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4759 Van Horne (Plamondon metro)
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Open Daily 11 a.m. - 11 p.m. Tel.: 737-5576
 Abe and Dolly Farber are here. Estelle and Harry Scialfa--and who’s that at the corner table? Could that be Dr. Dorosin’s son Jake, the nip-and-tuck guy?
If it’s Monday night at Fireside, they’re ALL here, probably for a bite after the bridge game at the Rotary.
Mrs. Fireside, the co-owner, comes to your table and remembers you from lunch the week before. “It vas sooo hot dat day, vasn’t it?” she says in her charming Eastern European lilt.
Fireside doesn’t really belong across from the Plamondon metro station on a busy, multi-ethnic strip of Van Horne in Cote des Neiges. Its fern-bar-and-kitsch-meets-saloon decor belongs more on a dusty strip of scenic Highway 12. The food certainly fits the bill: charcoal-grilled heaven at almost depression-era prices.
 Take the lunch: a kosher dill and crunchy-sweet sauerkraut. Hearty minestrone and country bread and a coffee from a fresh pot. A charcoal-broiled hamburger on a bun with grill marks, so juicy and smoky that you forget to remind the waitress that they shouldn’t be asking how you wanted it done. A forgettable but filling lasagna (but that’s not what you should be having anyway.) All this will set you back around $19.95.
The lunch menu, a bit schizoid with stuff like Spaghetti and Meatballs, Baby Beef Liver Steak and Homemade Fish and Chips, (most under $10 for a full course) is almost from a different restaurant than the dinner menu, which is heavily laden with red meat and large crustaceans. “Jumbo” is big here.
Fried onion rings are incredibly good, crusty and spicy on the outside and sweet and scalding on the inside. A Filet Mignon and Scampi comes oversized, with parboiled rice that Mom still makes at home, a thick, done-to-a-turn filet and obscenely large butterflied stuffed prawns. A chicken breast, while hammered flat beyond recognition and tortured on the grill, is still magically moist and savory.
 Every table is packed with customers, mostly silver-haired, and Mrs. Fireside knows most of them. But she knows you, too, even after only one visit.
Okay, so it’s Snowbird fare, not a fusion plate within a hundred miles, but who’s to quibble? It’s honest, hearty cooking at reasonable prices, done very well, not overly well-done. (But if I were you, I wouldn’t order the rabbit—if it’s the first Thursday of the month, you might have stumbled in on a meeting of The Society of American Magicians.)
If you go, say hello to Abe and Dolly for me.— Reviewed by Nick Robinson
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