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Cafe Rococo review
Sep. 11th, 2007 04:14 pmI have a million and one things to say about this Montreal trip and the Farthing party, but first things first: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jonsinger, here is your Hungarian restaurant review.
Cafe Rococo is on Lincoln and Guy, nearly on top of the Guy-Concordia Metro station. Extremely easy to get to. There are tables outside and inside. It's not a huge restaurant -- if you were going to bring a party of more than eight, you would do best to call ahead. There is a large vegetarian section of the menu, but I couldn't tell how many of those dishes would be vegan. I suspect fairly few of them, unless you consider cream to be the flower of the cow plant. Prices are pretty low, $8-12 a person, with $2-3 salads etc. You can go up to $14 for dinner, but that's only if you get really extravagant.
The tables bear salt, pepper, and paprika shakers. The smells are equally promising.
timprov and I each ordered things we would both like so we could have tastes of the other person's stuff. My cucumber salad was excellent, just what a Hungarian cucumber salad should be, with dill and paprika, very thinly sliced. Nice. But -- cover your ears, people, because my mom is about to shriek in triumph, and you will be able to hear it from where you are -- timprov's beet salad was just as good. Really. Just as good as cucumbers. Cucumbers are among my favorite things, and I hate beets. I used to hate beets. Now it turns out I hate all but the very best beets. At this restaurant, they have the very best beets. The beets here are a revelation. They still taste like beets, but in a way that makes you say, "Oh, is that why people are willing to eat these noxious things! In hopes that it will taste like this!" I tasted them specifically in order to be able to say, "I still don't like beets," and I can't say that. Wow.
I ordered cabbage rolls, and they were It. They were The Thing. They had that lovely solidity of the internal meat that cabbage rolls are supposed to have. (Cooked cabbage is another revelation Hungarian cooking has given unto me, but that was several years ago.) The cabbage is flavorful and lovely.timprov had lecso, which was not as outstanding as the cabbage rolls, in part because they didn't have their usual sausage and had to substitute. But it was good lecso. Just not as exciting. I was amused to see that their menus translated spaetzle as gnocchi, but whatever: it was spaetzle, it was good spaetzle, go spaetzle.
Of course we couldn't leave without palacsinta. The turo intimprov's was really, really good turo, sweet and tart and perfect in texture. We can make turo at home, but I'm not sure we can make it taste like this yet. But it's worth working towards. The walnut filling in mine was equally fine: so fine, in fact, that they gave me two small palacsinta, and I took a few bites of the second one. People who eat with me know how big that is. (No worries about the rest; timprov gave it a home.)
We are definitely doing this again when we return to Montreal.
jonsinger, here is your Hungarian restaurant review.Cafe Rococo is on Lincoln and Guy, nearly on top of the Guy-Concordia Metro station. Extremely easy to get to. There are tables outside and inside. It's not a huge restaurant -- if you were going to bring a party of more than eight, you would do best to call ahead. There is a large vegetarian section of the menu, but I couldn't tell how many of those dishes would be vegan. I suspect fairly few of them, unless you consider cream to be the flower of the cow plant. Prices are pretty low, $8-12 a person, with $2-3 salads etc. You can go up to $14 for dinner, but that's only if you get really extravagant.
The tables bear salt, pepper, and paprika shakers. The smells are equally promising.
timprov and I each ordered things we would both like so we could have tastes of the other person's stuff. My cucumber salad was excellent, just what a Hungarian cucumber salad should be, with dill and paprika, very thinly sliced. Nice. But -- cover your ears, people, because my mom is about to shriek in triumph, and you will be able to hear it from where you are -- timprov's beet salad was just as good. Really. Just as good as cucumbers. Cucumbers are among my favorite things, and I hate beets. I used to hate beets. Now it turns out I hate all but the very best beets. At this restaurant, they have the very best beets. The beets here are a revelation. They still taste like beets, but in a way that makes you say, "Oh, is that why people are willing to eat these noxious things! In hopes that it will taste like this!" I tasted them specifically in order to be able to say, "I still don't like beets," and I can't say that. Wow.I ordered cabbage rolls, and they were It. They were The Thing. They had that lovely solidity of the internal meat that cabbage rolls are supposed to have. (Cooked cabbage is another revelation Hungarian cooking has given unto me, but that was several years ago.) The cabbage is flavorful and lovely.
timprov had lecso, which was not as outstanding as the cabbage rolls, in part because they didn't have their usual sausage and had to substitute. But it was good lecso. Just not as exciting. I was amused to see that their menus translated spaetzle as gnocchi, but whatever: it was spaetzle, it was good spaetzle, go spaetzle.Of course we couldn't leave without palacsinta. The turo in
timprov's was really, really good turo, sweet and tart and perfect in texture. We can make turo at home, but I'm not sure we can make it taste like this yet. But it's worth working towards. The walnut filling in mine was equally fine: so fine, in fact, that they gave me two small palacsinta, and I took a few bites of the second one. People who eat with me know how big that is. (No worries about the rest; timprov gave it a home.)We are definitely doing this again when we return to Montreal.
