Montreal!

does anyone have a spare room i could crash in this wknd? will buy you whiskey/beer

Gonna be in Montreal for a couple of nights this June. I haven't been to the city in maybe 30 years, my wife has never been. Our only confirmed commitment is dinner at Joe Beef one night. So ... any new/good/updated recommendations of where to stay (leaning toward AirBnB) and what to do? I'd be happy just eating the entire trip, but I think I'd get bonus points with my wife if I planned more than just meals. (Though meal recommendations are appreciated, too!).

best thing to do in montreal is just to walk around imo. walk up the mountain then through golden square mile/mcgill and upper westmount (murray hill park is nice), walk through the plateau (the square formed by mont royal, esplanade, st denis, and duluth is hard to beat, and you could dip further south on st lau) or the mile end (just don't take one of those walking tours lol), walk along the canal... on a sunny day may/june is the best time of the year imo

i don't eat out much and i'm stingy but here are my fav restos. but there are better recommendations from ppl who eat out more + better than me upthread

mile end/outremont: lawrence/larrys (british), lester's (smoked meat), damas (syrian), guillaume (bread)

plateau: nourry's (iranian sandwich + soup, in the lobby of an old converted industrial loft bldg), romados (portuguese chicken, huge lineup), patati patata (tiny burger joint)

downtown: cuisine szechuan

little italy: espresso @ cafe italia and pastry from alati caserta. there are also a bunch of great vietnamese places in the adjacent neighborhood, pho tay ho is the most popular

ndg: chalet bbq (roast chicken), hwang kum (korean)

sud-ouest: AA (poutine, in st-henri), lotus bleu (super cheap authentic chinese)

quite far afield but Pushap (near metro Namur) is one of my favourite restaurants in the city, vegetarian indian with great selection of sweets. you can also stop at the Orange Julep while you're there, and if you really feel like "slumming it" go to a movie at the charmingly creepy dollar cinema in the dilapidated (virtually abandoned, really) decarie square mall

this post holds up

Stay in one of these neighbourhoods:
PLATEAU MONT-ROYAL, MILE END, PETITE ITALIE

Don't spend your money on pizza or sushi.

Do spend your money on pastries (St-Viateur Bagel, Mamie Clafoutis, Kouign Amann, Patrice Patissier, Paltoquet, Alati Caserta), ice-cream (Ripples, Kem Coba, Havre Aux Glaces), middle-eastern food (Alep, Damas, Sumac, Kaza Maza) and [relatively cheap] high-end dining (Salmigondis, Lawrence, Joe Beef, Foodlab, Lemeac [after 10pm special], Nora Grey).

Kazu is the only Japanese place worth your ducats.

Good beer at Dieu-du-Ciel and Vices Et Versa.

Coffee at Myriade/Dispatch (third wave) or Cafe Olimpico/Caffe Italia (Italian espresso).

Best cheap eats: Euro-Deli Batory, Thanjai, Kanbai, Pho Tay Ho, Romados, Chalet BBQ, Le Pick-Up.

― sean gramophone, Tuesday, September 15, 2015 4:56 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It does indeed. That said, Ma poule mouillée > Romados.

Awesome, thanks! I saw that post and actually made the call to stay in Mile End. It's not that far from tourist stuff we want to do, and I think staying in a proper neighborhood sounds great.

I also strongly endorse that call, just make sure to be a couple blocks away from the youth who are partying hard on st laurent until 3am on weeknights

I wrote that post and I agree Ma Poule Mouillée is kicking ass these days. Also might boast the best (non-trad, admittedly) poutine in the city?

in the mile end area best poutine is chez claudette imo

as someone who lives in st henri, i agree, fuck aa, go to chez claudette

(aside from there being nothing else in st-h worth checking out, aa fell off a fucking cliff after its last health shutdown)

(that said i'll live here til i die or they remember to raise my rent)

lol i haven't been (to aa) in a couple years, shame. although this isn't the first time someone has touted its downfall, only for me to go and have a delicious poutine \o/

imo just get kind of drunk and buy the cheapest poutine from whoever is open at 3am

i had poutine a few times in montreal, including at chez claudette, and none of it was any better than I've had in vancouver. was a bit of a disappointment.

everything else about montreal was amazing, i even quite enjoyed being shouted by a worker on the metro for complaining that the machine had eaten my money in english

crucial experience

Oh hi I am in Montreal. Packed a light vest and coat, also scarf, lol me.

Ate at Club Chasse et Peche which was awesome, accidentally watched average ~300 average Joes from Your Fair City in some sort of dance performance at Place des Festivals, wandered around Mile End/Le Plateau, did obligatory in-and-out of Old City. Damas tonight, thinking Jean-
Talon market tomorrow. Any Litte Italy recs? What else should I do/eat/drink on my last day?

little italy: cafe italia and (some find it garish but mmv) pastry shop alati caserta on dante

this post holds up imo

Montreal!

Thanks! People are so friendly and chill here compared to DC. It has been pleasure.

But where on earth do you buy booze? Wanted to grab a bottle of wine to take back to hotel (which has a mini rooftop pool deck with a great view) but maybe wine/beer shops aren't really a thing? I dunno we ended up grabbing something from some natural food store on St. Laurent.

Had a really nice time at Gokudo for cocktails; it is pretty new I think. Would return!

Also if anyone is up to FAP on a Monday (unlikely I know) lemme know!

SAQ. there's one on the corner of st laurent and mozart in little italy (secret flopson trivia: i used to live on that corner)

^ was a response to :

where on earth do you buy booze?

That saq is temporarily relocated to St. Laurent between St. Zotique and Beaubien. But there's also one on the NW corner of Jean Talon market.

Just back from a really really really great and fun meal at Damas, waitstaff explained SAQ to us, sorry Montreal that u have some booze barriers!

Anyhow not once but TWICE in two days we have hailed a cab whose driver then pointed us toward a different cab that was "up next"? Like there is a cab driver code of honor in Montreal?

Love u Canada!

you were probably at a cab stop, where they queue up

glad you enjoyed my hometown. i miss it sometimes :)

oh weird, I am in MTL right now, too! staying in St Henri, which is funny bc I just read this whole thread and ppl were like "tourists, don't stay in St Henri because why?" and I get it but there was a cheap Airbnb here and also I kinda liked the idea of being in a neighborhood I might not otherwise have seen?

actually, now I'm wondering, bc I have no trace of it, where rrrobyn lived in 2006 when I stayed with her? my Montreal geography is poor, I realized, bc on that trip I basically just let her lead me around everywhere (which I do not regret). where was the indian restaurant at which we met s1ocki?

mile end near st laurent & bernard iirc

not betraying any confidential info here, pretty sure she's moved (and the neighborhood's changed quite a bit)

deeply regret not ever making it up to montreal while i lived in vermont :(

shameful

although I visited one or the other multiple times and kept saying "oh yeah, I should go to both, it's like a two hour bus trip" and never did

i have a hare-brained notion to move to montreal but i have no idea how i would make ends meet speaking zero french

get a corporate office job

When we were just there, most people spoke English, or at least enough. If you live there, I assume you will approach it from the reverse, and learn a little French.

Amusingly, we met a couple of French immigrants, and they said they struggled with Montreal French.

get a corporate office job

― flopson, Tuesday, September 19, 2017 3:22 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do nonsense low-level office clerk work would that be an option?

9-5 job prospects for unilingual anglophones is definitely poor. this is a city where 90% of the industry is in french.
it is why most unilingual anglos who stick around do freelancey kind of work.

there are jobs - keep your eye on job boards for McGill and Concordia, Reader's Digest, Bookmark, etc, or i guess for big pharma or something - but this is definitely not a great place to be a unilingual professional seeking work at a large company/org

mile end near st laurent & bernard iirc

― mh, Tuesday, September 19, 2017 8:43 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok yes this checks out. i remember
that the pharmacie esperanza i mentioned here was a couple of blocks away from r's place.

now drinking at dieu de ciel! A+

*du

xposts. ah, thanks sean. i thought as much. ah, well, i can always visit.

have drank at dieu du ciel, very good, would drink again

i do nonsense low-level office clerk work would that be an option?

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, September 19, 2017 6:34 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup

sean is talking literary/media jobs i believe. if u just want to work in an anglophone office in an industrial park in Ville St-Laurent there are a dozen-or-so of those

not to mention if you do move there and only speak english you're essentially moving to a small town

nah that's not true. i am bilingual but only hung out with anglos, didn't feel small relative to vancouver where i live now that is entirely english. actually vancouver feels smaller, in terms of like social scene. the thing is that bilingual people don't mind speaking the language a unilingual speaks, so the real two solitudes is unilingual anglos and francos, each of which are very very small minorities

i would be planning to learn french obv btw. i am good at languages and so i think i could learn enough idiomatic french to "get by" but obviously to reach the kind of fluency and literacy that are required in the clerical jobs i do would take me years and i wouldn't have that long to become employable.

anyway thank you for your input and i will stop my derail of the thread now :)

You can actually get paid about $550/month to learn French here:
https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/french-language/learning-quebec/full-time/index.html

i mention this because montreal is the best and more people should move here! it's so much cheaper than toronto or vancouver. yes, it's hard to scale the corporate ladder - but there are still lots of opportunities, especially if you put in effort.

there are jobs - keep your eye on job boards for McGill and Concordia, Reader's Digest, Bookmark, etc, or i guess for big pharma or something - but this is definitely not a great place to be a unilingual professional seeking work at a large company/org

Maybe, but it's more complicated than that. In a certain segment of large companies (tech, financial, services) there are a significant number of unilingual anglophones above a certain seniority threshold. I've met many unilingual anglophone senior manager and corporate executive types, some are the flown-in-from-Toronto variety, some are the married-a-local variety, and some are the I'm-still-here variety (chiefly older West Island types). There are also significant numbers of unilingual West Island types in sales (often Montreal companies sell mainly into the US, so French is a non-issue for their sales reps) as well as various technical, back-office, and admin/clerical jobs. But yeah, there's a big chunk of middle-earners for whom bilingualism is absolutely necessary (this goes for native French-speakers as well).

In the tech sector the percentage of unilingual anglophones is significantly higher at all levels. Anyone who is new to Montreal and doesn't speak French would do well to try to get a job at a tech company. (If you have tech skills, all the better, if you don't you can still aim for sales, customer service, or various administrative roles). Some companies will have an ostensible glass ceiling as the language of management is French, but there's not much you can do about that.

Of course now that I think about it "unilingual anglophone" is a bit of a red herring in this context since the majority of workers at Montreal companies I'm familiar with who speak English and not French tend to also speak one or two other languages... but only have minimal French fluency. I've met tons of Concordia graduates who stayed on and other recently immigrated folks who speak Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, Punjabi, Romanian, Ukrainian, or Korean... and in many cases several languages. Mexican, Chilean, and Colombian colleagues have tended to take to French quite easily, as have the Romanians (where I believe Romania still has Francophonie status and French is a primary language of instruction), but not everybody finds it so easy or has the time to make it a priority. In the end I've been in many meetings where functional, okay-ish English is the basic standard everyone tries to meet, almost nobody speaks French, and you're more likely to hear colleagues have a side conversation in some third language than either of the so-called "Canadian" languages.

I'm sure it can be discouraging to hunt for a job and I've seen several "unilingual anglophones" (in this context I think we just say it means "people from elsewhere in Canada") stagnate in Montreal, burning themselves out on low-paying jobs beneath their ability simply because they feared another job hunt. But it's not impossible by any stretch of the imagination. Once you got a line on your CV that says you've worked at a Montreal company, your second job search gets easier. And chances are you'll have made some friends. Montreal is tremendously informal in the sense that small to medium companies often hire their friends instead of going through a formal process (although later on, this tends to have an altogether different effect on the workplace, more on which another time).

It's the West Islanders who don't speak French that give me the creeps.