Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Fuschia Epicerie Fleur

The Rating:

2 Fat Buddhas: Delicious, interesting, and healthy!
A cheap, all-inclusive meal that's good value for money

Our Review:


A coworker lead us for lunch to this cute little café that specialises in vegetarian meals, with a good dose of flowers in and around the food. Sounded interesting. On the quiet corner of Duluth and Coloniale, this is a small shop with just 3 tables, where we were welcomed by a lovely white dog spreadeagled on her back in the middle of the shop. The tables altogether seat probably 16 people max, and while we were there we saw a number being sadly turned away. Small groups can share, but our work group lorded over an entire table.

We welcomed the set menu of the day—two dishes and a drink—at a healthy $10. It changes daily, hence being "of the day", but is always vegetarian, often vegan, and also normally gluten-free for any people with coeliac out there. A friendly waitress saw us comfortably seated, and plied us with water, which had a faint aroma and taste of what we determined to be honeysuckle. Did I mention that everything has flowers in it? The salt was laced with what I thought to be rosemary and jasmine, and our menu of the day was an asian noodle salad (pansies), tropical fruit salad (orange blossom), and jasmine iced tea.

The salad was fresh and delicious. Lots of fresh herbs, red cabbage, bean sprouts, carrots, rice noodles, with a peanutty, asian-inspired dressing. And pansies. A decent serving that was remarkably satisfying for a salad. The drink was refreshing, obviously made fresh, and not overpoweringly jasminey. Dessert fruit salad was simple, garnished with black sesame seeds, and fresh.

I followed up with a selection of cookies; this place doubles as a mini-bakery, putting out fresh batches of cookies and cakes, which obviously change every day, since the waitress has to wait to see what emerges from the kitchen before she can write the options on the board. They had 3 types out when we visited, conveniently enough for the $2 per 3 cookie price, so a sample of each was in order. Macaroon with jasmine and chocolate: crunchy and chewy macaroon, as it should be, with a small molten chocolate centre, but not much in the way of jasmine; Rose cookies: a soft and buttery cookie sprinkled with crystal sugar and rose petal pieces, again, the flower flavour doesn't come through; Chocolate and violet: delicious, rich chocolate flavour, but not so much violet. So good cookies, but not strong on the flower flavours (but maybe that's a good thing).

This is a cute and friendly shop, where one can relax and spend some time. The set menu lunch, at $10 including taxes, is delicious, fresh, and great value. A nice spot for lunch or a quick snack in the afternoon. I think we'll go back to this one again.

http://www.epiceriefleur.com/
4050 Coloniale, Montreal (cnr Duluth)
Closed Sunday and Monday

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