Trip to “La Belle Ville” Part 1 – August 24, 2008

Nearing the end of last summer, Jimmy and I decided we would do a quick daytrip to Montreal. I practically grew up there with my second cousins when I was younger, but Jimmy had never been there before. I should mention that he also has an aversion to French, stemming from his childhood horrors that were his French classes before he was even able to speak English fluently. Did that sentence make sense?

Anyway, we called a friend of ours who recently moved back to Montreal and made plans to meet up. We weren’t sure what we should do, but agreed that good food would be our first priority.



I had left my camera in the car THE ENTIRE TRIP, so this will be the only picture of the post. No food porn here, peeps, so move along if that’s why you’re here.

On the way to Montreal, we munched on some bulk candy. The day before, Jimmy and I went to Sugar Mountain for some snacks. Lots of sour gummies for Jimmy, and chocolate- and yogurt-covered tidbits for me.

We met up with our friend and made our way out to Chinatown. Ah, Chinatown. It’s the only place I know in Montreal because I mostly hung out with family. We ate at some Mongolian hotpot place. I have their business card kicking around somewhere, but am admittedly too lazy to look. (*Edit: it was Little Sheep.) It was my first time eating hotpot at a restaurant! The two boys were shocked when I revealed that to them.

I honestly didn’t know where to start, or how to order anything, so the boys took the reins. We ordered a split pot with herbal soup on one side, and their spicy lamb soup in the other. A waiter came by and brought us plates of shaved curls of beef and lamb. Once we got the basics (hot soup and meat), we jumped out of our seats and dashed to the buffet of miscellaneous foodstuffs for the hotpot.

We had mushrooms (shiitake, enoki, and white button), greens (napa cabbage, watercress, and some other kind of vegetable that I can’t name in English), noodles (Shanghai noodles, bean vermicelli, and yellow chow mein noodles), tofu (tofu puffs, soft tofu, medium tofu, and fried tofu), seafood and seafood products (squid, shrimp, naruto), and various types of meat balls (fish balls, pork balls, beef balls, shrimp balls).

On another counter, there was a large and varied selection of sauces. It was nice to see so many different kinds of sauces. Everyone was able to get the exact type of sauce they wanted.

Needless to say, we gorged ourselves. Near the end of the meal, Jimmy found a fat, wormy grub in our vegetables. We showed it to the waitress, not expecting the meal to get comped or anything. We were pleasantly surprised to see that they had taken off 20% from the bill. This is far more generous than I’ve ever seen in Chinatown restaurant ANYWHERE.

We then waddled back to our car, and headed towards Old Montreal.

(To be continued in Part 2.)

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Little Sheep
50 De La Gauchetière Ouest
Montreal, QC
(514) 393-0888