Montreal is rightly acclaimed as a foodie’s paradise, with more great restaurants per square mile than almost anywhere else, offering a diverse range of cuisines from innovative, world-class chefs; it’s part of the reason the city has become a top North American tourism destination. And today’s restaurateurs are at the top of their game: the restaurant-going public of 2008 is more informed about food and wine than at any time in history.
However, it wasn’t always so.
In 1977, Montreal was still enjoying the lingering effects of Expo 67, which opened the eyes of a still somewhat parochial audience to a dizzying array of global cultures and cuisines. Many Expo workers, volunteers and exhibitors, equally taken with the genteel city on the river, decided to make it their home, and brought their cuisine with them. The decade was capped off with another global event, the 1976 Olympic Games, which brought a huge infusion of capital and tourism to the city. These events catalyzed the transformation of Montreal, over time, from dowdy dowager empress into the vibrant culinary capital it is today.
I found this copy of the Guide in a used bookstore while on vacation in the United States, obviously purchased by some long forgotten American tourist. Flipping through its pages, I was immediately brought back to the 1970s Montreal of my youth — where shopping meant Les Terrasses, Woolworth’s, Kresge’s, Simpson’s, Eaton’s, and Marks & Spencers — and in between these places would be landmarks such as Le Pavillon de L’Atlantique, Le Tramway, Dunn’s, and Chez Pauze.
1976, from a culinary standpoint, was a more naive and innocent time. Yogurt, sushi and curries were still strange and exotic; you couldn’t buy them in packaged form at Steinberg’s the way we can casually pick up some President’s Choice version today. Italian and Portuguese were charming “ethnic” foods only to be found in immigrant neighborhoods, cheese came in Kraft Singles or Cracker Barrel bricks, and most housewives cooked from Jehane Benoît’s repertoire of ye-olde-schoole French-Canadian classics. Buying wine at the SAQ was an experience akin to getting your passport renewed; a grim lineup at a teller’s window, with very little to choose from.
As far as restaurant food went, the pages of the guide show that Montreal was completely dominated by old-school, heavy French and Québecois fare: Doré amandine, veal scallops Cordon Bleu, all manner of chops and steaks, lobster Newburg, and beef Stroganoff were all pretty typical. The few Spanish restaurants were old-school paella joints, and Asian cuisine seemed to be limited to a couple of tiki bars and the Bill Wong / Benihana feed palace on Decarie. There were a few places that were beginning to bring Nouvelle Cuisine influences from France, but they were in the minority.
More than the nostalgia factor, what I love about the Guide is the writing style; prim, proper, prone to clichés, with an entertaining cluelessness about foreign food (the passage about a Benihana chef “sending your steak flying into the air with a deft karate chop” is priceless). Oddly, many of the reviews leave you guessing about what the food actually tastes like, but I guess that added to the adventure of dining back then.
By my teens and early university years, the recessions of the 80s and 90s had devastated downtown Montreal, leaving many empty storefronts. Many of the old-guard Montreal restaurants closed or faded away, their locations repurposed for newer places, or transformed into different retail vocations, or demolished entirely.
Slowly, surely, the city rebuilt its prosperity as a high-tech, creative centre, and the parallel renaissance of the food scene over the last decade-and-a-half is a fascinating story. Arguably, today’s finest Montreal restaurants are light-years better than their predecessors, but the encroachment of chain restaurants has nibbled away at the lower to middle tiers, where most of Montreal’s more idiosyncratic places were to be found.
I offer these transcribed reviews — one a day — for your enjoyment and as a historical curiosity. For those who love Montreal and love food, we cannot appreciate how far we have come without occasionally looking back.
Review transcriptions will include notes for 2008 readers: We’ll note if the restaurant in question is still open or closed, and if closed, what occupies that address today. The guidebook did not have any photographs, so if readers have any old slides or photographs of these establishments, we welcome their submissions. As always, reader memories of these places are welcome in the Comments.
Gyron Malloway
March, 2008
