Cartel
Street food on Crescent
Photo by Elizabeth Ranger
Oh Golden Square Mile. Not that I ever called it that when I lived there. Downtown Montreal was golden all right, but I never figured that the sheen of the streetlights on the mirrored shops and offices had anything to do with the area’s non-colloquial name. Home of the student, the barhopper, the vagrant, and the seeker of fantastic cheap asian food, I alas had a student’s budget to contend with when I actually *lived* there, and so had precious little exposure to the panoply of affordable bite‘ems that really do tumble from the kitchens all around.
Cartel Street Food, one of the newest on the block, features street eats (the funnest, bestest, most delish and usually most crispy-awesome type of food out there – *humble opinions*) at prices that students can actually swing some of the time.
I mean, it’s tapas, so yeah the portions are well, wee. But herein lies the fun: the whole menu becomes a gleeful christmas wishlist of foodie proportions – the urge to simply point, request, and consume a smorgasbord of the dishes becomes SO easy and so irresistible that it’s exactly what we ended up doing. Within reason. Sort of. Heehee.
Started with a big ‘lo bowl of fried clams with tartar sauce (8$), which might have been the most memorable bite of the night for me. “like bubblegum made of seafood,” but more accurately, like fresh, sweet and tender morsels in a perfect ethereal breading laced with a detectable amount of pepper. It’s fried foods, but it doesn’t *taste* like fried foods (i.e.: not greasy in the slightest). A must try.
Photo by Elizabeth Ranger
We also tried the duck taco (3$). Best with a green rain of lime juice (for needed acid) and eaten while still hot, I could have had even a few more of these. Not incredibly spicy, nor particularly special, but a pretty nice combination of flavours nonetheless, and like, it’s a handmade tortilla. I could spread a bit of sriracha on a homemade tortilla and it would taste great. Mm.
Third up, we splurged on lobster roll for $14, which arrived as a cold claw in a hot, generously buttered bun. It was a curious combination! I should admit that I’ve never had a lobster roll before, but I guess I was expected at least a cohesion between the temperature of innards + bread. That said, it was huge piece of lobster (1/2 a lobster!) and dressed lightly with citrus and what my memory is telling me might have been tarragon (but please don’t quote me on that, Internet) – very enjoyable and surprisingly light as a centrepiece to our fancysnack™-manging.
Read the rest of this review here
Photo by Elizabeth Ranger
Lobster
Photo by Elizabeth Ranger
Duck taco
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