Passion and Poutine in Montreal

My love would often joke to me that our lives revolved around three things: sex, food, and sex…no, just kidding 🙂 but really, the three things we absolutely love doing when we get together are having sex, writing/reading, and eating great food.
Sex, well, we’ll get to that one later, i promise!! 😉  As for writing/reading, i already mentioned on my About the Blog page that my love is enrolled in the Creative Writing Program at Concordia University in Montreal, and me, well, i’m working on this here blog, you see, haha? (ok, so i’ve been doing a lot of texting with my students so my writing style is reflecting this trend at the moment, but it’s just a passing phase, i sweeeaaarrr!!!!)

WRITING AND LOVE GODS

I first met my love in a writing group, a prompt writing group, based on the Amherst method. I will blog about prompt writing and the Amherst method later in another post, but let me just say it was one of the best things i ever did, not just for my writing but because if i hadn’t gone there, i would never have met my love. We would sometimes talk, she would initiate the conversations, and i would shy away because she was in high school and i was, well, i was doing my Master’s degree and that even late in my life. For the curious out there,  let me just say that there are 24 human years that separate us (that makes 106 dog years! thank god we’re not dogs. or even worse still, cats as 24 human years works out to 113 cat years!)

But, as those of you who have ever fallen in love (or lust) know, you can’t stop the course of Mother Nature,or as good ole Rumi says on my About the Title and Visual Theme page, “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.” And so, when it came to the end of the writing group, i slyly left my car at home claiming i was trying to be good to the environment (this was true…ok, partly true. Another part was because i noticed that she took the subway and i wanted to take the subway together with her. For those familiar with the Toronto subway system (a link for those who are not), the writing group was at Broadview subway station, and i lived near Finch subway, which meant i had to go westbound and then northbound. The love gods were partially on my side: she lived near Royal York subway station which is westbound, so i had the delight of her company for a whole three subway stops. We talked as quickly as possible, or rather she did because she was a phenomenally fast talker – she’s slowed down a bit recently – and often we had to fight the screeching noise of the subway wheels grinding against the rails (why don’t they use rubber tires like in Montreal? taking the Toronto subway is enough to make you deaf), as well as a rush of people.

Is there a divine presence that guides those who are falling in love? Perhaps Cupid and Aphrodite are real? As i said, i secretly left my car at home so i could have a chance to talk to her on the subway and perhaps she knew this on some level because she would drop me hints that she knew i was older than her but that it didn’t matter. For example, once, when we were pressed against a throng of shouting teenagers, she whispered in my ear: “God, i hate teenagers,” which i thought was pretty funny since that’s what she was. Well, all you women out there probably know how dense men can be because i didn’t pick up on the import of that until later when i thought about that comment again.

Anyway, our relationship as well as our relationships with the other writers were progressing and on the day of the last class, one of the other writers invited everyone to a unique activity: every Monday or Tuesday evening, sorry my memory is a bit hazy on that one, a group of senior citizens would meet in a room at the Rosedale library and read plays out loud, each person taking a part. Well, my love and i somehow knew that this was it and we both agreed to. I had the vaguest doubt that she probably wouldn’t show up and my leaving my car secretly at Finch subway station and taking the subway down from Finch to Bloor for 30 minutes would all be in vain, but i consoled myself with the thought that perhaps i could network with some octogenarians (ok, i was desperate). Remember i was talking about Cupid and Aphrodite? I think they must have heard us, because my love called me on Monday to confirm…yes,  now that i remember her phone call (it was at around 5 pm because it was right after one of my tutoring session and i had just got into my car to drive home, so the timing was perfect – thanks , love gods :), i also recall that the play-reading was on a Tuesday evening).

i guess she must have had the same kind of doubts, but couldn’t console herself with the prospect of hanging out with some seniors. She asked me to meet her near Bloor subway station so we could go to the library together. She said her sense of direction was terrible, so i, being the gallant male with the reputed superior sense of direction agreed to guide her in my manly way to the Rosedale library. I found out a bit later that she actually had an iPhone with that fancy GPS navigation thingy and she probably would have been able to find her way; but then again, as i also later found out, she often got confused by that GPS thing especially in Montreal, so who’s to say what? Only the gods of love will ever truly know.

Needless to say, my heart leapt, and i was there at our meeting place in front of the Central Library at Yonge just north of Bloor, exactly on time (ok, i lie, i was about 10 minutes late), but thankfully, she was even later. She apologized profusely, and i said it was ok because i was scoping out a location for the writing group i wanted to start on my own, separate from David’s, but more on that later in my post on prompt writing. While waiting for Angelica, the girl in our writing group who had invited us, we talked. She talked about some guy she knew named Dean. She made him out to be some kind of genius, but i never did find out about him because i never got a chance to meet him. Angelica didn’t show up so we went into the room and they welcomed us warmly when we told them Angelica had invited us. They gave us copies of the play they were reading and assigned us parts. The play was a modern one with some sex, swearing and violence, and some of the members rally got into the swearing and sex with much gusto. It was funny and i really liked it. 

FINALLY, FOOD!

Afterwards, my love casually asked if i wanted to get something to eat. I wasn’t hungry, except in my heart, so i said sure, where should we go? She told me she was a vegetarian, and my heart did a little flop because i was almost vegetarian. Well, actually i am a “pescetarian”, a term my sister introduced to me, which basically means i don’t eat meat except for fish (I’ve recently added the occasional lamb and goat to my diet both for philosophical and physical reasons as i am molding my body right now and require huge amounts of protein, but i will post about body-building, or what i call body-molding later and my philosophy about killing and eating animals later). Being a pescetarian is quite challenging if you’re living by yourself and trying to save money by cooking, so i was interested in vegetarian/organic cooking and watched huge amounts of Food Channel and was constantly trying out a lot of recipes and trying to create my own recipe book. Anyway, i think i said something like, “Wow, me too, although i also eat fish (or, maybe i didn’t mention that part until later??), but i don’t know any vegetarian places near here.” She suggested a place called Rawlicious in the Dundas West north area, near Annette. 

Well, that was the beginning of our passion for fresh, organic, mostly vegetarian food. I guess we became what is known as “foodies”, although i hate those kind of labels. Not only would we search out good food, but we would cook each other food whenever we went over to each other’s houses. This was usually followed by sex, or preceded by sex, or sandwiched in between sex, so no wonder we began to associate the two. Ok, so back to Montreal. Since food was one of our priorities, one of our goals in getting to know Montreal better was to hunt out good food, especially since i was renting out single rooms in shared apartments through airbnb and found it uncomfortable to cook in someone else’s kitchen (although i did manage to do it once as you can see from my previous post “Ode to Montreal“. 

A MONTREAL BAGEL

We decided that there were two things we absolutely had to find in Montreal: one was a Montreal bagel. Thank the bagel gods we found St. Viateur – it was purely accidental, we were actually searching for another bagel shop and came upon St. Viateur because we couldn’t find the other two places. A funny thing actually happened when we first bought bagels there. We were so hungry that we didn’t bother going home, but sat down on a bench on the sidewalk just down the street from one of the two St. Viateur bagel shops, which are actually on the same street, just down from each other. The owner of the St. Viateur bagel shop happened to walk by and seeing us eating the bagels and reading the plastic bag they give you to store the bagels, he said, “I bet you can ask me anything on that plastic bag and I’ll know it.” Little did we know it was the owner, so we began grilling him. My love asked him the most difficult questions, like when was St. Viateur started and how many bagels do they make, etc. He answered them all and we nodded in appreciation and then he revealed to us that he was the owner. It was then that I recognized him from one of the Food Network shows in which St. Viateur Bagels was spotlighted. I shook his hand and said, “Great to meet you. Thanks for stopping by and making such great bagels,” or something like that.

AND OF COURSE, POUTINE!

The other thing we absolutely needed to find was good Montreal poutine – vegetarian, of course, and that naturally leads to Patati Patata, located at 4177 St. Laurent, on the corner of Rue Rachel. My baby had mentioned it as a good spot and we just kind of came upon it one night while walking on St. Laurent north to my apartment at Mile-End. It’s a tiny little place with a huge lineup outside both because it’s so damn good and because it’s so damn tiny. As i said, my love had mentioned it before, but somehow it had slipped our minds and we weren’t really looking for it, but i guess we noticed it because of the lineup outside. We lined up and ordered poutine and two grilled cheese sandwiches. I think we were cautious because we weren’t sure if the poutine was vegetarian, but my love said, “At this point, I don’t care,” so that was that. (Sorry, baby, but i just found out that although the toppings were vegetarian, the gravy sauce is made from chicken stock…but, i know if she’s reading this that she’s thinking, “It was worth it.”  I won’t go into how great the food is or even the strange small aesthetics of the place as there are many many reviews that you can read online.

THE PASSION OF PATATI PATATA

No, the reason why i wanted to write about Patati Patata was because of the extraordinary people working in there. The restaurant (if you want to call it that, i would call it something along the lines of a food truck without wheels) has an open kitchen. You can see the cook furiously cooking to meet the demand. The host/cashier/waiter was all rolled into one man manning the front cash. Now, I’ve worked in many restaurants, both in the kitchen and out front. I’ve done dishwashing, prep cooking, short-order cooking, baking, and waitering. I’m well aware of the frantic stress of the “dinner rush”. I know what it means to be “in the weeds” I’ve both been super-stressed and seen people crack in the most strangest ways under the stress. For those who have never worked in a restaurant, you have no clue what it takes to get your food out to you during dinner rush. Well, it was dinner rush at Patati Patata even though it was close to 10 o clock at night. My hunch is that the dinner rush at Patati Patata is longer than that of most other restaurants. I couldn’t help marveling at these guys handling the rush by themselves, the cook’s hands flying when he wasn’t scurrying to the back to get some ingredients and sometimes, i kid you not, disappearing into what seemed like a rabbit hole to get some supplies. The front man took orders, waited and bussed tables (lucky for him there are only about 6 tables and and a couple of bar tables running along two edges of the place), and called out orders for pick-up as well as taking payments and making change. I have no idea how he kept everything organized in his head. As i said before, only those who have worked in a restaurant know what it’s like to try to endure the dinner rush and this is only playing one role, like waiter, or busser, or host/hostess, but to do all three at one time is begging for a nervous breakdown. But, somehow this man with his green bandana tied around his head was doing just that and he was not only pulling it off, but he wasn’t freaking out with stress.

CIRQUE DU POUTINE!

Watching the two in action was like watching some kind of strange extreme dance choreography where they moved and bobbed and ducked and spun without once bumping into each other. I heard a glass smash and i thought it was the cook, and thought it was excusable considering the circumstances, but it was actually one of the customers and in the midst of his incredible busyness, the green bandana-ed whirling dervish of a front man managed to find time to clean up the mess and actually reassure the customer who was apologizing awkwardly. We finally got to the front of the line and this magician in a green bandana looked at me calmly and asked me what i wanted. I ordered and he asked my name as though I were meeting him at a party or perhaps at a cafe. He explained that if i waited outside, when my order was ready, he would call out to me by name.

And he did. We waited outside for quite a while and to occupy my love, i asked her to get me a coffee. My name was called. I looked up and the green bandana-ed sprite looked straight into my eyes. I went in and got ready to pay. It was under $10, very reasonable for what we would find out was some of the most delicious food we had ever tasted. But, the magic moment was when he handed me my order in the brown paper bag. He did so with both hands, as though delivering some kind of holy grail. I reciprocated by receiving this food of the gods with both my hands, and then he looked me straight in the eyes, and said in the calmest, gentlest voice possible: “Thank you ____ (he said my real name), bon appetit and you have a wonderful evening.” It was as though in the midst of the insanity of the dinner rush, the world had taken a deep breath. I couldn’t believe how this man could not only keep everything under control, but actually take the time out to call me by name and wish me a good night, not in a rushed off-hand way, but with real feeling as though we had known each other for years. I was too bowled over to say anything except, “Thank you, I will.”

THE GURU OF ST. LAURENT

I walked out and my love was waiting with a coffee in hand. We walked a short distance to a parkette one block north , sat on a park bench and feasted. I couldn’t stop thinking about the two magicians of Patati Patata. They were a miniature Cirque du Soleil. They brought magic in such a small place, in such small almost unnoticeable ways. But, most of all, I thought about the guru in the green bandana. Some people may wonder if calling him a “guru” is a bit of an exaggeration, but there is no more appropriate word. If guru means master, if guru means teacher, then this man is a guru. Hemingway says “Grace under pressure”, but that’s only part of it. To be so involved in what you do, to be “in the zone’ like that is truly spiritual. The way i know this is because he kept his humanity, his love for humanity, by remembering my name, by taking that deep breath and wishing me bon appetit and a good night from the bottom of his heart.

In “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall, a great book that my love bought for me brand new only because i couldn’t find a pdf version online (i got Bruce Springsteen instead), and of course it wasn’t in second hand bookstores yet, McDougall talks about how physical hardship, such as super marathons make you a better person, citing the Tarahumara people as an example. He states that they are the most gentle people possible, except when they have their drunken orgies, and he speculates that it is because of their incredible running feats,  such as running 100 mile ultra-marathons. (Sorry, but I can’t find the exact page reference because i left the book in Canada).

Whether it be running an ultra-marathon, or enduring the stress and rigor of dinner rush at Patati Patata, the point is to do it with joy and focus because in the end, you will love both yourself and your neighbor and that love will spread, from one satisfied customer to another and from there, to the people they know. I hope to love what i do with such passion. I hope that my passion for what i do will make me a better person. I hope that my passion for what i do will let me love others openly and unguardedly. That to me is the passion of Patati Patata.