What Makes Steak Frites The Hottest Restaurant In Montreal's Gay Village?

While exploring the summer-long-pedestrian-only stretch of Saint Catherine Street in the "Village Gai" de Montreal, everyone we met had the same eatery at the top of their list of recommendations, Le Steak Frites, 1302 Rue Ste. Catherine Est. How could we not give it a try?

Here's how to enjoy the best dining opportunity of the summer in Montreal's Gay Village. Exit the subway at the Beaudry station where you'll walk across Ste. Catherine Street and into the SAQ, the government owned liquor store where I'd recommend heading for the rack of Argentine wines. We are malbec fans, and SAQ offered us a few robust and inexpensive selections that would pair well with a good steak.

Bring your bottle one block down Ste. Catherine to the restaurant. (Steak Frites is an apporter votre vin restaurant. In other words, they do not sell alcohol but will serve you your wine. No, you can't bring any other type of alcohol.) Steak Frites doesn't take advance reservations, but when you arrive (earlier is preferable), you'll be told how long you'll have to wait for a table outside where you can watch the colorful flow of folks on the street, you'll drop off your bottle, you'll give the host your name and cell number and head down the street to popular SKY Bar for a pitcher of red sangria with the boys until you get your call.

We followed the recommendation of friends that matched our waiter's advice, ordering the steak-for-two ($60) which comes with a variety of sauces, salad and vegetable sides, some heavenly warm bread and all the French fries you can eat.

The chairs are comfortable. The service friendly, fast and efficient. The food superb.  And if you are a Starbuck's addict, you can cross the street after dinner and continue your al fresco crowd watching from their opposing patio deck. Steak Frites well deserves its popularity.

Le Steak Frites St. Paul Village,
1302 Rue Ste. Catherine Est
514 439-1376
www.steakfrites.ca

How to vote for Tony Adams

I appreciate the scuttled efforts of those who tried to support my run for gaytravel.com's travel guru but had trouble voting. Would you try once more? Here's the step-by-step:
(and remember, the system allows one new registration per email address.)

Go to gaytravel.com homepage. 

In the upper right hand corner, click "join now". 

fill out name, email, alias, password, country , agree to terms, and then click "sign up". 

You'll get the confirming email and when you click on the link in that email, you'll see a message that you have activated your registration. 

Now you go to the homepage, 

login using your email and password. 

Then go to "guru" under "meet new people", hit vote, find my application and click the little blue "vote for tony adams" letters next to my name. 

Be sure to vote the full five points.

That's the complete and "road tested" map! Let me know if it works.

Have you voted yet for Tony Adams?

One more week of this! (See my earlier post for details about this.)

It looks like I'm in second place, but a few dozen 5 point votes would help me zoom forward in the gaytravel.com gay travel guru contest.

I'd be deeply appreciative if you would you take a moment. If you have not yet registered on the site, you'll be asked to do so. Then comes the usual email verification that you are not a spambot. Then you log back in. Then you vote. Let me know if you encounter problems.

Here's the link.

And if you would consider Facebooking or Tweeting this, I get some points for that too:

http://www.gaytravel.com/guru/judge/app/application-14200

Thanks!

Tony

PS: Unfortunately, you can vote only once.

like a field of corn moved by an angry wind

Your daily divine Dickens mega-sentence, from Chapter 50 of Oliver Twist. It becomes clear to me that had Dickens painted rather than wrote, we'd have had a second Pieter Bruegel.

The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind: and joined from time to  time in one loud furious roar.

"every repulsive lineament of poverty"

In my role as Chief Living Adulator for Charles Dickens, I bring you this delicious single sentence from Chapter 50 of Oliver Twist:

Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it--as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.

Guru Contest Update!

Hey folks,
I'm the front runner but the competition is closing in!
If you haven't yet voted, would you take a moment?
Deeply appreciated.
Here's the place.
And here's the link, for Facebooking or twittering:

http://www.gaytravel.com/guru/judge/app/application-14200#vote


Thanks,
T

A Request For Help.

Dear readers,

I'm in the running for a six month gig as the new "Gay Travel Guru" for Gaytravel.com.
I've made it into round two of the competition and now I need your votes. Here's the link. ( http://www.gaytravel.com/guru/judge/app/application-14200#vote ) In tiny blue letters next to my name, you'll see the invitation to vote for me. A "five" is the best rating.

The first video I provided is a compilation of fun moments from recent interviews. Making this vid made me realize how much fun I've had in the past several months. The guru gig is a paying one, an element not overlooked by my less leisurely husband, in which I'll travel and report.

Looks like their are six serious contenders against whom I'll need your boost.

Thanks for your help!

T

Sea Turtle Hatchlings On The Beach In Fort Lauderdale

I finally saw a nest hatch out. Around 11PM. Nest #71. Stephanie the volunteer was there and one other guy who happened to be walking by. In just a few seconds, what had been smooth sand turned into a squirming heap. And then, as if somebody had given a signal, they all bolted. Stephanie told us what had to be done and she was well in charge of the situation - but in theory only.  There is no way she could have dealt with what was about to happen if she had been alone, and when that became clear, she said something about the "Good Samaritan" clause trumping the usual prohibition keeping untrained people from participating in the process. 

Two things happened simultaneously. All of the hatchlings (and I mean 100% of them) headed southwest rather than east into the sea, drawn by the headlights of the cars going north on A1A, and the lightning storm that had been percolating offshore arrived ferociously. The rain was so dense and wind-driven that it was very difficult to see anything - the other guy ran for shelter - and Stephanie, whose drenched t shirt had been both loose and white, kept saying "I'm supposed to count them! Can you help me count them?" (Not the usual beach script for someone in  a girls-gone-wild outfit.) It became immediately obvious that we were counting some of them two or more times, and some of them not at all. It was very much like that Seinfeld episode in which George plays that old video game Frogger. She gave up and we started putting them into the two buckets. I have the feeling that a large number of them got away from us. 

When the rain stopped five minutes later in true Florida fashion, we took the buckets down to the water and released them in groups of five. The downward slant of the smooth packed sand at the water's edge seemed to shield them from distracting light but some of them still wanted to head toward the traffic. Also, several of them headed back to the buckets, not out of any yearning for their childhood orphanage, but because the buckets are white and attracted their attention. I think the buckets of the volunteers should be painted black. One of hatchlings kept heading to my feet which Stephanie says are very white. We stood silently pondering her words for a few seconds both slightly off balance by the strenuous intimacy of a statement and an adventure shared by two who had before this hour never met. I considered naming him as he knocked his little head into my flip flop. I tried to think of a foot fetishist whose name I knew, and realized that I don't know any by name. I wonder if that fact is more curious than the whiteness of my feet. 

Also, I think we should have dug a trench leading to the water as soon as the hatching began.  Had they been in the bottom of such a trench, they might not have seen the headlights. They are cute little buggers. Some were feisty, lifting their heads up and looking about. Some were slow and plodding and would not be dissuaded from their misdirection (Republicans) until a good strong wave convinced them. Stephanie says that their march to the sea is a necessary exertion and that just dumping the bucket into the waves would cause some of them to drown.

We released exactly fifty from the buckets, and Stephanie predicted a second wave of hatchlings from the same nest perhaps before dawn.  We released them in groups of five and when each group's members had been washed away (and some of them get tossed back onto the sand by smaller waves, necessitating more interventions, like relapsed addicts, the Lindsay Lohans of the brood destined for a hardknock life), Stephanie would draw a line in the sand. She made four parallel lines, and then crossed that set diagonally just the way prisoners mark their duration on the walls of their cells. She completed two sets before the tide took our records away.

We scouted the periphery for strays. We found only one. In the middle of the highway. He had not made it across.

I've had a lifetime of seeing roadkill through a windshield with absolutely no emotional reaction but this one got to me.

On my way back to my bike, I encountered a gigantic female sea turtle digging her nest fifteen feet north of the lifeguard station and I doubled back to let Stephanie know so that she could watch over her and mark the nest.

Stephanie says that the hatchlings will swim for two or three days before they reach an area of underwater vegetation where they will get their first food and find protection. Along the way, some will be eaten by natural predators. This is not upsetting because it is part of the balance. But the one that scurried eagerly toward the oncoming headlights on the highway should not have perished.

A Defiant Argentine Priest

There is always one good apple in every Catholic barrel.

While on the other coast...

While you may have been heartened by the previous post about Mark Foley, you'll be distressed by this video about the sea turtles in the gulf.



Update: Here is a very disturbing link about Corexit provided by Mark Foley. It seems that BP has dumped a toxic substance into the Gulf in an unbelievably disgusting effort to correct the damage they have already done.