A new supply of bagels?

Here are some good news for the hungry expat I am. I recently met for the first one of my colleagues from Montreal, basically he is more or less in the company my opposite number on the other side of the pond. Of course, as a fellow Montrealer, I asked him if he was more Fairmount or St-Viateur when it came to choose bagels. He was Fairmount, darnit. Well, nobody is perfect. But nevertheless, he was nice enough to offer me to bring some bagels from St-Viateur next time he is here! Which is likely to be April. I will ask for a dozen of them. I was lucky last time I bought a dozen bagels at their café on Mont-Royal Avenue: when I got home, I discovered that I had fifteen bagels! I call this fair accounting. Anyway, thanks to this generous way of counting, I still have a fair stock of bagels, now I know I can have a supply in April. I am happy.

The bagels of St-Viateur

For this Friday, I am plugging, as it is now a sort of blogging tradition, a restaurant or food joint that I particularly love. I have mentioned them time and again before so it will not be exactly something new, but they deserve their own post. I am talking about the bagels of St-Viateur Bagel of course. My first year in Montreal, they were part of my main diet and made me survive starvation. That and pork pies, omelettes and a few other things, but mainly the bagels from St-Viateur, which I had very often as my Friday treat. I used to go to the café on Mont-Royal Avenue, buy a few fresh from the oven, with salmon, cream cheese, capers, bring them back to the apartment, then toast them and eat them with cream cheese, smoked salmon, onion and lots and lots of capers. And a zest of fresh lemon too. Sometimes I ate there too, I usually take the Traditionel (classic smoked salmon bagel), but I also tried the Omertà once (years ago), which from what I remember was quite nice. My youngest brother had the one with smoked meat, which seemed delicious and very Montrealer. You can find the menu here, in PDF format. My other brother and I had them replacing the bun in hamburgers, and they work very well like that too.

You might think I am exaggerating, but Montreal is the place for bagels. Read the reviews on TripAdvisor. Of course, I need to mention that there is also a "bagel war" in Montreal, between St-Viateur and Fairmount. You can read more about it on this BBC News article, which also features a video. I am sold on St-Viateur, but I may be biased because I had my first Montreal bagel experience there and because it was so close to home. In any case, they taste much better than the cardboard donuts they call bagels here. If you go to Montreal, your trip is not complete until you eat a bagel from St-Viateur, fresh from the oven.