La Buvette Chez Simone... Now that's what I'm talking about.

I would love to work in this place. If you're a waiter there, you're cool, like triple O cool. Even the busboy looked like a model, and it showed that they all loved working there.

This isn't a restaurant, per se. It's in the same style as the more known Réservoir on Duluth, but in a more intimate and cozy atmosphere. It's what us French people call a buvette, a place where the main goal is drinking nice little things, with a bit of appetizers offered on the side.

Anyways, the place looked sweet, it had an awesome stainless steel bar in the middle of the room surrounded by small tables. The crowd is a bit older, filled with artsy people in their mid-thirties clearly all from Mile-End. Since my friend loves this place, the waitress greeted us with a huge smile and a joke, setting us up at a nice little table.

What was refreshing is that all the waiters that worked with us knew the place's products as if they were their own. They were willing to share their tastes and the experiences they had with the wine and the dishes. Though it seems like basic marketing skills, not many places do that. If a waiter says that he had this particular bottle of wine with friends on a warm summer night, that it was delicious and that they had wonderful philosophical conversations around it, you would probably buy it. Face it - people are sheep, you have to tell them what they want.

So my friend and I started off the night with a couple of beers, and since we were slightly hungry, we got a horse meat (blasphemy! you cry) carpaccio. The cute fluffy pony it came from probably had a great life, because it was delicious and tender, the flesh beautifully displayed with a light pesto-like sauce. To accompany that, I had a delicious glass organic red wine from Pays d'Oc (the only one on the menu),  which the clearly vegetarian waitress kindly recommended, and my friend had a nice crisp wine with some sort of Québecois insult on the front.

The drinking was merry, but moderate - just within that blissful zone where food and pleasure intermingle so gracefully. The busboy was also pretty damn cute, and came up in our conversations a couple of times. In the end, the night was pleasant and smooth, punctured by the dry and witty jokes of our elegant waitress.

I'd definitely recommend this place for a small group of intimate friends, in the mood for a chill, low key evening out.

So, to sum it up

4869 Avenue du Parc

Price: Once again, sorry. I'm not cheap, I swear

Food : 7/10

Atmosphere: 8/10

Service : 9/10

Drunkeness: 6/10

Overall : 8/10

Up next : Will it be a bar? a restaurant? or maybe a drag-show chez Mado!