A month ago I got to attend a conference for work in Montreal. I went to the conference with a few coworkers, and after that was done my friend Stephany and I stayed for a long weekend and had her husband and my fiance Aldo fly in to join us.

I loved Montreal! There were so many great places to eat everywhere – I think there might even be more variety than in NYC! We went out for really good food the whole time and stuffed our faces with many delicious things.

We also took an Eclair Making Class, and you can read all about our experience here on my food blog Babaganosh.org.

First and foremost: Poutine! I am not a big fan of gravy, but pour it over delicious cheese curds and top it with maple bacon and I am sold!

Along with the poutine we had AMAZING burgers at Burger Royal:

Of course, we also ate a smoked meat sandwich – how could we not? This was from some deli in old Montreal. We grabbed it to go and went to sit in the park by the waterfront for a picnic. For $6 CAD it was not bad at all!

We also got a bit adventurous on this trip. Escargot! I personally love escargot – it seems very similar to clams/mussels to me, and I love the garlic buttery sauce. Aldo was very hesitant to try them but ended up liking them. Success!

We also had plenty of sweets during our trip. This is a soft serve raspberry vanilla cone from au Festin de Babette. Aldo had a caramel vanilla soft serve ice cream. I have never been to a place before that could blend different flavors into soft serve ice cream. Custom made! We loved it.

Not pictured: Crepes. Why oh why did I not take photos of the amazing crepes we had there?? I had the smoked salmon crepe, and Aldo had the ham and cheese crepe. Both were amazing, we loved the buckwheat version of traditional crepes.

But we didn’t stop at the ice cream… We grabbed a slice of Napoleon to go from a Slavic bakery. It reminded me of the traditional Bled Cake, only so much richer. Yum!

There might have also been cupcakes happening… You see, what had happened was we stopped by a bakery on rue St. Denis that had cronuts. We shared a cronut just to try it, and then Stephany could not resist buying some cupcakes. Because bacon.

Here is some beautiful cappuccino foam art from Kitsuné Espresso Bar Espresso Bar. The cappuccino was way too strong for me – but it sure did wake me up!

We also ate a ton of other good food – roasted duck, truffle pasta, Tibetan food, Korean bibimbap, steamed buns from Chinatown, and yummy seafood. It was all awesome and I was amazed by the variety of food in Montreal. The only thing that did not impress me? Montreal bagels. Sorry, this New Yorker has a fairly high standard for bagels and Montreal bagels did not even come close to being good. I gave them a fair chance (tried them at 3 different places!), but they were all pretty awful compared to New York and New Jersey bagels. Sorry Montreal!