There are literally dozens of gourmet experience offerings during the 10 days of the Montreal en Lumiere festival – and picking and choosing which meal to enjoy (and spend your hard-earned dollars on) is not a simple job. So many choices – so few evenings, such limited funds.
So – to help you out – here are the Montreal Madame’s quick guide to making great choices:
1) Old age isn’t good for a chef. Don’t pick a meal where the ‘guest’ chef has a huge reputation, and has been doing this a long time. Why not? Because in my experience, these chef’s have little left to prove – and a lot to lose if they take risks. So you can bet the meal will be on the safe side of dreary – with an expensive price tag to boot. Better bets are elsewhere.
2) Up and Coming means Exciting. A young chef who has just gotten a serious award is probably still trying to prove he’s worth it. And those meals can be some of the most fun. Just bring an open mind – molecular cuisine is huge – and not to everyone’s taste.
3) Never pick a meal that goes on for more than 2 days. Why not? Because in my experience, the chef shows up for the first day – trains the team – and then leaves. You end up eating a meal cooked by quickly trained newbies – and pay the celebrity chef price. That’s no fun.
4) More courses – more better. Meals with lots of courses tend to be a better deal. You’ll get smaller portions of course, but the odds that something will be spectacular increases when the chef has to do more work. Logically it seems the opposite should be true – but experience has shown that making the kitchen sweat a bit is the best way to get the best experience.
5) Don’t let price keep you away. Ok – seriously expensive meals may not be in your budget, but don’t toss away meals in the $50 to $80 bracket. They are often the best ‘bargains’ – a great restaurant, a hardworking kitchen team, and a fun approach.
6) Don’t be discouraged by the lack of description. Sometimes the chefs don’t even know what they are going to be doing until they arrive in the city. In fact – if the description mentions a specific course – unless you are seriously interested in trying that course – steer clear of that offering. It means that there’s not going to be a lot of creativity happening – and tried and true, while safe – can be boring.
If you have other ideas – comment away – these are just some of the clues I’ll use when picking where to spend my money – you may well have ideas that are even better.
Musings and Mutterings of a Montreal Madame 
You’ve clearly been there done that before. Good advice I hope to use one day.
Hi there, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar
one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam feedback?
If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you
can suggest? I get so much lately it’s driving me mad so any help is very much appreciated.
I’m so new at this – it’s funny! I made comments require my approval – and if a comment doesn’t make sense – I don’t approve it. So far I’ve had 2 that got thru the WordPress filters – Yet they were totally unrelated to the Musings and Mutterings of the Montreal Madame. If you are using wordprss to host your blog – try turning on manual approval of comments.
I tend not to create many comments, but i did a few searching and wound up here
6 Tips to getting the best from the Montreal
Festival of Lights | Musings and Mutterings of a Montreal Madame.
And I actually do have 2 questions for you if it’s allright. Could it be just me or does it give the impression like a few of the comments appear like left by brain dead folks? 😛 And, if you are posting on additional online social sites, I would like to keep up with anything fresh you have to post. Would you make a list of the complete urls of your social pages like your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile?
Hi back at ya.
I approve all the comments manually – ie: one at a time – and so I’m not sure what you mean about getting lots of Spam. But then – I’m really new at this. I did notice that wordpress automatically categories some comments as Spam – even before I see them – so maybe that’s key. And as for on-line social sites – I’m not really on those. Sorry.
I like what you guys are up too. This kind of clever work and coverage!
Keep up the good works guys I’ve included you guys to my blogroll.
I really like reading an article that can make people think.
Furthermore, thanks for permitting me to comment!
Very nice post. I simply stumbled upon your blog and wished to mention that I’ve really enjoyed surfing around your blog posts. After all I’ll be subscribing to your rss feed and I am hoping you write
once more soon!
That is a good tip particularly to those fresh to the
blogosphere. Simple but very precise information… Thanks for sharing this one.
A must read post!
bookmarked!!, I really like your blog!
This is the 6th time I’ve seen this article; on numerous different blogs. Is someone just taking this and passing it around or what? Don’t misunderstand me,
it is a fantastic article, but I feel someone is being a thief, lol.
I hope it isn’t you.
Can’t speak for others – but I wrote this! Leslie