Hours: Mon - Fri 11:30 AM to 11:00 PM; Sat - Sun 5:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Licensed, all major cards, Interac, Traveller’s checks. Tel.: 843-7432.
 guess we often want to surround ourselves by things we like. Things from our youth, sounds and smells that make us feel happy.
Going to Le Petit Moulinsart in Le Vieux Montréal was a bit like that. I grew up reading all those Tintin books in which the Arumbaya Indians speak in the Brussels dialect and the Arab names like Wadesdah and Babelehr can only be understood by Belgians.
To get an overdose of happy memories, I opted for a Belgian restaurant in this artsy part of the city named after the castle in which Tintin lived: Le Moulinsart, draped in Tintin paraphernalia, with a promise of unlimited Belgian beer and heaps of mussels any way you like 'em.
I had no choice, really. After all, it was already April 25, and the mussel season would end in five days, to start again in earnest in September.
 This week's RestoSpy team consisted of the boat guy, a woman I will call Bianca Castafiore (she has at least the same aristocratic nose, but her balcony is smaller), a woman I will call the Brusselse kiek (in Tintin's Brussels dialect), and, yes, a third woman, the Blue Lotus, an Asian beauty who for a mysterious reason has taken a liking to the boat guy.
It's easy to spot the place on St. Paul, because the Belgian flag is waving outside. The boat guy and I settled for Belgian beers, selected from a list of about 25 Belgian brews, ranging in price from about $5 dollars for Leffe draught to about $11 for a bottle of Delirium Tremens. The women selected a white wine.
We came for mussels, so that is what we had, but it should be noted that the menu offers a variety of dishes, from fried calamares as an entree ($7.50) to steak or horse tartare with fries ($15.95) as a main dish. Yes, the Belgians eat raw ground horse meat, and Le Petit Moulinsart is probably the only place in North America where you can attempt the same.
What a noble place to end a successful career as a caleche stud. For the less adventurous, there are table d'hôte dishes that change daily: today, they included confit de canard ($25.95) (a dish that loses its appeal when translated in English), the "catch" of Captain Haddock ($27.95), and ris de veau aux poires et à l'estragon ($28.95). We ignored all that and went straight to the mussels, opting for Moules Marinieres ($16.95) and Moules Madagascar ($19.95). The former are the standard mussels in a salty vegetable soup, and the latter are served in a red pepper and white wine bouillon. The other mussel dishes are flavoured in many ways, typically by combining a spice or vegetable with a drink, such as whisky, armagnac, cognac, red wine, white wine, beer, and even sake.
The firm, large mussels, all yummy light orange or dark beige, contrasted nicely with the gorgeous silver-colored casseroles. Not a single sandy Babelehr in sight. The bouillons were excellent.
The rather large and stocky freedom fries were not up to Belgian standards, and some of them barely made it to the dining room. The last batch arrived at our table after we had finished all the orange critters.
The service was courteous in the beginning, cold and slow during our dinner, and hostile towards the end.
The short balding waiter treated us as if we had Radjaïdjah needles sticking in our necks. Previously employed at the well-known Syldavian restaurant, the Klow, he was clearly not up to the exacting standards of Bianca Castafiore and the Brusselse kiek.
After the dinner, we tried to explore the adjacent Bar Lounge Le Cigare du Pharaon, but were promptly told by our Syldavian torturer that the "exit was the other way".
At that point, Bianca wisely warned me not to tell him what to do with the pharaoh's cigar. We discovered that one can also dine in the cozy Bar Lounge, right at the bar in a sushi-counter style, and in fact, if I return—after the painless removal of all Syldavians from Montreal—I will head directly there.— Reviewed by RestoSpy
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