If you're looking for "I Spys," dating or LTRs, this is your scene.
View ProfilesPublished February 21, 2023 at 2:15 p.m. | Updated February 22, 2023 at 10:04 a.m.
Boasting as many restaurants per capita as New York City and 110 festivals per year — including the largest jazz and comedy festivals in the world — Montréal doesn't slow down in the winter. Fests that just ended include Poutine Week (which lasts for two) and Igloofest, an outdoor electronic dance music festival on the pier in Old Montréal. "I like to say that it's the only festival where I need to put my beer in the fridge to keep it warm," tourism promoter Martine Venne said.
Already under way is Montréal en Lumière (Montréal in Light), an 18-day festival that runs through Sunday, March 5, and is among the season's biggest. After being online-only in 2021 and hybrid in 2022, the annual celebration of food, culture and the outdoors is back to normal in its 24th year with a full slate of events. By its nature, a festival of light must feature the night, and Montréalers are out dancing in the streets. After all, in winter, they say here, "it's not the days that get short, it's the nights that get longer."
Ready to shake off the slumber of the past three years myself, I headed north last Thursday to check out Montréal en Lumière's opening days. Canada has lifted all of its COVID-19 travel restrictions, Québec has a high vaccination rate, and hotels are filling up.
The first person I met, hotel doorman Oscar Donoso, immediately mentioned the festival. "Snow is coming tonight," he said. "It's going to be beautiful."
His favorite part of Montréal en Lumière is Nuit Blanche, the one day — Saturday, February 25, this year — when museums and galleries stay open late and more than 120 free events run all night. Donoso likes the museums and the music, and he stays out until 3 a.m. He is 61 years old, he said, "but the energy there ... it's contagious."
My first taste of the festival was a "crispy cigar of goat cheese" with olives and dried tomatoes, served with basil-elderberry vinaigrette, part of the special Montréal en Lumière menu at Restaurant Bivouac. Shaped like an egg roll, it was simply sublime. I followed it with roasted cauliflower prepared with woodsy spices and topped with crushed hazelnuts and, for dessert, clementine and sweet clover panna cotta. Executive chef Xavier Dahan, originally from Marseilles, France, runs a Québécois kitchen, he said: "I try to get all the products around us."
Festival food at Montréal en Lumière, I quickly learned, is not about beaver tails and poutine, though you can get them from a food truck on rue Jeanne-Mance. It's a celebration of local chefs, local producers and local ingredients. There are tastings, demonstrations and workshops. New this year is Quartier Gourmand, which offers free presentations in the hall at Place des Arts on the first two festival weekends.
Forty restaurants offer special events; 25 host international chefs, a festival tradition. This year, many come from Scandinavia, which has a similar climate and produces many of the same foods. Visiting chefs are paired with local chefs to cook together and learn from each other. "We rediscover our own products through the eyes of an international chef," Julie Martel, the festival's gastronomic program manager, told me.
Among the international visitors is Vermont winemaker Deirdre Heekin of Barnard's La garagista Farm + Winery, who will join Newfoundland chef Jeremy Charles at Vin Mon Lapin (150 rue Saint-Zotique Est) for wine pairings on Tuesday, February 28.
The heart of Montréal en Lumière is the Quartier des Spectacles, a downtown district of less than a square mile. It's home to 30-plus performance halls and to plazas where revelers can ride a Ferris wheel, zip down a slide and skate for free during the festival. Colors dance up and down the 265 LED tubes that line the elevated 1,000-meter skating loop (maintained by a custom-made mini Zamboni). The Ferris wheel turns like a neon kaleidoscope, and rings of light encircle the five slides. Video clips are projected on the sides of buildings, and five interactive installations dot the area, producing light and sound.
Though the whole area is designed to keep people moving and warm, opportunities to duck inside abound, such as a chalet at the skating loop, another at the Esplanade Tranquille rink two blocks away and the pop-up (heated) Bistro SAQ.
Thursday was so springlike that even I had the stamina to stay outside, but the buzz swirling around Haiti-born chef Paul Toussaint's 2-year-old pan-Caribbean restaurant, Kamúy (1485 rue Jeanne-Mance), pulled me in for jerk chicken, rice and plantain chips. Chef Paul's Sour, the signature cocktail, is made with Trois Rivières Martinique rum (which smells like cotton candy), lime and spicy syrup. It burned just enough.
Sated by the warm explosion of spices but disappointed that I was too full to try the tres leches cake, I tumbled back outside and hustled over to Place des Arts to catch the first two acts of Riopelle Symphonique, a multimedia concert celebrating the centennial of the birth of acclaimed Montréal-born painter Jean-Paul Riopelle. Then it was off to Le Studio TD, a block away, where trumpeter Jacques Kuba Séguin's jazz performance had 30 minutes left to go. I perched on a stool along the back wall and sipped water to rehydrate while, along with Séguin, I reveled in the return of indoor performance.
After a post-jazz spin on the Ferris wheel, I was exhausted. Nightlife goes on long after the festival closes at 11 p.m., and I wanted to stay out, but I headed to my hotel and melted into my pillow before midnight.
Friday dawned white. The snow that doorman Donoso promised had arrived, and the temperature had plunged. This was Montréal winter.
I explored Le Central (30 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest), the place to go if you miss out on a restaurant reservation or simply want a casual, high-quality meal. Open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., this 3-year-old gourmet food hall includes 22 restaurants, not one of them a chain.
This is no mall food court. "It's more like a street food spirit," general manager Genevieve Touchette said. Cuisines include French, Moroccan, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Hawaiian and Indian.
I passed up my chance to eat Filipino poutine, but I had to try a "caviar bump." It's a thing! And it's popular at Dominic Laflamme's new wine bar, named kaviar. You spoon caviar onto the base of your thumb and, tequila-shot-style, lick it off, hold it against your palate and then drink a shot of vodka. Three flavors come through, Laflamme said: first salt; next, the sea or the fish. "And then you feel all the soil texture, the soil flavor, and that's usually where we take a shot of vodka."
I tried a mini version consisting of one-quarter of the caviar, minus the vodka (it wasn't even 2 p.m.), and found the Siberian sturgeon caviar mild and less fishy than I expected.
After the delicacy, I walked to Morso Pizzéria & Alimentari, tucked at the opposite end of Le Central, for the Roman-style pizza that won a 2019 world championship award in Naples. Its dough is fermented for two to four days to produce a light crust with large air bubbles and a thin, cracker-like base. The result is crisp to the bite, then satisfyingly chewy. I savored a square of potato-rosemary, then went back for the Margherita, topped with burrata and basil leaves.
Two hours later, I enthusiastically accepted an invitation for the festival raclette and wine pairing that the hospitality and culinary school ITHQ offered at its bar, Blanc bec (3535 rue Saint-Denis). The Can$25 event (which runs through February 25 and February 28 to March 4) features Québec-made Swiss cheese on bread from aube boulangerie and Chardonnay from the Jura region of France.
By 10:30 p.m., it was 16 degrees but felt like 6. Ten-year-old Kalae King and her brother, Maverick, 12, from Ottawa, smiled for a photo holding ice-cold sticks of maple taffy (sugar on snow.) "I'm hot!" Kalae said before she and Maverick darted off for a ride down the longest slide at the festival.
My fingers ached from the cold. This time, I ducked into Kamúy to get warm — and finally to get a slice of that tres leches cake. Kamúy's version — cuatro leches because it adds coconut milk — is garnished with lime zest, hazelnut crumble, passion fruit reduction and a sugar confit habanada pepper, giving the Latin American dessert a Caribbean kiss and my Montréal en Lumière adventure a sweet ending.
Heading home on Saturday, I was wistful but recharged by the energy of the city. This must have been how Dorothy felt when she got to Oz, and her world turned from black and white to color. She wanted to go home; I wanted to stay!
But I will come back to this world next door. It's so easy and so close, and, through March 5, Montréal will leave the light on for me.
Nuit Blanche: This year marks the 20th anniversary of Montréal's Nuit Blanche, a free arts and culture all-nighter with some 130 events around the city. The Métro will run until 6 a.m. to shuttle festivalgoers who are sampling museums, dance, theater, standup comedy, improv, music and more. Find events organized by area — pôle in French — on the festival website. Click the "theme routes" tab for suggested itineraries, including one for families. Saturday, February 25.
Ciné-concert Les Triplettes de Belleville: Guitarist and composer Benoît Charest, who composed the soundtrack for the 2003 Academy Award-nominated animated film The Triplets of Belleville, will join eight other musicians to perform the soundtrack live while the film plays. Sunday, February 26, 7 p.m., at Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts, 175 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest. Can$52.15-62.55.
1969 Live: Claudia Bouvette, Elisapie, Elliot Maginot, Half Moon Run, Jason Bajada, Joseph Mihalcean, Les Soeurs Boulay, Matt Holubowski, Quatuor Esca and Safia Nolin play '60s folk songs. Saturday, March 4, 8 p.m., at MTELUS, 59 rue Sainte-Catherine Est. Standing room only; Can$47.
Galerie Laroche/Joncas: This art gallery on the fourth floor of the Galeries d'Art Contemporain du Belgo features 15 oils and watercolors by Waitsfield painter Frankie Gardiner. "Instagram," gallery director André Laroche said when asked how he connected with a Vermont artist. "I like her style, her painting." Through Saturday, March 11, at Galeries d'Art Contemporain du Belgo, 372 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest. Free.
Antoni: Let's Do Dinner!: "Queer Eye" star Antoni Porowski will demo recipes from his latest cookbook, Antoni: Let's Do Dinner, and answer questions (in English). Saturday, February 25, 7 p.m., at Corona Theatre, 2490 rue Notre-Dame Ouest. Can$56.53-65.23.
Free bilingual food workshops for kids: February 28 to March 2, at Le Central, 30 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest.
Learn more at montrealenlumiere.com.
The original print version of this article was headlined "Northern Lights | The Montréal en Lumière festival is back in full force"
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