Bedtime snacks

by JACK OATMON

I had an interesting chat with my next-door neighbour about those chips they have at le Quincaillerie—the bar next to la Banquise on Rachel, not the hardware store. He was telling me that apparently one of the cheap lubricants the STM uses on the metro trains’ brakes is peanut oil. So that’s why, when you’re riding the orange line at 1 a.m. and some six-foot-two goth guy wearing vinyl asks you if you’ve ever thought about fornicating with dead people, you start thinking about burning popcorn. Because of the cheap lubricant. Because you know, they also use peanut oil to cook those heartburn-inducing mega-portions of popcorn at the cinema. How people manage to finish all that oily popcorn will remain a mystery to me till the day I die—not of a heart attack, thankfully.

Anyways, so he told me that the reason the nachos at le Quincaillerie always have that delicious, three-pitch vr-ooooo-ooooo-oooooming crescendo flavour that makes you want to gorge cheap draft until la prochaine station is because they cook ’em in peanut oil. Crazy, huh? It’s pretty funny to see all those cats at le Quincaillerie munching down on the metro-flavoured nachos and then stumbling next door for la grosse poutine “T-Rex.” That’s the preferred Poutine of TTC, by the way. I know this because they did a live show there once at like 4 a.m., just so they could play the collab track they did with Omnikrom, “Danse la Poutine,” and have it come true. That’s just about the best all-night poutine in town, if you ask me—second only to Chez Claudette, just east of St-Denis on Laurier. After nearly three decades of artery-clogging scrumptiousness, you can still get served hand-cut fries by Claudette herself.

This is important because, for a city that parties as hard as this one, the late-night dining is pretty dismal. After 10 p.m., it’s down to woodchip falafel and cardboard pizza. And the only falafel joint I really liked recently closed. You know, the one right by Academy on St-Laurent, with cinnamon in the pizza dough and the two old dudes who would play that atrocious bhangra-techno and dance on the counter. I loved those guys. Oh, if you happen to be up Academy way on Saturday, make sure to see Kitsuné artists Passions live, dishing out only the most delicious of temper-tantrum electro and hyped-up remixes. If you get a little peckish during the show, you can always run up the street for the amazing calamari at la Sala Rossa—another nocturnal snack score. And if you need a venue for a romantic tangent tonight, note that Thursdays are live flamenco night in the Sala restaurant. Always a treat. But they’ve got some new competition for best fried calamari on the Plateau, lemme tell ya. I checked out Kops Crew’s new digs, Sing Sing on des Pins, and the seafood is not only delectable and fresh, but mysteriously cheap. The kitchen’s open till 3 a.m. too!

That’s good news for those of us who have had le Pistol’s soup/sandwich/pint deal one too many times. It was especially bad when it used to be only $10 and it was the only real place to eat around there at 2:30 a.m. It’s still pretty cheap at about $12 though, and the staff members are as charming as ever.

Man, am I hungry! jack.oatmon@gmail.com