In the spirit of Tony Bourdain, food as adventure. Try everything twice in case it was made wrong the first time. Eat without fear or prejudice.
For breakfast in Montreal, we relied on the Fodor's recommendation of La Brioche Lyonnaise on Rue St. Denis. It was a straightforward continental breakfast, but it was gosh darn delicious. I had a large bowl of cafe au lait and a brioche with raisins. The dish also came with basket of french bread that demanded smothering with butter and jam.
Redneckhunter loved how the creams come with percentages of milkfat- no non-dairy crap here.
Above is a pic of the Cochonnailles platter - basically all pork by-products including blood, liver, and sausage. We actually ordered this thinking it was another dish. . .maybe this is why we got the respect of our waiter.
Duck in a Can. This dish was a work of art. All the ingredients are canned, and the can is then cooked.
They then poured the contents onto a bed of mashed potatoes and toast- the steam rising up from out of the can. Genius. So simple a concept resulting in amazing flavor. Our table pretty much finished this dish first.
1000yregg, redneckhunter, his brother, and I took a post-Thanksgiving jaunt up to Montreal. Our mission was to eat at Au Pied de Cochon. After watching Bourdain eat something like 14 courses of pork, duck, and foie gras dishes on No Reservations we were obsessed with trying this place, and it lived up to its promise -- it was truly amazing. I think the others will agree that this was one of the most memorable meals we've ever had.
The third starter was my favorite: venison tongue with tarragon. This tongue displaced the tongue tacos from Tortilleria and Tacos as the best tongue I've ever had. So soft and tender it melted in your mouth served au jus and with a delicious mustard. I left the boys to devour the poutine and ate most of the tongue on my own.
Then we had three main dishes: the house specialty pied de cochon (pig's foot) with foie gras -- crispy thin skin covering falling-apart nuggets of pork and fat and softened gelatinous cartilage with foie gras served over garlic and cream mashed potatoes.
Our third main dish was kidneys with mustard. I'd never had kidney before, so I think I've discovered that it's not my favorite organ meat. The springy texture is not my thing -- I like chewy like tripe and soft like sweetbreads, and I adore gelatinous like tendon, but springy not so much... I know that 1000yregg was a fan, and a huge fan as well of our dessert, which I was too full to eat more than 2 bites of, so I'll let him wax poetic on those and other items in our meal.
For our second of three Thanksgiving dinners, redneckhunter and I decided to deep fry a turkey. I did the prep again -- man, I loved injecting the mesquite marinade and watching that flesh plump up, and I have some weird fetish for rubbing under the skin... Redneckhunter took care of the frying - 35 pounds of peanut oil and 40 minutes later and we had one tasty tasty bird.
Queens is a foodie mecca. In our drive down Queens Boulevard and Roosevelt Boulevard we passed Ecuadorian, Mexican, Korean, Jamaican, Soul food, and who knows what else. Our destination: Sripraphai for true Thai. Thai food so true our friends who met us there said that they didn't like the Pad Thai because the dried shrimp in it were too pungent for their taste. 
We got a number of dishes but these were the standouts: Fried watercress salad - with such a wonderful blend of flavors - crispy greens, dried fish, pungent and sweet and tart; green curry with fish and eggplant - little green eggplants the size of golf balls - so good soaking sticky rice with the coconut-curry sauce; and drunken noodles with pork - wonderful broad rice noodles, spicy ground pork with just a little kick. The blending of so many flavors is the beauty of Thai food.
We tried to order our dishes spicy-spicy but the waitress told us medium-spicy would be hot enough. It wasn't that hot - nice spice but we all could have gone much hotter... they just never believe you when you tell them you like it hot!
So they aren't the best dosas (or is the plural dosai?) I've ever had, but they're the closest geographically. And sometimes, you just have a craving for that starch overdose known as a dosa. Potatoes and spices wrapped in a pancake made from lentil flour. My friend brownie94 and I are partial to the extra-spicy Mysore Masala dosa. On this evening we got the usual Mysore Masala (above), and a Mysore Uttapam (below). With the uttapam the ingredients are mixed into the batter and formed into a thicker pancake. I read that the batter is made of bean flour and rice. It reminds me of an Indian version of okonomiyaki, the Osaka specialty, or Korean pajon.
When I was growing up, Szechuan Best was one of my family's favorite Chinese restaurants to go to. The place opened in the 1980's and initially was rated one of the best Chinese restaurants in the Baltimore area. Nowadays, the place is looking a little rundown, but the food is still pretty amazing. In particular on weekends, they serve one of the best dim sum menus anywhere.
We started with some sweet warm soy milk accompanied by fried dough with sesame bread.(above) You take the fried dough and put it into the sesame bread to make a "bread sandwich".
Of course, they have scallion pancake as well.
My favorite dish is the steamed vegetable dumplings. I can eat 2 trays of these dumplings. They are so tasty, and they are good for you, too.
We also got a nice side dish of tendon marinated in chili oil with onion and garlic. This thing is really hard to make at home.
My mom's favorite dish is a dessert item that is sesame coated sticky rice with date paste in the middle. I'm not a big fan of Chinese dessert, but this is pretty good especially made at Szechuan Best.
The case contains 30 White Castles (that's 15 each). I do prefer the cheese. He eats the originals. It is sometimes accompanied by 1-2 orders of cheese fries. In my youth, this form of gluttony would be easy, but nowadays, the "wall" hits me at about 11 of them.
