Tall windows define the front of the restaurant, the tiled back wall streams with water. The bar, suffused in red light, runs from front to back. The place is packed with square tables, leather-backed chairs, and, on that Friday night, the nervous energy of young, well-dressed urbanites.

The air throbbed as the DJ, wearing a tuque, goggles and tattoos, cued up the Rolling Stones, followed by the Tragically Hip. Waiting for our table, I smelled oysters.

The food at Méchant Boeuf is French brasserie fare - raw bar, hanger steak, grilled salmon - with a nod to pub food, including burgers and a poutine made with braised pork and Canadian Migneron cheese.

My salad of arugula and goat cheese was decidedly French: half inch slabs of creamy chèvre stacked between rounds of yellow and red beet made a delightful and delicious sculpture.

Eating required deconstruction; in the process I slathered cheese on slices of fresh crusty baguette. The loose pile of peppery greens with grape tomatoes and grated carrot, paired with a glass of Chilean cab, left me satiated, and full.

The burgers at Méchant Boeuf are said to be the best in town, and Ken couldn’t resist. The half pound of charbroiled beef arrived nicely pink at the center (even though our server told us they’re not technically allowed to serve beef rare).

The juicy meat was covered with blue cheese, gruyère, caramelized onion, and two substantial slices of bacon. A warm onion roll contained the dense, smokey concoction. An English pint of Tetley’s cream ale, with notes of caramel and a hoppy finish, was exemplary at its side.

Good as it was, the search for the city’s best burger continues…

Do you have a favorite? Let us know!

What a great gift for your favorite chocolate lover, and at $14.95, it’s outrageously affordable!

With two restaurants, a bar and, for added romance, a poet as a namesake, the Nelligan is the perfect place to cocoon.

I spent 24 hours at the Nelligan - read about my micro-vacation, including the best eggs benedict I’ve ever eaten, in this week’s Seven Days.

Here are a few other ideas:

Old Montreal
Ateliers et Saveurs, 444 Rue St-François-Xavier. Gift certificates for wine tastings, cooking and cocktail classes, $20 - $75

Verses Restaurant, 100 Rue St-Paul Ouest. Gift certificates for weekend brunch, $40

PLATEAU-MONT-ROYAL
La Vieille Europe, 3855 Bd St-Laurent. Italian panettone and panforte; German gluhwein, marzipan, stollen; Christmas pudding, mincemeat, and many other Old World holiday foods. Most $5-$15

Epicérie Entrepôt, 4001 Bd St-Laurent. Bulk groceries, including organic products and Portuguese specialties, at reduced prices

Le Canard Libéré, 4396 Bd St-Laurent. Everything duck, including pâté, rillettes, foie gras and tubs of rendered duck fat, from $10

Espace Nomad, 4650 Bd St-Laurent. Gift certificates for 7-step Chocobliss facial ($95), and skin products made with maple syrup, fruits, vegetables and chocolate ($20 - $40)

And finally, a view more food treats from this week’s Voir.

Have you found a fabulous treat or source? Tell us about it!

Then, a few weeks ago, I went to Café Griffintown to meet a friend and listen to live jazz. I liked the ambiance - a long, narrow space with brick walls, wooden floors, and lots of regulars - but I didn’t expect much, foodwise, until my friend told me the menu was based on ingredients from Atwater Market.

I ordered the Griffintown Burger - 50% beef, 25% lamb and 25% duck, charbroiled in the open kitchen at the back of the café. The combination of ingredients raised my spirits - which then fell when I wasn’t asked how I wanted my burger cooked (rare is my default position).

Fearing the worst, I sipped my Argentinean malbec and mentally tweeted the gods of fairness: Please, not another flat, dry disappointment.

They must have been listening.

The burger was cooked through, with no pink that I could see in the dim light. But it was plump - a good sign - and surprisingly, wonderfully, tender. The flavor was primarily beef - not bland factory farmed beef, but closer to the round, fresh flavor of grass fed Scottish Highland - enhanced by the earthy sweetness of the lamb and duck. The lightly toasted eggy bun complemented the meat perfectly.

Lettuce, onion and a slice of tomato served with the burger were substantial, though not so much that they made holding it unwieldy. A red condiment I thought was ketchup turned out to be a smoky concoction that overwhelmed the bite I put it on.

Of the soup, salad and chips w/salsa offered with the burger, I chose the salad, a tidy pile of mixed greens with lots of mustard on the dressing. The meal was delicious and filling, and at $14, a good value.

Then came the value-add: live jazz.

The One Two Trio that plays standards on Thursday nights is actually a quintet, composed of Griffintown owner Mark Peetsma (bass), artist Cheryl Braganza (piano), and Roger Walls, formally a member of the Duke Ellington orchestra (trumpet). Eloi Bertholet and Oscar Kalderone play the regular drum kit and djimbe respectively.

I stayed into the second set, swaying in my seat as the musicians riffed and swung, showing obvious joy in delivering familiar music in their own way.

My search for the best burger in Montreal continues.  But, all things considered, Griffintown is at the top of my list.

1378 Notre Dame Ouest @ rue de la Montagne

I’ve been wandering Mile End lately, with and without clients.  I love that it’s an interesting mix of architecture, commerce, art and people.

These photos take you to the neighborhood in ways my descriptions just can’t.  I’ll be back with a few reviews, but in the meantime, merci mille fois - a thousand thank yous - to Cynthia Hartnett for sharing these photos (which I have regrettably cropped to fit the blog format.)

I found the show beautiful, mysterious, intricately designed and socially relevant - a curious combination of abstract and real.

The first installation, Data Zone, consists of three large white tables imbedded with Petri dishes. The “cultures” are actually videos, where dark human figures, reduced and stripped of physical characteristics, resemble strings of bacteria. The figures/strings move in intricate patterns across an illuminated white field.

Each dish seemed to contain a kind of modern dance where I reveled in the beauty of the movement, and searched in vain for a narrative. Rovner is a trained dancer, and the choreography of her “data” is both mind-boggling (the complexity of the patterns suggest that they are created by computer programs) and meditative.

The human forms at the foundation of Rovner’s work are part of the exhibit. I was struck by the amount of humanity the anonymous figures retain when reduced from real life men and women with identifying characteristics.

These figures are superimposed (and always exquisitely lit) on stone sculpture, canvas, notebooks, and four floor-to-ceiling screens. While we don’t see people, the installations feel personal. The line between real and abstract is not clear.

The show also contains continuous screenings of Rovner’s more overtly political works, in which she creates large-scale installations, one on the border of Israel and Lebanon, and the other using 60 tons of white building stone from the remains of Palestinian and Israeli homes.

Particles of Reality ends this weekend. Hurry to see it before it goes.

Have you seen the show? Tell us what you think!

If you go…

451 Rue St-Jean, at St-Sacrement, M: Place d’Armes
Open W-F noon-7pm, Sat and Sun 11am-6pm

Art is food. Feed the people

Working backward:
Reception, Saturday 4-7pm in their new fourth floor space. Meet writer, artist, and gallery owner Ric Kasini Kadour and participating artists. Eat real food: fruit, chocolate, cheese, wine.

Get your aural fix, Saturday 3pm. Nicolas Dion, a.k.a. Darcin, will perform “X” - a sound performance that focuses on the manipulations of one toy instrument by one person and one computer.

Graze, Saturday 2pm. “Commencement” expo and ARTSHOP open. Visual artists include wood sculptor Clement Yeh, collage artist Karen Geiger, jazz-inspired abstract painter Lois Eby.  ARTSHOP sells monographs, chapbooks, small one-of-a-kind works, multiples, and other creative endeavors by contemporary working artists.

Saturday, noon. Feast on the gallery’s temporary proportions, newly wrapped in brown paper by performance artist Emma Waltraud Howes.

Friday 11am-6pm, watch Howes, an interdisciplinary artist who has performed and exhibited internationally, as she stretches and affixes brown paper throughout the gallery to create new walls and redefine the space.

If you go:
372 Ste Catherine Ouest, Suite 408

Muvbox, a new take-out restaurant in Vieux Montreal, is a 20-foot shipping container by night and a solar powered boîte serving clam chowder, pizza, and lobster from the Magdalen Islands by day.

I arrived just before noon on a Wed, at the recommendation of a friend - knowing nothing about the design, but eager to try a lobster roll that cost less than $10.

It was a sunny day with a delicious breeze coming off the water, and the place was hopping: the shaded deck was full, half a dozen people waited in line on the building’s north side, and red-aproned staff moved quickly and efficiently at the heart of the miniscule space.

My lobster roll came in a paper box, in keeping with the box theme. The split hot dog roll was nicely toasted, making a warm shell for chunks of claw meat with slivers of celery and bound by a little mayo. The most popular meal was the special - clam chowder, lobster roll, chips and a drink for $14.95.

My friend pronounced the Margherita Pizza ($5.95) delicious and a good value. (The resto’s founder, Daniel Noiseux, brought the wood-fired oven to Montreal 25 years ago.)

Located on the quai next to La Maison des Eclusiers, the minimalist structure looks onto a gorgeous view. And at night, the restaurant itself adds to the scenery. Painted black, white and red, with giant lobsters on the end, the box has awnings that retract and sides that fold up to enclose kitchen and deck.

If you go:
Muvbox is located at the corner of McGill and rue de la Commune
Open from 11:30 am to 7:30 pm, weather permitting

Nearby, a mother defined anarchism to her teen-aged daughter. “It’s craziness! Chaos! Everybody running around with their hands in the air!”

So which is it - freedom or lawlessness? utopia or disorder?

L’Insoumise, an anarchist bookstore, library and independent media center, does a great job addressing the topic’s two sides. The mission of this sliver of a space (L’Insoumise means unsubdued, or rebellious) is to make anarchist information available.

The shop’s most popular section is Marxist writings. Art and fiction, with Camus and Orwell among the favorites, is also much visited. Half of the books are in French, half in English, most are used.

There are sections dedicated to classics, poetry, drama, theater, contemporary anarchists, the history of anarchism, feminism, green architecture, animal liberation, Chomsky on foreign policy, surrealism, psychology, children.

They sell pamplets, magazines and newspapers, as well.

Booksellers are friendly and knowledgeable - and impeccably organized. Not far from the mother/daughter duo, an employee made his way through the section on the Spanish Civil war - lining the book spines up evenly with the edge of the wooden shelf.

Have you been to L’Insoumise?  Purchased books or attended events there?  Share your experience.

If you go:
2033 Blvd St-Laurent
(514) 313-3489