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For our anniverary, my husband and I visited the delightful city of Montreal.  We’d been there before, mainly to spend time at the city’s incomparable international jazz festival, held every summer, usually spanning the last week of June and the first week of July.  The weather is glorious in Montreal at this time of year which means for foodies like us, that the gorgeous produce of Quebec is beginning to flow into the cities, ending up in our grateful mouths.

While I could go on and on about the good time we had (the music, the rockin’ Asian cuisine we scarfed on the fly, the hotel’s rooftop pool), I simply must take this opportunity to endorse one of the best restaurants we’ve ever visited…Au Pied de Cochon.  If you don’t understand French, this literally means “at the foot of the pig,” thus the title of this blog.  We’ve been twice, and each time we enjoyed meals that nearly rendered us comatose with the pleasure of them.  (The first time we dined here I ordered the roasted pig’s foot, the menu’s crown and glory.  It was prepared in a wood-fired oven, tender and deeply flavored, sauced with a gravy of port and wild mushrooms.)

Au Pied de Cochon is not for the faint-hearted.  There are no watercress sandwiches here,  no chicken fingers or peanut butter for children, nothing for the fussy eater of any age.  In order to enjoy this restaurant, you must be prepared to face a menu of offal, game meats, and bizarre sea creatures.  You must be prepared to be served extremely large portions of the aforementioned.  In short, you must be very hungry and open-minded.   And despite the hefty price-tag, this place is casual, noisy, packed every night of the week, and an absolute hill of fun.

The first time we ate here a few summers ago, we, in our ignorance, ordered the cold seafood platter as an appetizer to share.  Our waiter mentioned that it was large, but he neglected to tell us that it involved half a lobster, and at least two dozen other pieces of shellfish, including some delightful sea snails whose shelled were packed with local butter and herbs.  Also included were langoustines, whole crabs, raw oysters…you name it.  But we learned our lesson from that, and on this past visit, we both ordered salads as first courses.  Salad, my foot.  I mean, pig’s foot.

My salad was the highlight of my meal, I think the best thing I’ve eaten all year.  It was a large plate of five or six varieties of wild, edible greenery with the barest hint of mustard-y vinaigrette.  But here’s the kicker…the salad was topped with a seared pigeon liver and a perfectly poached egg.  The mere thought of this dish is making me swoon, because it was SO CLEAR that the ingredients had been expertly, lovingly chosen and prepared.

My second course, was bison steak-frites, which was really super-delicious…the fries were served in a sundae glass lined in a brown paper cone the size of a dunce cap and they had been cooked to golden-brown perfection in DUCK FAT!

My handsome husband Joe’s second course, though, this was a true spectacle of mouth-watering delight, the stuff of culinary legend, a dinner story that we’ll be telling people for years to come…Duck in a Can.  That’s exactly what it says on the menu (well, Conserve de Canard, but you get it), and that’s exactly what you get.  A whole half a duck is wiggled into an aluminum can with foie gras, herbs, demi-glace, salt, garlic, and the barest whiff of balsamic vinegar.  The whole thing is cooked under pressure for who knows how long, and then the can is brought to your table closed, along with a plate of mashed potatoes and thick country bread.  Your server ceremoniously whips out an opener and proceeds to pour the contents of the can over the potatoes and bread, the fragrance of the whole plate rendering you giddy and moaning…like getting slapped in the face with something really good.

Go to Au Pied du Cochon if you are in Montreal.  Save up for two months if you have to.  It’ll cost you about $150 (two courses with wine and dessert) for two.  Just don’t forget to make reservations because it’s packed with locals every night of the week. 

My very generous boss Doreen treated us to a really lovely meal to celebrate the holidays and the six-month anniversary of Green Harvest Food Emporium, the place she owns and where I work.  She solicited our ideas about where we’d like to have dinner about a month and a half ago.  The general chatter was, “Why don’t we go somewhere we’ve all wanted to go but never have?”  Oddly enough, that’s a tall order to fill when you live in a fairly insular region and are trying to accomodate a bunch of foodies who have for years considered dining out their first choice for entertainment.

Doreen settled on Cavallo’s, a slightly mysterious villa I’ve passed by many times.  It’s considered more of an inn/event space.  It’s not quite a house, nor quite a hotel, and it’s not open regularly for dinner.  Nevertheless, the owner of Cavallo’s, Shirley, agreed to cook for us last Saturday night.  Doreen brought a selection of excellent wines along, and we arrived at Cavallo’s eagerly awaiting a special meal.

Much to our surprise, the space was open to only us that night.  The outside gate was closed after we entered the driveway.  Each table was impressively and expensively laid (a wedding was to happen there New Year’s Eve), but one was set aside for our party of six.  We settled in, all of us oohing and aahing over the odd yet grandiose surroundings.  The inside of Cavallo’s is largely an enchanting series of rooms and halls, decorated with amazing antiques and marble floors and staircases.  Shirley encouraged us to explore between courses, and thank heavens she did.  The meal she prepared was delicious, ENORMOUS, and the little walks in between were quite necessary.

Shirley began by serving us a roasted vegetable stack, a fabulous piece of homemade sausage, all accented by vin cotto.   Next came meltingly tender winter squash ravioli in a carmelized onion and muscat grape sauce.  The third course was prawns and langoustines in a lobster reduction, served with a butter-toasted baguette for scooping up the sauce.  And then came the entrees, where we all had a choice of dishes.  I chose the two-inch veal chop with demi-glace, which was just yummy.  But one of the funniest moments of the evening came when my husband’s entree was set before him.  He had chosen the half duck, which arrived in all its burnished, glazed glory on, no kidding, a PLATTER!   It was surrounded by whole roasted fruits and vegetables, easily enough food for three people.  Dessert was comparitively simple, but delicious, a fresh orange cake with lemon curd, strawberry coulis, and whipped cream.

So if you’re ever coming to Easton, PA, consider seeking out Cavallo’s on route 611.  If you’re lucky Shirley will let you in for dinner, and with advance notice you can stay in one of their suites for the night.  You’ll probably need to after the coma-inducing meal.

In our small city of Easton, PA, we’re experiencing a downtown revitalization, a remarkable charge led by the opening of several new eateries.  It’s wonderful to see, and most of the places I’ve tried are quite good.  And I even work in one of them, now!  My only qualm with this is the grim but real statistic that most new restaurants close within a year of opening.  It’s great that all these new places in town will create competition to keep the older, more established places on their toes.  But on the other hand, I’d hate to see our town just not have the interest and money to support all these new places at once.  Uncontrolled, rapid growth can be harmful in any business situation.

Perhaps those of you who live in other small cities that have experienced an economic reboot and the gentrification of dicey neighborhoods can relate to this.  This is not a big place, and yet we now have TWO Thai restaurants, five delis, inumerable pizza places, one upscale Japanese place, one very upscale tapas joint, soul food, several grub pubs and nicer grills, and a patisserie. I could go on. Within the next year, the chatter indicates the arrival of Tex-Mex, an Argentinian bakery, South American churrascaria, and Indian, all within one square mile.  Yikes.  I hope we’re all feeling hungry!

My husband and I love to dine out, and consider it a form of relaxation, entertainment, and sometimes education.  But even we, who eat in really nice places once a week, have our limits on what we’ll spend and how often we’ll spend it.  Maybe there’s more people around here like us than I realize, and everything will proceed swimmingly.  I hope so.  I’ve got my mind set on having ready access to big steaks with chimichurri and homemade mole.  If it’s all tasty, my heart will be broken if these places can’t afford to stay open.