I’m going to a square dance convention in Montreal around July 4th. Mostly I’ll be busy at the convention, but I’d like to go to a good restaurant with a friend while I’m there. Actually, I’d like to do two meals:
- deli for lunch one day
- someplace fancy for dinner another day
I might also have a few hours to walk around the city some morning.
What do you recommend?
(There was a Montreal sliced meat place someone recommended in a previous thread, but i can’t find it.)
For dinner, I’ll be with a friend i like to get together with for fine dining. 
Probably Schwartz’s on St. Laurent was the smoked meat place recommended, although it is hard to find a bad smoked meat place.
In recent years I have lost track of fine dining places, including a few with Michelin stars. My favorite go to place is called Sirene de la Mer restaurant and sea food store. What my wife and I do is go into the fish store and pick out fish (usually one fish large enough for two) and then do into the restaurant and choose an accompanying potato or rice and tell the waiter that you have chosen fish from the store and they will serve it over a bed of veggies. Usually we will order some Lebanese appetizers. And they have good Lebanese desserts.
Schwartz’s sounds right.
I see there’s a lot of middle eastern influenced food there. I’m going to need to be careful to tell them I’m allergic to eggplant. That doesn’t usually come up in America.
I hear the bagels there are supposed to be pretty good.
St. Viateur and Fairmount are the two biggies in the Montreal bagel world
Oh, that’s a good point. Montreal has it’s own style of bagels, that are sweet. Or so I’ve heard. I don’t really want my bagels to be sweet, but it would be fun to try a Montreal bagel while I’m there.
Following because we will be there in early June and wouldn’t mind a few recs!
They aren’t pastry-sweet, but they are boiled in water with malt sugar in it before baking.
A proper New York bagel is boiled in water with lye, not sugar. 
But you’re absolutely right, i should try to have one.
I dislike Montreal bagels. I guess they are pretty good with butter, but don’t get along with cream cheese and lox. And their holes are much too large to make a decent sandwich anyway. Of course, I grew up with NY style bagels.
Yeah, i think I’m going to have to try it as a new-to-me kind of bread product, because I’m nearly certain it will disappoint me as a bagel. Still, i would like to try one.
Do i have to go to a bagel place to get a real one, or can i get them in other places? (In new York City, many supermarkets, delis, and even convenience stores sell brand name bagels from good places.)
My opinion is that you need to get one fresh from a place where they are baked in house.
You can certainly get them in supermarkets. But they don’t keep very well and, when my kids visit, they will want them from St. Viateur. My daughter lives in Brooklyn and somebody drives Montreal bagels down to Brooklyn and sells them. She says that even 6 or 7 hours on the road leaves them decidedly poorer. They should be eaten as fresh as possible.