Pig out
I remember Martin Picard declaring to his friend Anthony Bourdain (in the Quebec episode of No Reservations): "Tonight I will keel you." To which Bourdain added: "these are words I don't take lightly." Picard proceeded to keel Bourdain with one spectacularly rich and extravagant dish after another, ending with the palate cleanser of a whole roasted suckling pig, bisected snout wrapped in 24 k gold leaf. "You can eat it and the day after you're shitting gold," Picard told his guest. I vowed ever since that someday somehow I would visit the scene of the massacre.
Thirteen years later and there I was. standing in front of Picard's Au Pied de Cochon, one of the pioneering restaurants that helped put Montreal on the international culinary map. A relatively quiet little joint: storefront of glass and wood folded aside to let in light and air; street deck with tables and--love this--planters full of herbs: rosemary, cilantro, so forth. Peered a little closer at the cilantro: some of the stems have been cut. They're not just decor, the herbs were being used.
