9to5ers
Montreal employee’s restaurant review

970 st_laurent,
Montreal, QC
H2Z 1J5
Tel: 514-954-9644
Google map

I made a mistake on the last post where the Vietnamese noodle shop across the street of Pho Bang was Pho Viet Nam instead of Pho An. I simply deleted that sentence. Pho Viet Name located on the corner of St-Laurent and Viger Street. This restaurant had big windows that showed street pedestrians what their customers ordered. It was clean and neat.

Like all Vietnamese noodle shop, the service was quick. The waiter brought us the menu and at the same times a metal teapot of yellow tea. Pho Viet Nam served a large variety of Vietnamese dishes from noodle soup, spring rolls, and varieties of BBQ meat on rice, red broth noodle soup, and Vietnamese submarine. Yes, viet subs! I was confused why this restaurant would even have viet sub in their menu. As far as I know there are 2 other decent pho restaurants around the corner, and 2 decent Vietnamese submarine shops on the same street. By putting viet sub on the menu will only brings more confusion, and a feeling of unspecialised pho broth. Why couldn’t they concentrate on one thing at the time?

I ordered a medium noodle soup and my co-worker ordered a large. We also ordered 2 pork spring rolls. The spring rolls are ok, and it came with a small bowl of orangey fish sauce. As for the noodle soup, I didn’t like their broth. It was too sweet and there was some other taste that I couldn’t describe; but something wasn’t right. The differences between the taste of their broth and other places’ are not very big, but enough to keep me away from Pho Viet Nam for good. I would say that this restaurant tweaked their broth the wrong way, and it ruined everything. The broth will always be the main attraction of a pho noodle shop, so maybe they should concentrate on improving their broth instead of bring all those varieties. My co-worker felt the same. As a Vietnamese, he tasted a lot of broths and he didn’t like it. For those who never had Vietnamese noodle soup it will be difficult to know the difference; but once they tried the broth from another place they would know. The price was all under 10$ where the noodle soup was 5.75 for small, 6.75 for medium and 7.75 for large. The spring rolls were 3$ for 2. 

Service & atmosphere: 3/5
Food: 2/5
Price: 3/5
Bonus: -
Total: 8/15

1001 St Laurent,
Montréal, QC H2Z 1J4
(514) 954-2032
google map

With over 6 months of cold Canadian winter, pho should be a very popular food for Montrealer. Each Asian country has its own noodle soup; but only the Vietnamese popularizes it. It isn’t exaggerated to say that they monopolized noodle soup market in Montreal.

Food

What is a tokenise noodle soup? The concept of noodle soup is very easy. It is rice noodle in a clear beef broth with some onion slices, beef and a plate off garnishments. The heart of the noodle soup is the broth. Vietnamese uses a clear beef broth as their soup base; it is very savory and slightly sweet. Every restaurant has their own little twist to make their broth different, and the difference is usually very little; but a regular visitor can easily tell the difference. Some broth are sweeter, some saltier, and some with extra flavor. The broth’s taste determines how good the business is.

The plate of garnishment includes fresh Chinese basil, chop suey, lime, and hot peppers. Each of these ingredients can add extra flavors the broth. For example: the Chinese basil brings extra sweetness, the chop suey brings the crunchy texture and the soy flavor, the lime brings a touch of limy freshness for those who find the broth too greasy, and hot pepper for those who likes spicy. You can add any off the above according to your taste, and personally I like to add the Chinese basil and chop suey.

I suspect some of these noodle shops to be using MSG because I had experience where I become very thirsty or be slightly dizzy after the meal. I am not 100% sure, but if I’m right shame on those restaurant who use the MSG short cut to get a savory broth.

Vietnamese spring roll is an appetizer that one should try. It is a fresh spring roll wrapped with a wrapper make with rice. The basic ingredients are rice noodle, fresh Chinese basil, fresh mint leaves, shrimps, iceberg lettuce, and slices of marinated pork. Difference restaurants will have different ingredients for their spring roll, but these are the common items in most of the place that I have been to. The wrapper is transparent so we can see through the spring roll and see all the ingredients. It has a beautiful presentation which makes it visually very appetizing. There are 2 sauces for the Vietnamese spring roll: the peanut sauce and the clear orangey fish sauce. It would be good to try with and without the sauces because the sauces can overpower the original taste. Sometime I like to eat my roll plain to taste the blend of all flavors.

Beside the noodle soup there is the dry noodle. The dry noodle is made of rice noodle, BBQ pork, Vietnamese pork sausage, chop veggies on top, and a small bowl of fish sauce. You basically mix the bowl of noodle with the fish sauce like a salad and dressing. I haven’t eaten a dry Vietnamese noodle for a long time but I remembered it as very refreshing only if you like the taste of fish sauce. The sausage tastes sour and has fresh garlic slices inside which compliment the sour theme very well. The only thing that stands out is the BBQ pork which is very strong on the garlic marinates. My co-worker order that noodle, but I can smell the garlic. There are other dishes in a Vietnamese noodle shop. Some BBQ pork with rice or fried spring roll with noodle, but the face of these “Pho” restaurants is definitely their broth. According to my Vietnamese co worker, the best Pho in town is the Pho Hoa at cote-des-neiges.

Price
Everything is amazingly under 10$! The ingredients’ cost is very low, so most of the money is paid for the effort in making the good broth.

Conclusion
service&atmosphere: 3/5
Food: 3/5
Price: 3/5
total: 9/15

Most of the Vietnamese pho restaurants are similar, so this Pho Bang New York gives you a general idea of how other places are. One should definitely give it a try!

Korean fine cuisine
5545 chemin upper Lachine,
Montreal, QC H4A2A5
Tel: 514-484-5263
googlemap

My girlfriend saw Chez Hwang’s ad in the Korean newspaper. When a restaurant’s ad could only be found on the Korean newspaper, you can expect the restaurant to be very “Korean”. Well it meant was that their customer will mainly be Koreans; their taste will stay original and won’t be westernized. Yet, all Korean restaurants in town were pretty much similar in menu and taste, so we will see if Chez Hwang will stand out from the others.

Setting
The first thing we noticed walking toward the entrance was the strong scent of Korean BBQ, and an ads on the wall stating “all you can eat Korean table BBQ, minimum 6 persons.” It was very interesting because the majority of Montreal Korean restaurants served their BBQ on a portable gas burner, and not a buffet style. Well we’ll try that the next time. When we walked in the restaurant, we spotted some tables with the inserted BBQ burner and some without. The interior was very bright, and the table and chairs were in burgundy. It had a cafeteria like setting, but very simple and neat. It was a family run business; I assumed that the cashier was the mother, the two children waited; and the father acted as manager. Soon after we sat, they brought us the menus and a rice aroma tea.

Food
Chez Hwang’s menu was very simple, a typical Asian menu from number 1 to 62. It had couple of items that we didn’t see in other places. For example jok-bal: steam pig’s feet, gam-ja tang: stew pork bone and potato soup, and of course the Korean table BBQ. our choice was number 18,32,34,49,and 50 which translate to seafood pancake, kimchi stew, mixed stew, dol sot bibimbap, and stir fried pork. After the waiter took our order, we got 5 plates of kimchi. Like some of the items on the menu, the kimchi were a little different from other Korean restaurants too, there was a plate of marinated cucumbers. The cucumbers were seasoned with sesame oil, maybe some sugar, and with a slight touch of fresh garlic. It was very refreshing and a beautiful color contrast to the red nappa kimchi. There was a cabbage kimchi marinated with soy sauce; it was very crunchy and ordinary. The last plate was marinated rice noodle with carrot and cucumber slices. Besides the rice noodle, the other kimchi were slightly too salty.

Seafood pancake arrived while we were eating the kimchi. The pancake was served on a pizza plate; it looked a lot more appetizing than on a regular plate. The pancake was smaller than the one I had in Seoul BBQ, but thicker. It used the same ingredients as the other places: diced octopus, green onion, zucchinis, and carrot. Around the round edge was the brownish crispy part of the pancake, and the in the middle was the soft mush dough mix. The thicker pancake enabled you to taste the fried pancake mix, and this made a big difference comparing to other places’ seafood pancake. The amount of ingredients and the seasoning was just right so that we were still able to taste the sweetness of the pan fried pancake mix. Outstanding pancake! Using the same ingredients and the same cooking method, but able to made it many times greater than the other places. Chez Hwang’s seafood pancake definitely stood out from its competition.

The dol sot bibimbap was sprinkled with chopped lettuce all over the bowl. It hid their display of ingredients. The hot sauce that they provided overpowers all ingredients’ taste. Dol sot bibimbap was a regular item in Korean restaurant and it always tasted good; but Chez Hwang’s bibimbap was disappointingly below standard comparing it to other places. The mixed stew used a mix of beef and seafood soup base with tofu, shrimp, mussel, nappa, and an egg (raw); same thing with the kimchi stew with the difference of nappa kimchi instead of nappa. Put your egg into the soup for it to be cooked. The mixed stew was ordinary; it didn’t have an accent taste. You couldn’t taste the seafood or beef’s flavour in this soup. The mixed stew was ordinary. On the other hand, the kimchi stew had the kimchi’s sour and spiciness; it was ok. For the stir fried pork, it was a big plate of fried onion, green onion, garlic, kimchi, and pork with a bowl of rice. Chez Hwang used a lot of onion, green onion, and garlic; it made the taste very heavy, and the kimchi made it spicy. It went very well with rice. This stir fried used a lot of Korean seasonings which differentiate it from a Chinese stir fried. It would be even greater if they used the marinated beef from bulgugi instead of pork.

Price
Like all Asian restaurants, the price was just right. We were 4 and we spend a total of 67.67 with an average spending per person was 16.92 tax included. The service was slow because there were 2 waiters for around 15 tables. The Korean customers were slightly better taken care off, but not a very big issue.

Conclusion
Excellent seafood pancake! This will be the dish that brings me back again. I will be back to try out the Korean table BBQ. Overall Chez Hwang was similar to its Korean competition until I tried their table BBQ.

Fish head is considered a delicacy in Asia, but in Canada, for most of people, its garbage. Majority of Canadians doesn’t eat fish; therefore, we can see the difference in price. An order of salmon head in Asia’s restaurant can go up to 20-30$ Canadian and in Montreal you can’t find that on a menu. The cost of fish head in a Montreal supermarket is 1$ a head. Not only that you can’t find them on the shelf; you’ll need to ask a clerk to bring you one, and hope is not from the dumpster. Generally restaurant charges 3 times or more of their cost, so using this rule I come up with 1/3 x 20$=6.66$ which is the assumption cost of a fish head in Asia. With this assumption, the price of fish head is 6 times higher in Asia than Canada wow!

Selling fish head is like telling a story to children. Story that teaches them the fact that meats are obtain by killing an animal. Today’s kids know a lot about everything but where their meat comes from. I recalled a movie demonstrating the lack of knowledge of today’s kid on where does their meat comes from. I think the question was “where does this piece of chicken come from?”, and the child answered “supermarket.” It is true that kids don’t make the link between a hamburger and a cow, or a chicken and a nugget; and that’s why we need to educate them. If they see fish heads on a supermarket shelf, they will be frightened and perhaps ask about it. You’ll be surprise with other people’s reaction when you have a fish head in your shopping cart. You’ll get some “oh”, “eww”, “eyebrow rising”, and “small inhaling” like you just commit some crime. It’s all good until you’re at the cash where some cashiers just refuse to touch the head or serve you with disgusting written all over their face. Lol why does people react that way? I’m eating its head and they are eating its body which make me that much different?

Most of Chinese immigrants are happy once they know about the fish head. The price of fish head also correspond to the growth of Chinese population in Montreal. 10 years ago it used to be 50 cents for a head and now its 1$. I’m positive that the Chinese population have doubled since. Anyways, the ways to prepare a fish head varies, but my favourite is to bake it with salt and pepper or in a miso soup. I like the bake fish head because it brings out the natural fish savoury. For the fish head in miso soup, you can use a bonito fish to make the soup base, but water and miso paste is fine. Fish jaws’ meats are very tender because the muscle is used very often. There aren’t much meats on a fish head, mostly is the gel like fat that contain a lot of omega 3 which can turn into eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Both acids have tones of health benefit to human such as lose weight, improve short term memory … etc here are an article that you can read by Karin Theron. Eat your boiled fish head with soy sauce and wasabi; then have a sip of the miso soup. Healthy and delicious! What can you ask for more? Come out of the Eww side and be and explorer and try a fish head and become a regular DHA consumer. YAY!

Do you want to be a 9 to 5er all your life? Do you want to be an employee or employer? These are the questions that a 9 to 5er should ask himself or herself. I’m not suggesting that starting a business should be the goal for everyone, but everyone should compare their career path potential and starting their business. Maybe this comparison will change your mind or not. For those that want to start a business, they should ask themselves if they have enough capital and desire to go all the way. Restaurant is one of the most popular businesses for a 9 to 5er to change their status from employee to employer. It is easy entry, but hard to survive. It requires a lot of hard work and a lot more work than the 9 to 5 jobs. According to the studies that I read, restaurant businesses have an average of 25% failure rate in the first year. However, these stats are from other cities, so the real figures in Montreal could be different. Besides the basic requirements such as hard working, desire…etc there are a lot of other variables that make a restaurant successful. We’ll be learning some of these variables from a successful restaurant model: La Popessa (read the dining experience here). I’ll be taking quote from the article written by Paul Delean, A dish best served fast, in the business section of the Montreal Gazette on march 25 2008.

One of the important ingredients for a successful restaurant is to have a plan. A plan determine your business’s goal, and at anytime you can use it compare to your current progression; whether you over or under perform. Setting a goal is like setting a beacon at your destination point. It keeps your business on the right track. La Popessa’s owner Michel Bourdages said “When I opened the first one, I wrote down how I wanted things to be done.” Execute the plan is as important as having a plan, and Bourdages have been following his plan “everything happened exactly as I hoped.”

Secondly is having a good system. Michel Bourdages sure have planned to expand his pasta restaurant. He chooses to have a mass production food factory where he creates a system that works with any employee “we have eight employees just making sauces and pasta, packaging and shipping.” Besides having a production line system, the system in each restaurant must be easy to manage, and transportable. This way you have no problem of expanding and controlling your restaurants. “The second one opened six years after the first, was to show the concept was viable and transportable.” Having a transportable system is the key to restaurant expansion.

Lastly is updating business goal. It is like setting new destination once you arrive at your previous one. La Popessa’s owner says it clearly that the first restaurant is to get him known and the second one is to prove his system works. He is planning to open 2 new restaurants at Pierrefonds and St. Eustache, and reach 16 restaurants at the end of next year. I assume that his long term goal is to become a pasta sauce wholesaler, as he says that “by next year, he expects to start selling some of the homemade ingredients in the restaurant.” By setting new goals a business will grow continuously.

It is interesting how much we can learn from restaurant owner. Hope you guys like it as I mix business and food together.