Key West: The Wedding

Hilton Bonaventure is in downtown area and sits on top of a metro station. The coolest feature of this hotel is the roof top outdoor swimming pool that’s open 365 days year-round. Yes,
the pool is open even when it snows. We were swimming there when it’s about 60 degrees F outside and the water temperature was very suitable for swimming but not quite the hot bath/jacuzzi temperature.

When I first planned this trip,
it was going to be about local food and because of such focus,
I bookended the trip with market visits — Jean-Talon Marche and Atwater Marche. For the fesitivitiness,
the choices of vegetables,
and variety of ready-to-eat food stands,
Jean-Talon takes the crown hands down. Atwater Marche,
on the other hand,
has all the butchery you will need and there is an excellent bakery toward the end of the building.

While at Jean-Talon marche,
you can’t help but to notice that there is something different about Montreal’s fresh produce than the ones we see in U.S.,
and we assumed that it is because of the French connection. The produces are petite,
delicate,
beautifully arranged with matching colors,
and much more enticing to the shoppers.

As we browsed the stands,
Kelly and myself bought a fairly mundane corn on cob that was cooked in water,
and it was surprisingly excellent with just some butter and coarse salt sprinkled on. You could feel every niblet popping bite after bite,
it is a sure sign of freshness — like from farm and straight to market kind of freshness. Kelly liked it so much that we went back for second.

On one corner of Jean-Talon marche,
there is a stand/shop selling some sort of sandwich with barbecued meat. The first time we saw it there was a line of people,
and when we revisited the same corner again,
the line was still of same length. We decided to give it a try as the old adage always says “where there is a crowd,
there is good food”. Having no idea what they sell,
as menu is in French,
I improvised by listening to what the person in front of ordered. She said something to the sort of “poulet” and I matched the sounds of the syllabels to the first menu item.

And O.M.G. what a poulet it was.

Well-marinaded,
spicy and just all-around flavorful are the words come to mind. Turned out we ordered a Lebanese chicken sandwich. Even the bread itself was of high quality and not to mention it costed only 3 dollars. After some Googling,
I have found out that the place is called “Boucherie An-Nasr”. Don’t forget to drop by if you are ever in the area.

After food-ing,
we strolled around Old Town area in the afternoon. Unfortunate for us,
there were weddings in progress and we couldn’t make it inside the famous Notre-Dame Basilica,
we opted for wandering around the streets instead.

For Saturday night dinner,
I had already made reservation at L’Express,
a rather popular French restaurant in the local area and we came to find out that the merits are well-earned.

Kelly started with a soup which I went without as I had ordered beef bone marrow and pasta with prawns as appetizers to share. The bone marrow was heavenly. Succulent,
rich in flavors,
tender,
and absolutely delightlful with the accompanied toasted bread and salt. Pasta with prawns on the other hand seems like a regular dish,
but L’Express takes it up a notch by using fresh made pasta(I can’t confirm). The texture of the pasta is very inviting and you just want to keep on stuffing that pasta in your mouth.

We are not big eaters and were slowly becoming full after the appetizers. The main courses came — hanger steak with frites for her and quail with wild rice for me. Hanger steak was top notch — heavily seasoned and topped with melted herbed butter. The frites are cooked to a slightly crispier texture and wonderful with just salt and pepper. The quail with wild rice while decent,
is now ranking behind the bone marrow,
shrimp pasta,
and hanger steak. It was good,
but not on par with those 3 items.

The next morning was drizzling therefore we opted to take a cab to Eggspectation for brunch. The cab fare actually worked out to be roughly the same as 2 metro tickets so it was worth the money.

Eggspectation serves your usual diner breakfast items but their food looks fresher — the photos will speak for themselves. While most items we ordered were excellent,
what’s worth mentioning are the fried potatoes. They are cooked with chives and onion to enhance the flavors,
in other words,
they are delish. We would go back again if possible.

Feeling well-fed and jacked up on espresso with shots of Bailey’s,
Kelly and I moved on to shop the stores of Montreal. *cue Fabolous’ Throw In The Bag* Working under Montreal’s laid-back(read: LAZY) Sunday schedule,
most stores open from 12pm to 5pm,
we were racing against time. Well,
it was mostly Kelly racing against time,
I was just “assisting”.

Trotting the Montrealean streets had made us feeling sore in the feet and we were definitely in need of some refreshment. Seeing that we actually were one block away from Rueben’s Deli (I mistook it for Schwartz’s deli which I wanted to visit),
we went in to get a couple drinks and shared one gigantic Ruben’s special sandwich. The meat is decently flavored and go well with ketchup or mustard or just by itself with no condiments.

The reason we split that sandwich at Rueben’s is because we were getting ready for another dinner feast. This time around,
it was at L’Académie Restaurant.

We “bumped” into L’Académie Restaurant while taking a short walk after dinner at L’Express the night before. L’Académie was filled to the brink on a Saturday night with lines that erupt onto the sidewalk. Noticing everyone had a bottle in their hands and that there is a liquor shop next to the restaurant,
we realized this is an BYOB/BYOW place.

That Sunday night when we walked in L’Académie,
it was at about 85~90% capacity,
and we were sat immediately. The service was definitely slower and less attentive in comparison to other places we had been to,
but we weren’t all that hungry at the time,
so we were okay with that.

Roughly 30 mins later,
dishes started to roll in. We only got one starter,
escargots a l’ail,
escargot with garlic and butter. It was fresh,
ie,
not gamy like the ones I’ve had in New York City. I guess having a larger snail-eating community does affect the freshness of it at restaurants. The main dishes were mussels flamande et frites (mussels with butter and parsley sauce) for Kelly and crevettes a la creme d’ail (prawns with garlic creme sauce) for me.

All dishes were well executed and flavorful. We couldn’t stop dipping bread with the butter and parsley sauce that came with the mussels. I even proposed that we could drink it as a cremey soup. My grilled shrimps were great and the gravy went well with the rice. I would recommend the place for the food,
but given that I just dug up some dirt on this restaurant,
I don’t know if I can recommend the place fully. Apparently,
many English-speaking patrons received bad service from the people working there. I can’t deny this being true to certain extent,
since our waiter did “forget” our soft drinks(we didn’t get a bottle of wine from next door till later). At the same time,
the waiter was covering parties on 2 different floors,
therefore I will give him some benefit of doubt that they were short of people that night and the serviece therefore suffered.

Next day,
we were ready to bid adieu to Montreal. Before leaving the city,
we swung by Marche Atwater to pick up some shish-kebob and corn to grill later for lunch. At border crossing,
we had just realized that we shouldn’t had bought all that meat as it may raise some unwanted custom problem. Luckily,
our meat and vegetable got through okay.

I had planned an outdoor cookout at Ausable Chasm prior to some sightseeing at the said place. It was a good decision as Kelly enjoyed the cook out and she had a nice glass of wine to go with her shish-kebob. Alas it was slightly mid-afternoon when we got to the park and the last guided hike had already departed,
we took photos on the bridge and got a nice view of the waterfall instead.

After lunch and photos,
we drove straight back to New York. Thanks for reading. The end.

Shot in Soho

Anyway,
got the extra ticket from a friend who couldn’t make it and the concert turned out to be a 4 hour of pure solid R. O. C. K. Capitalized. David Grohl of Foo Fighters made sure everybody had a good time and got their money’s worth. He played all the hits of the years plus some new songs. It was just pure rockin’. Gotta hand it to the band.

If you are a fan and on the fence about seeing these guys in a concert,
I would totally recommend going.

Check out the photos:

Some highly amusing quotes from the article:

“I was born here,
” said Ms. Garcia,
who is 44. “Why should I learn their language?”

“Why do you say two words for ‘bladder’? I have one bladder! For one bladder it’s two words?”

“Mr. Henton asked Councilman Liu to sponsor the lessons last year during a community meeting at which most of the comments were made in Mandarin. He feels a responsibility for the classes’ success; on Tuesday nights,
he calls 40 people just to remind them to come.”

To my knowledge,
I didn’t know they host community meetings,
in Chinese,
here in the grand ol’ U. S. of A. — with a councilman. I guess there is a first for everything.

Please don’t skip this entry because the title sounds uninteresting.

I guarantee you that this is the most interesting piece of news you will read in this month.

Recently,
the leader of a group of Fundamentalists Mormons (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints),
with member count at around 10,
000,
was caught by Texas local police on suspicion of child abuse,
and now 400 something children were extracted out of the camp of this particular religious group.

When i said camp,
I meant that they have a ranch. And when I said ranch,
I meant it’s about 1900-freakin’-acres(metrics: 7km*7Km) big. It’s called “Yearn For Zion Ranch” aka YFZ Ranch. It hosted about 500~600 people including children(I can’t find the exact number from the new articles as no one seems to be able to get the correct headcount) before the police raid. The ranch is not just big,
it is also fairly self sustainable with gardens,
a waste treatment facility,
dormitories,
grain silos,
generators,
and even a stone quarry(!!!) to build their temple with.

Check out their ominous looking temple.

So what exactly did these seemingly harmless Fundamentalist Mormons do other than dressing themselves in those silly colonial attires on their ranch to attract the attention of Texas Rangers?

Oh,
they practice polygamy. And they marry girls at 13-14 year olds to men 3,
4,
5 times older.

With all things considered — it is nothing too serious as our Chinese ancestors would’ve told you that they practiced polygamy and possibly married much younger girls — for thousands of years. Back in the days,
as long as you had the money,
you were free to marry as many women as you could,
but the society probably would spit on you for marrying really young girls. This practice lasted up until when there was still an emperor in throne in China (early 1900’s).

So,
with all these hoopla,
the situation is that the children are now with social service and it is becoming a major concern for the general public. The foremost problem is,
you don’t just “extract” 400 children from their homes without a solid plan. Can you imagine 6-7 year olds being separated from their parents by force?

Yes,
truly tragedy.

However,
if you realize that the two choices which Texas government has: one,
facing the social problem of arranging 400 children with a place to live and enduring the public agony for removing them “inhumanely” from their parents. And two,
send the children back to their parents,
hence the ranch,
and sealing their fate to play their roles in the half-insane polygamist church for the rest of their lives.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I suppose this is partly why the government hadn’t done anything about it until now. You don’t really build a 1,
900 acre ranch to house 600 people in one day,
you know.

Now,
have you finished digesting all that information,
yet? Here comes even more interesting tidbits — supposedly,
they kick out young boys at around 16~17-year-old so that they do not compete with older men on the girls. And that’s not all,
it is rumored that they have a cemetery on the ranch where they bury infants,
those that were deformed or had birth defects due to several generations of marriages among close relatives.

How are those for shockers?

Suddenly,
the Mormon religion,
as a whole,
grabbed my interest in a big way.

I think everyone knows about them as being very friendly and trying to recruit people to their church on the street,
in your door steps,
in social enclaves (such as Chinatowns),
and even in Taiwan. However,
did you also know that they were just… polygamists as a religion altogether. There were no so-called fundamentalists back in 1800’s when they first started out. Because,
polygamists WERE the mainstream Mormons. As someone from a blog had commented — “in 1800’s,
they didn’t hide all the way to the desert to live next to a saline lake (Salt Lake City) for no reason. They had some weirdo religion and social beliefs.”

It is not until early 1890’s,
the Supreme Court decided to criminalize polygamy then the Mormons decided to “adapt” itself to NOT include polygamy in their teachings.

Talk about a farce.

Nowadays,
you will hear “mainstream” Mormons denounce polygamism and say that Mormons do not practice it. That’s rather hypocritical of them,
don’t you think?

There are even more interesting information about the founders of Mormon religion,
but it might be too in depth for this blog entry. Maybe next time when some weirdo in some unknown town in Texas causes a raucous again then I will talk about it more.