Restaurant experience: Au Pied de Cochon

For my birthday this year, I decided to try something new and potentially hazardous to my health. I'm talking about the (in)famous Montreal restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. This restaurant belongs to Martin Picard, an unconventional chef who was also involved in the opening of Montreal's famous Toqué restaurant.
He hosts the Food Network show called the Wild Chef which explores Quebecois cuisine.

Au Pied de Cochon specializes in foie gras and pig's meat. It's an extremely rich cuisine and people with health problems should be wary. It was also visited by the American chef and author Anthony Bourdain who had this to say about the restaurant:

“It’s like driving down Hollywood Boulevard naked, wearing a cowboy hat and holding a white castle hamburger in one hand, having sex with two hookers while listening to ZZ Top. Total trash. [And I love it.]”

You'll find stuff on the menu that you won't find anywhere is, like foie gras poutine, bison tongue and, for the truly adventurous, pig's head!

Here was my experience. First of all, I didn't heed the warnings about not eating for the whole day. I have a very good appetite and figured I would be ok. This was my first mistake.

My husband ordered the little bouchée called cromesquis de foie gras. It's basically a small square of deep fried foie gras. The foie gras is completely melted inside, so you have to shove it in your mouth in one shot. It was apparently delicious. For the first course, Anthony also had the duck carpaccio. It was fantastic and I would recommend it to anyone who likes raw meat.

For my first course, I was feeling adventurous so I ordered something that I had never eaten before but always wanted to try, tripe. This was my second mistake. Now please understand that anybody who likes tripe would have loved this dish. The flavours themselves were wonderful and the taste of tripe was good, I just couldn't get past the texture. And with a fried egg on top, the dish itself was very filling.

Save Me!

At this point I knew I was in trouble, because I was already feeling full. But I persevered none the less and decided to order my mistake number 3, pied de cochon stuffed with foie gras. This thing was big enough to feed 3 people (the waiter had warned me). The meat itself was smothered with a rich sauce and had plenty of vegetables. I barely made a dent in it, because I was feeling slightly nauseous at this point due to the tripe. If you order this dish, please, please, do not eat anything prior because it will not be as enjoyable. Being unable to eat much of what I had ordered, I chose then to swap with my husband's dish, which was much more my cup of tea.

He ordered the duck in a can. This concept is awesome. From what I understand the whole meal is stuffed in a can and cooked this way. The waiter brings you a plate with a piece of bread on it, opens up the can and dumps the food right in the middle of it. You end up with a juicy duck breast, some foie gras and cabbage among other things. This was great, I am salivating just writing about it. I was glad that Anthony was nice enough to swap with me.

Luckily enough, they placed the rest of the uneaten food in a vacuum seal bag, which was pretty neat. Now you would think that I wouldn't have space for dessert (and I didn't, technically) but as my husband says "dessert goes into a different stomach". This would be my only negative comment about our experience. Although we knew that we only had our table reserved for 2 hours, our waiter was somehow unaware of this. This combined with a pretty slow service (we were fairly fast ordering and eating) meant that by the time we got to dessert I was told I couldn't get the much anticipated pouding chomeur because it would take to long to prepare and that our table needed to be vacated for the next reservation. Disappointed, I ordered something else, but wished they had been better organized. It sucks to get kicked out when you're not ready to leave, especially when you're paying good money.

So, all in all, I will definitely go back (this time on an empty stomach) and maybe choose a night that has less restrictions on the reservation. There's so many other things on the menu that I would love to try. If anybody is game, I would love take my chances with the pig's head. Always willing to try something new!!!