Peter read the last entry, and was horrified that I could’ve forgotten a crucial almost-food. Oh, and I forgot to mention that _everything_ is in French up there, including the edible underwear packaging–or should I say “dessous mangeable”? Oh please, as if you can’t figure it out from the context. Anyway, here’s Peter’s extra detail:
Oh, how poor is the memory of our dear blogger. Was it all just a dream? Did the smoked meat cloud her mind? There was more. So much more… the Vietnamese sandwich, the three markets, the walk around the Expo center in search of edible bugs.
Bugs, you say. Where better to begin?
We saw a listing for a “French-style insect feast in the Montreal Insectarium.”
Say what?
“In November and early December, check out the award-winning ‘Insect Tasting’ (Croque-insectes), an event which features expertly cooked, spiced and sauced insects for your eating enjoyment!”
Talk about filling a need we didn’t know we had. Perfect! Well, perfect if you actually want to eat bugs. We weren’t sure we did. But seeing how we’ve eaten horse in Egypt and whale in Norway, it seemed silly to pass up this opportunity. And never having tried bugs, “French chef in Montreal” seemed like a much better beginning point than, say, “sun-dried on a African road and skewered on a stick.”
So off we went to find the Insectarium. We had just left the Maisonneuve Market in the not so classy Prefontaine neighborhood (nice, but the smallest and least impressive of the three markets–it reminded me of the market in Portland, Maine, for what it’s worth). I had the random plan of taking the subway to the end of the line for no particular reason. But then we noticed that the Insectarium was right by the Expo Stadium, near the Market. We were on our way!
[Peter digresses. This is the kind of musing that got him cut from Chowhound. But I support it.]
This stadium was, until three months ago, the home of the (now defunct) Montreal Expos baseball team. It is a large and impressive and now apparently empty massive structure that looks just like you’d expect from a 1976 vision of the future. The roof and the supporting tower were only competed in 1987. So I grew up knowing this place as the home of some of the coldest and least aesthetically pleasing baseball you could imagine. All the charm of a bad domed stadium without the actual shelter of a roof! Now it was merely a physical obstacle, as we had to get to the other side. Crossing expanses of concrete, large roads, parking lots, and an actual grassy knoll, we managed to show that even the most pedestrian-unfriendly space in Montreal could be conquered with gumption, good walking shoes, and promise of new food.
[Anyway, back to the bug snacks…]
Upon arrival at the Montreal Insectarium, we were slightly put off by the 12$ [so Fronch] museum admission fee. After a quick huddle, we agreed to pay only if there were in fact insects to eat. I proudly went up to the man at the ticket desk and asked, for the first time in my life, “Are there insects we can eat here?” He looked at us quizzically and said with some sympathy and a Gallic shrug, “Non. Only in June.” But the way he said this implied that we should have known that June is the season for eating bugs. As if we had asked a Greek farmer for fresh figs in the spring. The man did suggest that we buy a lollypop-encrusted insect at the gift shop. We didn’t.
Well, it turns out the November-December season was last year. Evidently the feast wasn’t quite enough of a success to repeat annually. Imagine that. So off we trudged in the cold back across the stadium area, empty except for a few skateboarders, the only people who actually appreciate large expanses of cold concrete. We asked what Jane Jacobs would think of it all, and wondered if she had ever eaten any bugs.