quaker chewy chocolate chip granola bars

i eat these all the time. i have them after other food. i have them as food. i even have them as dessert. i think it's the chocolate chip part that gets me. i'm sure that's all i like about them.

for tas 1 [m:brgr]

the choc chip cookie with vanilla ice cream at m:brgr got betr. it was always a good idea, but recently they started making it with larger choc chips, and now it is actually really good, and i think about it from time to time.

m:brgr is just generally nice, it's a very chill atmosphere (though sometimes the music is really loud), and the place itself is very cool and trendy, the crowd too, and jeff the owner is great, very nice always friendly. one always bumps into someone one knows. i've spent a quite bit of time there recently. was fun with s-man that one time, and even he liked the place and the beer.

i really like chilling there (though it is too expensive). the drinks are high-quality, top-notch. i'm sure josh silver would be really happy i said that, he's always promoting m:brgr cuz he's got them to stock stewart's. he's all over asw, always promoting mbrgr, trinity, l'original, all the places that stock stewart's. m:brgr also has coke in the bottle. that's always nice, isn't it t ;). and the other day i had a kobe burger with portobello mush, monterey jack cheese, and caramelised onions...it was really good. i like m:brgr now.
[this is a very un-triumphant return. i hope i'll be more inspired soon than i have been over the last month.]

kabir's taj.

kabir's resto le taj is consistently rated the best indian resto in town for good reason it really is good everything there is good all the dishes are really delicious of course i love butter chicken and its excellent there and at a's prompting last time i had chicken tikka masala and it was great and again at her welcome and recurrent prodding i had the garlic naan which again was just so tasty and really amplified the general goodness of all the other dishes and it's generally just always a good time with kabir with whom i always enjoy interesting interlocution

other good burgers

a tangible facet of my life has been the pursuit of burgers. i'm not alone in this; in fact, it's a very 'stuff that white people like' sort of thing, and it occupied the content of an entire episode of himym, the epitome of white lameness. but, leaving aside that throbbing reality, there are a few good burgers i've had, though i know i'm far from where i need to be, in terms of the global human experience. let us concentrate on mtl, as you retain the possibility of being entranced by local fare, and that would be most beneficial to our future discussions on the subject as it would place us on common ground. the lamentable closure of pipeline (opposite club 281) was both mysterious and unhappy, as i didn't know it had shut and when i found out i was sad. i kept driving by, promising people the best burger in town, with its wonderfully rye bread, and being all juicy and tantalising. but it, like an anal of history, was shut. though when it was open it didnt shut till two in the morning, a big selling point for me as i like everything that stays open till the times i'm available to avail myself of them. if a burger place shuts at ten it's likely i won't go there often. like dilallo; it shuts early. but, moe's, on the other hand, is up all night. it's the oldest diner in mtl, open 24 hours, it's cheap, dingy, right next to the forum (which was a very profitable location for decades), and its really tasty. it's not called moe's anymore, but the burgers are still just so good, with the relish and the cheese and the pickles. all the stuff that other burgers have, i suppose. but, for example, nickel's isn't good, though it has the ingredients, it lacks good taste. nearby nickel's, though, is mr steer, which has always been considered among the top in town. their burgers are smaller in diameter, which is kind of cute, but they're fat, so still quite fulling. these are really tasty and i have two at a go. further down st cats is reuben's, which is a smoked meat place, yes, but still has one of the best burgers around, the berghoff's beer burger: a well-chargrilled patty, all the necessary ingredients, but with the addition of this beer-ketchup sauce, which puts it over the top. if we come back up the street, we'll pass by firegrill, which has a good, decent burger for the sort of place it is. if one continues perambulating, one will miss m:brgr, because it's out of the way a bit, but now this is a place that is dedicated to burgers. it has every option you could have thought of, mushrooms, truffle oil, all the cheeses, kobe beef, lettuce wrap instead of bun, the most expensive champagnes. well, it's expensive, this place. the first couple of times i went there i didn't see what the hullaballoo was, i didn't like the sweet potato fries that much, though i was much impressed by the giant choc chip cookie with ice cream (!), and i loved with nostalgia the floats and milkshakes, which looked the ones archie and the gang used to drink together in the 50s at pop's choclitt shoppe. or like the ones in norman rockwell paintings. that's more representative of a definite nostalgia, perhaps. despite all that, though, i had, last month, their special, which was a kobe beef burger, with monterey jack cheese, caramelised onions, shitake mushrooms, and truffle oil. and it was spectacular. really, really good. and it's silly of me to like the coke bottle, but i did. people from here only had them decades ago, so the kids here didn't grow up with them, but people like me, from the rest of the world, still use bottles, and we grew up with them. now, if we take a hike to another part of town, we see mamma's pizza, who have this wonderful mamma's burger, which comes in a tight aluminium foil. it's a big, big, juicy burger, but the relish is the thing with this one. our imaginal friend introduced me to it, and we both used to order it all the time, and one time i had called up and he had just placed his order, and the girl knew it was us two cuz we both asked for no bacon. further along, on duluth, one finds the famous au pied de cochon, who have a foie gras burger. now this is very interesting, and one finds it in some places, and it is worth a go. a couple of other interesting places in mtl are newtown, which actually has a great burger; dundee's has a good mushroom burger; some people like dunn's burger (metcalfe and st cats), for me the big selling point is it's open all the time, you can have steak at 4 in the morning; the st james hotel in old port has a beautiful dining room, with a burger that has an amazing tasting patty, but is far too small for the bun, which itself is very lacklustre. in some of the cities i visit a lot, there are places i go for burgers also, for example, in vancouver i always loved the burger at the garden cafe at the four seasons. it really is good and was my favourite for many years; it's a formal burger, with the traditional ingredients, such as onions, lettuce, tomatoes, with a well-positioned bun, and a carefully prepared patty, and the chips are well-cut and thin. vera's, on the other hand, is a chain that has excellent burgers, but, again, come in aluminium foil, are messy and big, and have lots of options, but, like they say, you can't beat vera's meat. in london i've always liked the tootsie's burger. it really is good, it's semi-formal, really, but it's best with the white chocolate milkshake. ah, five guys burger and fries, the burger from dc that spurred my somewhat-infamous moment-of-passion email some years ago; this is a burger. it's a fast food place, but, the thing is, it just tastes so good. it is so good. really good. in bangkok i like the burgers at the intercon hotel, and the hyatt has a good one too. these are wider in diameter, as hotel burgers tend to be, more formal, as stated, sticking to traditional ingredients, with well-grilled and well-made patties, topped with nice, melted cheese. it's the quality of the ingredients at the hotel burgers that makes them good. this has been a long exposition of a subject that i can imagine a number of you will not like at all, but some of you will understand and appreciate my appreciation. it's the sort of thing that the sort of people who like this sort of thing will find that it's the sort of thing they like.

a cheap trick (illusion, really): the despite-or-maybe-because-of-$3.75 so good dilallo burger.

the chain with the name dilallo: i frequented it frequently this past week, as my gustative peregrinations took me there on sunday night, some twenty-odd hours subsequent to my first experience there when i ingested two of the namesake delicacies as well as an entire french fried, and i again visited the scene of this crime of passion on tuesday night, when my enjoyment was, once again, plain and evident, like a piece of cheese in a mousetrap baiting its prey. the dilallo pattys are flimsy and unsound, nestled between a top bun that looks like a sexy bottom bun and a bottom bun that looks like a top-heavy bun, punctuated with hints of tomatoes, a lavish hit of onion, a Mr Pickle Two Slice, and pleasurable mustard, all topped with a grease that allows one's fingers to slip and slide, reminding one of the tenuousness of youth's pleasures, and the frivolity of trying to hold on to them. the first time the burger and my mouth met, the world was bright - it was a sunny day. there was an initial shock, followed by a rapturous engorging. the chemistry was palpable.

la clafouti sandwich

the place is packed. at lunchtime the lineup's a winding snake, people all waiting to gobble down the sandwiches, the fruits, the soups, all 'healthy' foods for cheap. the demography, all ppl taking lunch breaks, is noteworthy for its aesthetic quality, which is a surprising contradiction to the eatery's dark, cavernous atmosphere. in the summer, ppl/one cross the street (drummond) to the mini-park and eat there. that's what we did the first time i was taken there a few years ago by my old friend al-bookthief, who told me, quite correctly, that the sandwiches were great and cheap. i've never had anything else except the tuna sandwiches and i've never looked back. but here's what it looks like if i did look back:

spaghettibolognaiselust

it's basic. it's for kids, for young people. it reeks of simplicity, like pesto pasta, another of my lusts. it's sometimes disparaged by people who fancy they've sophisticated palettes; sometimes not. but it can't shake that sense of innocence, that sense of easiness, of being at the beginning, something from which one graduates. i never craved it in my minority. i never remembered it in the early years of my maturity, eschewing pasta generally. but, it's overcome me now and i've never wanted it more.

zooma zooma/angelina [for zara...]

i would eat this antipasto fifty times. one of the most amazing things in my life, the mont blanc was pure pleasure, the hot chocolate was pure, melted pleasure [a blog on paris breakfasts, w more pics]. hot choc and mont blanc are the two most popular things at angelina in paris, just near the louvre. "Although this palace has become a veritable institution, it still keeps its recipes secret. The thick, frothy beverage is served in a hot-chocolate pot, accompanied by a jug of whipped cream to complement it. The Mont-Blanc pastry comes from the Italian Alps. It consists of meringue, whipped cream and sweet chestnut cream." angelina is a chocolate house which opened in 1903, and it looks like it, an old, elegant salon, serving the most amazing hot chocolate, really, and the signature dessert, mont blanc, which, again, is out of this world. so good. "One should come as soon as it opens while the tea-room is still quiet and almost empty. The unchanging ballet of waiters then begins. The setting has remained almost identical for nearly a hundred years. Only a few Art Déco chandeliers were added around 1930. From floor to ceiling, the gilded moulding plunges us into the prestige of bygone times. On the ground floor, a large long room, lit by a glass roof letting the daylight in, receives small groups at tea-time, gathered around marble and wooden tables for a snack. A few people sitting in the window watch passers-by strolling by, while eating a Viennese pastry. At the back of the room, alcoves make it possible to set large tables for a dozen people or so who can meet quietly together. The mezzanine, almost hidden away and covered in red, attracts a few customers. In all, the restaurant can serve more than a hundred people." aviva told me to go there, though she doesn't read this lexical space; i went with zara, and she loved it like me. other people love it too: "The famous fashion designer Coco Chanel and the writer Marcel Proust used to take their five o'clock tea there. King George V of Britain had his own engraved glasses there. Today, artists such as Catherine Deneuve, Britney Spears and Patricia Kass are regular customers." i went to the angelina in bangkok, in central chidlom department store, it was a small section and kind of looked the same style, but the mont blanc was nothing ... nothing. and the hot choc was not as good as j&c here in mtl. regardless, i remember angelina in paris. i remember it so well. but i forgot to go there when i was in paris in december.