[ July 2019 ] Our guidebook says that Little Italy in Montreal in Canada is the foodie’s nirvana, so we decided to visit there, though it is quite far away from the old town where we were based.
Going by metro seemed the good idea, so we looked for the station.
By then we had walked here and there in the centre of Montreal, but had not noticed any metro signs, so we had to ask passers.
The sign for the metro turned out to be a arrow pointing down, which is quite easy to understand, isn’t it.
The trains had rubber wheels like those in Paris and the announcement in the train and in the station were all in French only.
Even the ticket machines were explained only in French.
We took the orange line in the metro map from Place d’Armes and got off at Jean-Talon.
There is a market called Marche Jean-Talon and this market seemed to be the centre of Little Italy.
The name of the station was the same, but the market was not in front of it, so we walked towards it by asking the way to people.
Thanks to that, we could see the streets outside of the touristy old town.
To be honest, the look of the Little Italy was disappointing.
We have been to the Italian town in Boston in the US and it was a lively place with many Italian restaurants, so naturally we were expecting something similar, but in fact here it had a run-down atmosphere.
And sometimes, it smelled very bad, a similar smell in the far corner in some food markets in Asia.
This is my guess : At the beginning, this was the place many Italian immigrants came and built the town, but they became more wealthy gradually, so moved away to different places.
And this place became the first place for any immigrants who start their life in Canada, maybe?
Finally we found the Marche Jean-Talon which was a huge vegetable market.
There were quite a few light meal restaurants next to it.
Our guidebook suggests to have some snack such as sandwiches here and walk on, but since the moment we decided to come to Little Italy, we had been ready to eat some Italian meal, so we looked for one on the internet.
There seemed quite a lot of Italian restaurants around here, but because it was late for lunch, only a few were open.
We went to one of them called Bistorante Boccone.
This restaurant is run by people who speak broken Italian, like the one in the old town.
They were serving the set menu with the starter of a salad and the dessert of small Tiramisu and Brownie.
For the main, I chose Fegato (veal liver) and my husband chose rabbit dish which was not on the menu.
I have to say that this Fegato was one of the best I had ever eaten.
I like Fegato and often choose one, but here, the meat was quite thick and how they grilled was just right.
The waiter seemed proud of this dish, too.
The glass of wine we had was good, too and when we ordered espresso after meal, he poured some liquor like Baileys in it, which was nice.
So although we were disappointed with the look of Little Italy, our stomachs were very much satisfied in the end.
