2015-06-19: Tourism

Our Australian Sensei has wisely chosen Peter to be in charge of the team.

Old Stuff - Vieux Port

Previous years I have been in charge but that has mostly been because I have often been the only member of the team. Sensei hasn't had a lot of choice. This year he is not forced into such foolish choices.

New Stuff - Geodesic Dome

To ensure team morale is high Peter has done a bit of research on Montreal and knows roughly where some things are to look at. He has also made sure we are registered correctly and so on.

Blue Stuff - Zip lines at the old harbour

I have also done a bit of research about Montreal. Mine is more along the lines of Talking to guys at the bar.

Guys at the bar did not talk about architecture

Guys at the bar were a little drunk and started discussing poutine. Poutine is chips, cheese curds and gravy. I already knew that because I am Worldy (and Wise) Man. I did not know that Poutine is quite as big a deal as the guys at the bar thought it was. The guys at the bar are Canadian French and so not prone to violent outbursts but Poutine looked close to provoking one.

Food & Beverage Review: La Banquise

map ref
http://labanquise.com/ (the switch english is in the top right, tricky to find)
My research indicated that La Banquise might not be the undisputed best poutine in Montreal but it is in the top ten easily and considered a good starting point. Plus it is open 24 hrs which reduces organisational skills on my behalf.

Bourdain's segment didn't offer much more information than mine usually do.

Anthony Bourdain made a very drunk (even by his standards) segment about this place. Due to this we have been advised to get there early as it is now quite the tourist mecca.
We walked in mid afternoon and got a table immediately. By the time we left the queue was about an hour. Thanks drunk guys.

Fork is for eating with, not for scale.

I like chips. Ewa likes chips. Peter has been doing lots of organising and has an appetite. Flora and Al are happy to follow our lead. We grabbed 3 Poutines to start with. The drunk guys did warn they are pretty big servings of food.

Carb loading partially complete, being able to claim you are an athlete is awesome.

3 is my favourite number of dishes to get anyway; easy to remember the differences while still getting variety. La Galvaurde (chicken and peas) is my favourite. La Classique (no toppings) and La Trois Viandes got some votes from foolish people. They serve beer so I wasn't overly concerned with the foolish votes.
Ravenous destruction of the dishes meant we had to implement our backup plan: Order Another One. This time we went La Boogalou (pulled pork and coleslaw).

And then we take it higher...

My reasoning for this was I like BBQ but I also like singing Gonna rock down to Electric Avenue in my head and boogalou rhymes so I had internal theme music for it.

Rating: 9/10 (8 for for the chicken +1 for the theme music)

Canada has a couple of other signature foods, we doubt they are all going to be as great as Poutine.
We know for a fact one of them is not.

Pizza-ghetti is a good way to ruin two things which are great by themselves in my opinion. Flora has weird (and wrong) opinions about what food she likes and took the plunge into testing this culinary travesty. She thought it was okay. Peter was hungry again and helped finish it. When I was doing the organising I don't remember it making me as hungry as it seems to make Peter.
Admittedly he is achieving much more than I ever did.