1218 Drummond, Montreal | Tel. 514.868.1666
magine, just for the sake of argument, that you were planning to do a restaurant review. This involves a few steps, naturally. First you pick the restaurant. Sometimes we pick based on other publications’ reviews, sometimes we pick based on readers’ requests. Imagine that this time, Chef Nick was having a craving for a lovely hunk of red meat. Imagine that Shelley isn’t such a great fan of "big plates of Moo", but she’s happy to come along, take the pictures, write the text, and be amusing.
Imagine that you’ve has gone to the Angus Beef Steakhouse website to determine their hours and menu. The website is a grand display of programming talent. Imagine that you’ve had to reschedule not one but three times to get this date to work out correctly.
Now, imagine that it’s Wednesday January 25th, 2006 and the planets have finally aligned, and you’re there at the resto promptly at 11:30 am (when they open for lunch) because they’re probably very busy, how can they not be, their website says that their dinner sized portions of Moo are between $50 and $110 each. Imagine that you’ve chosen lunch because they have a smaller, cheaper version of their fare.
We are the only patrons in the place when we get there. The restaurant is on a weird stretch of rue Drummond, below Ste-Catherine. It’s across the street from a parking lot. There’s nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving.
It might be OK that the place is deserted. The waiter is lovely, chatty, trying to distract me from the inevitable… But imagine, if you can, that it actually gets worse from here.
view from inside and out ... empty
The chef isn’t here. He hasn’t come in yet. I’m sure he’ll be here in a minute. There’s no one to cook the Moo. Can you wait another five minutes? Finally, half an hour has passed. The lovely waiter offers to cook something himself, but admits that he could probably only pull off the most expensive Filet Mignon ($32/lunch-sized). We decline.
We did, though, run the tape the entire time, record the review anyway, this was to be our first podcast, and yes, it still is. Nick has edited down the most delicious bits for you in the link below. Imagine that the best part of this lunch is the podcast. || Click to hear the podcast ||
After half an hour, we decide to leave. Another table of clients did finally arrive. The chef, unfortunately, did not. – Reviewed by Shelley MacDonald
