first-world people plowing back mountains of fat and starch for a sense of satisfaction that only comes from gorging oneself. But, in some way, this is democratic republic where voluntary choice to cosplay Kevin Spacey movies is a right? D'accord! Mangeons!

Among participants were two guys from Epic Meal Time, the group of puffed-up local somethings who've made a name for themselves as creative food debaucherists. Representing the team were Peter 'Furious Pete' Czerwinski and some insolent guy calling himself Muscles-Glasses, who predicted - while holding a 26'er of Jack Daniels - his team would finish in 15 minutes. Big talk. Apparently, it was on?

Right from the drop of the hat, madness. People powering back that stuff, some shoveling it in with their hands, beards dripping with meat. I even saw one guy making snowball-shaped spheres and eating them like apples.

So many started with such gusto, almost laughing as brimming forkful after brimming forkful disappeared, the possibility of being crowned champion guiding the gluttony. As the bolus built and the mountain before them refusing to recede, smiles and pleasure quickly melted away. Forkfuls turned into one speared fry, one lonely hotdog chunk, one meagre slurp of coagulated gravy. After snarfing a pound or two and not even making a dent, many tapped out with the bulk staring mockingly back at them like Jabba the Hut.

For those going for the title, the looks on their faces are something I'll never forget. Strain. Distended cheeks. Profuse sweating. Every sign the body's way of telling them something's wrong. "What the hell are you doing? I should not have to endure this punishment. Stop! Help!" said Kidneys and Livers. "Shut it and open wide," said Pride. After 45:57, Dominic the Donkey gulped back a final greasy curd to take the first ever Poutineville Challenge. (However, this was not the first poutine eating contest in Canada. In 2010, Chicago's Pat 'Deep Dish' Bertoletti at 5.9kg of pooters at an eating contest in Toronto, of all places.)

"I've never felt so horrible in my life," Dominic's teammate Chris Cookie told me after the competition. "It was delicious at first and then it got to a point where it tasted horrible."

Dominic the Donkey looked better, albeit a bit pale. That guy even brought his own cafeteria-serving spoon to scoop that muddy mess into his face. I guess you need personal equipment to eat at a rate of 250 calories a minute.

The real scene, however, was over with Muscles and Furious. Well past their forecasted time, the pair was nearing the one-hour limit with only a few handfuls to go. With the crowd feverish and the cameras a-poppin', the two slowly got close to placing second as the only other team to polish off their helping.

Nope. Minus nope. With seconds to go and mere shreds left, Muscles-Glasses erupted an epic vom time, spraying himself, Furious, and his bottle. Blecchhhh! Not so puffed-up now, hmm?

Wait. Oh my god. Would this be the trigger that would send the roughly 100 spectators and participants into a Stand By Me Lardass barf-o-rama? I got the fook out of the vicinity pretty damn quick for fear of catching a whiff. I know that's sick to even mention, but come on. Think of the children.

For the record, the small portion of braised beef and blue cheese poutine co-owner Kosta Kariotakis kindly provided me prior to the epic meltdown was wonderfully tasty. I'm generally a straight-up poutine kinda guy -- it's nice to gauge the dish from the baseline, I believe. "Go to La Belle Province if you want that," Kariotakis said with a smirk. "Here, you eat for real." Cheers, Kosta.

Me, I was happily full to the gills after that. Who wouldn't be? As I ate, I sat next to Montreal Alouettes Shea Emry and Ryan Lucas - both healthy 200+lbs boys with presumably sizable appetites - who had just finished a small portion themselves. Neither competed. Why? "This competition is insane," Emry said. This from a guy who smashes his head for a living.

[midknife]

Pop Montreal Grows A Real Moustache On Its Hip

Shall we talk hipsters? I'll say it: The term is hackneyed. It's a cheap, diluted label. And thankfully, right now, it may be on the wane to some degree. I think Pop Montreal has something to do with this.

"Hipsterism fetishizes the authentic," Christian Lorentzen of Time Out New York wrote in 2007. Pop Montreal - almost by virtue of its name - could be simultaneously seen as a proprietor and the antithesis of such a statement.

But that was New York. This is Montreal. However much we ride those cotton coattails, we have our own wooly jackets to get us around.

The Pop Montreal organization and annual festival have done much to create the aura of the Montreal hipster that has rung out well beyond the icy confines of our dear island for a decade now. The festival has long arrived, but this year it really got comfortable. We witnessed it progress beyond being a fitful acute carnival for the privileged young. We watched it grow an adult moustache we could all admire; not because of its ambitious bristly girth, but because it was now natural.

I could give you a rundown of all the bands I saw, but I won't. You were probably there and you'd probably disagree with my opinions. (Bellybuttons and arseholes, man.) I could give a lamented swirl of all the bands I didn't see; after all, one of Pop's plights is that its seemingly unending smorgasbord of music makes it impossible to sample every dish.

As the tens of thousands who took a bite this September dig ourselves out of the five-day binge and settle into our hangovers, I sense everyone kept at least one memory. One day, we might collectively recall that big Arcade Fire show at Quartier des spectacles, how we connected with hometown superstars at the shimmering height of their young lives. We might tell our kids that for five days, the Main was our street, that it was just a matter of steps before we took a left and saw some amazing band that changed forever the way we heard music. That's kind of cool.

And 'cool' is the operative word here, isn't it? It's that ever-receding carrot that keeps many on the hunt. It is the modus operandi of the hip. Pop Montreal has never been strictly for hipsters, but it has been of hipsters since its inception. Any festival teeming with that breadth of music and culture will inevitably become such, if it wasn't already. And that's awesome! Keep pushing that carrot back. Whatever the motivation of its clientele, Pop is cool. Face it. It's wonderous to have that shit right out my front door. Everywhere I looked, there was that little pigeon logo furtively giving me the one eye ignore. A better fitting logo, I can't think of.

It has now surpassed its own watermark. Pop is less about sweeping synths that whisk us off to magical places or 4am beers or record fairs and greasy hairs or glittery wristbands or tight pants. (Though, if you wear glasses to look and not to see, maybe take them off? Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.) There was an undertone of camaraderie this year I hadn't experienced any year previous -- one that told us it was about digging where and how we live, and that's enough.

For me, there was truth to it. And if there is magic music that continues to melt my mind, who cares? Kid Koala wears white socks with runner-hikers and shorts, and he's permanently cooler than all of us. Talk about authentic, huh?

[midknife]

Thinking with my stomach at Montreal's third annual Oysterfest

[midknife]

What's sweet, salty, pink, delightfully fishy, and is currently being stuffed into my face? This maple gravlax I made! I was going to eat it on a bagel or at least on some crackers, but whatever, son. I couldn't resist eating the stuff straight. You know, I used to hire a trombone player just because his folks owned a salmon cannery and he could get heaps of that candied salmon. (That's not totally true. Dave was a great trombone player and a solid dude, but don't underestimate the power of cured fish in the music business.) Here's how I made it: 1 lb Atlantic salmon 1/4 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup maple syrup 3 tbsp coarse sea salt (All measurements slightly approximate) I placed the salmon skin down in a Ziploc bag. Then, I mixed the sugar and salt and put it on the fish. Pouring the maple syrup in the bag goes here. I put it in a baking tray in the fridge with a plate and two cans of chick peas on top; this pressure apparently helps the salt extract the liquid from the fish. I turned it every 12 hours for two to four days. I ate one filet after two days. It was good, but not half as good as the one I left in for almost four days. The salt really got a chance to get to the centre of the fish and set up camp in that senior filet. Overall, the gravlax turned out really well — nice and chewy, cut transparently thin so it almost liquifies in the mouth or in rough chunks for a good satisfying squish in the teeth. How would I improve on the second batch? If I could get my hands on some nice juniper or cedar leaves, I'd throw those in the bag. Maybe I'd use a bit more salt. I know I'd make more than a pound. En fin, if you like fish, do this. If you make a lot, you can freeze it and eat it all the time. This afternoon, I bought the tail of a nice 2+lb tail of wild B.C. sockeye. I know it's come a long way from Montreal, but I'm hungry and it was the best salmon the market had. I'm going to make a traditional gravlax with dill, vodka and lemon. It's going to be amazing. Eat that. 

[midknife]

My nephew Seamus.

[midknife]

Mochi Ice Cream

[midknife]

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