Tomorrow my youngest sister is getting married!

As I mentioned in a previous post earlier this week, for my sister’s bachelorette party we went to Montréal in September. The restaurant Bouillon Bilk, as I wrote about in a previous post, was both of one of our favorite restaurant experiences. The other one for her was Au Pied de Cochon, which I nickname to just “APC” in this post.

First I should say almost none of these photos are mine, they were accumulated from the cameras of many of the other lovely ladies, of which total there were 10 of us, who were dining that evening. All I did was a little bit of cropping and lighting touch-ups for the sake of this Au Pied de Cochon Montreal Recap post.

APC is a very narrow restaurant – it reminded me of New York in that way – and I was impressed they found a way to seat our party across almost the entire front of the restaurant (there was actually another 2 two-tops just to my right). Even with tables and the related chairs close behind us, they scooted very carefully to get to all of us even on the inside wall end.

Even at APC a vegetarian was able to dine. I didn’t take a photo of the vegetarian’s food, but I believe we all stole some of those super buttery potatoes and she enjoyed her tomato tart and salad washed down with Pied de Cochon’s own beer. So it is possible, though they can’t be the type of vegetarian squeamish about seeing a lot of meat because most of the menu is meat. I would draw the line at vegan as everything the vegetarian had included dairy like butter or cheese.

One of the things we (who were not vegetarian obviously) were pretty excited about at APC was the foie gras. In particular, some of the ladies are from California, where foie is illegal. So we maybe over-indulged a little here…

I liked APC, but for me the richness wasn’t balanced and so it felt too much, an excess of fat in the experience. Usually I am usually a lover of fat as it brings so much flavor,  but this went over the top for me because the dishes were so intense. It may have had to do somewhat with our ordering, but looking over the menu now, I don’t see a lot of dishes that offered another flavor – something spicy, or citrus… a counterbalance of flavors in food form and not just Cocktail or Dessert at the end.

Part of it might have just been palate fatigue on my part, since as a normal diner you probably wouldn’t be eating ALL of these dishes we did! We ordered family style and with 10 of us we justified getting a lot of dishes. This may have meant most of the section labeled Foie Gras.

Anyway, I would not have thought of APC as my top dining experience this trip – that honor for this trip goes to Bouillon Bilk. However, it was definitely memorable as so indulgent and lavish.

Suffice it to say if you come to Au Pied De Cochon, you better love fat in your food. You should love foie gras and also love pork and be ready to luxuriate in those 3 things –  fat,  foie gras, pork. If you can’t say yes to those criteria, you may not have as good of a time with your dinner because of the food they showcase here.

Not pictured below are additional dishes we ordered of Accras de morue (salted codfish fritters), Tarte de tomates (tomato tart, for the vegetarian), or the Salade de Bleu, pommes, endives (also for the vegetarian) and Purée de pommes de terre (the super buttery mashed potatoes I mentioned earlier).

Starters

• Foie Gras “tout nu”
  
• Mousse Foie Pintade
  
• Soupe A L’Oignon, French onion soup. I don’t think I tried this…
  
• Pain De Viande, a meatloaf with foie gras… perhaps you detect a theme
  
• Cured foie gras and boudin tart
  
• Tarte de Foie Gras, it gets two photos so you can see it from both sides
  
• Poutine foie gras, this was my favorite of the starters… so it gets two pictures in this recap too, a dish of fries, gravy (the most refined gravy for a poutine we had the whole trip), cheese curd (they were much more restrained on the cheese curds) and two big hunks of foie. I would recommend ordering this dish,  even if you’ve had other foie gras poutine elsewhere, because the APC version is like no other.
   

This next dish I guess could be counted either as a starter or a main, it was listed in the Foie Gras section in the menu that as you saw above, mostly are starter or shared plates. This burger was amazeballs. When we came back late after our evening/morning out, this was what several of us were so looking forward to warming up slightly and eating… the Hamburger Foie Gras. There is so much to eat here though, I could see trying to split this in half or quarters to try to eat as a starter. This is before our table mauled it… Recommended, but share it.

Mains

• Coupe PDC (0.5 kg), or PDC’s Cut, a pork loin seared in duck fat with mushrooms and onions because you can’t just have pork simply alone…
  
• Pied Cochon Foie Gras. The namesake dish of the restaurant, fried pig’s foot, vegetables, mashed potatoes, stuffed with foie gras inside after deboning and then topped with foie gras. Pretty much if you are going to order this, you need a big party. Even with the 10 of us we had some left to take home, though admittedly we did just eat a lot of starters… We who did eat it called it “the Best Thanksgiving Dish ever”. Recommend if you have enough dining friends to make this work!
  
• Canard en Conserve – the famous Duck in a Can dish. They open it tableside with a can opener, turn it upside down on the platter, and slowly pull the can up, letting the cooked duck breast and foie gras just flow out of the can into what you see below. Seriously. I would recommend this as a dish to share.
  

I also have to say that the service was amazing and so friendly at APC the entire time we were there, and they dutifully packaged all our leftovers… Yes, four boxes of leftovers. Warning though they have no bags (what, do people not carry leftovers?) so some ladies stopped at a convenience store to acquire a big paper bag for our boxes… which we then carried to multiple destinations later that evening (cough cough).

Whatever, we were happy to do so because as soon as we got home late/early that morning we were already looking forward to eating it. Even though I believe we made 3 more stops and had lots of liquids that evening, there was always someone making sure we were still carrying our leftovers to eat once we reached home.  When that time finally came, yes we did rip open the bags and containers and did continue the meatextravaganza!

While at the restaurant we did finish most of the dishes, minus the foie burger, and the main dishes as they were so large. Each of those main dish portions could have been for four people at least. I felt like I should have spent the whole day working out to help build the animal hunger for this dinner.

We never felt rushed during our dinner at APC even as we saw a line of guests line up out the door. In terms of table service, we were constantly kept refreshed with waters and other beverages. Most of us were trying beer and cocktails to take a break from the wine during dinner of the previous 2 days, and personally I thought the cocktails were a nice refreshing contrast to our heavy dinner plates- most of us were having mojitos with ground cherries.

Overall our dining experience was a stay at APC of 2.5 hours and we left about $500 lighter.

I highly recommend sharing dishes, as the flavors of each dish are intense, so you will want to sample around and break up your flavor experience.

A member of our group called towards the end of July in order to secure our reservation for September 13, so keep that in mind too. Our group size, at 10, is the largest they can accommodate- at first we thought we might be a group of 12 and they would have split us into two tables of six. Whatever the case with your dining party, you definitely want to make reservations, and it took her a couple calls to confirm that we were set (thanks Elaine!).

Congratulations to my sister tomorrow, I can’t wait to be a part of your Big Day!

Have you ever had foie gras? Have you ever gotten together in a big group and ordered most of a menu than eaten family style like this?