Earlier this year, the company I have worked for for over 16 years was purchased by a capital investment group. The good news is that I still have a job. The bad news is that there's still some uncertainties and some figuring things out with the new company. The other good thing is that my boss, the former owner of the company, was retained by the capital investment group to run the North America operations for the company. The familiarity of working with the same people is a big plus, but even during the course of transition, there's still some apprehension. To help get over the trepidation and uneasiness of this transition, my boss called for a company meeting in Montreal. The only problem was that it was in late January. And Montreal in January isn't as fun as Montreal in, say, August. Still, I always relish the chance to go to the city as it has a lively and diverse culinary scene. For lunch one day, a group of us went to a sort of sports bar/beer place by the name of Bier Markt.
Bier Markt is a small chain of restaurants that started in Toronto in 2001. A Toronto restaurant group, Prime Restaurants - which was founded back in the early 80's - was behind the original concept of the sports bar restaurant that featured a number of beers and upscale bar food. The Montreal location opened in 2013 along Boulevard René-Lévesque West (see map) in what was the original location of Queue de Cheval - one of the best steakhouses in Montreal - before that restaurant moved to a new location in 2012.
In 2013, Prime Restaurants sold their portfolio that included Bier Markt to Cara Operations Ltd., the oldest restaurant group in Canada which got its start in the early 1880's selling confectionaries and magazines in Canada Railway train stations across the nation. Now known as Recipe Unlimited, the restaurant group owns and operates 18 different brands of full-service and fast-casual restaurants across Canada. Today, there are 7 Bier Markt locations in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and St. John's, Newfoundland.
Montreal has an intricate labyrinth of passage ways under the city's center. The Montreal Underground City is something I've heard about, but have never experienced - until this trip. We were staying at the Hotel Bonaventure, a 70's-era hotel known for its rooftop pool that's open even in the dead of winter. The Hotel Bonaventure is also somewhat well-known in rock music history as the place where members of The Who completely destroyed one of the suites after a show in Montreal. Members of the group, as well as some of their entourage, were arrested and the band's management was forced to pay nearly $10,000 in damages to the hotel to get the band out of the pokey.
The Hotel Bonaventure is connected to the underground walkways and since it was snowing out pretty good, we decided to take the Underground City passageway to Bier Markt. We took a lot of steps down, a lot of right turns, a lot of left turns and then steps up before we found ourselves outside in the snow and just across the street from Bier Markt.
For a pseudo sports bar/beer joint, Bier Markt is pretty nice. Walking into the space, I saw a metal topped bar that curved around with lots of dark wood paneling throughout the place.
The main floor was spread out with a number of tables that featured comfortable padded chairs and a large of number of televisions that could be seen from nearly every seat in the place. It was a lively lunch crowd that was enjoying being out of the late January snow outside.
Toward the back of the main floor was another bar area that featured a small bar with an area for grilling meats, primarily beef and sausages for small charcuterie plates. This place was more like a bistro than a sports bar.
We ended up going upstairs to a second floor dining area. There was a small bar up there along with a large glass-front refrigerator that featured a number of bottles of beer they had to offer. They offered a wide variety of beers on their beer menu including pale ales, stouts, ciders, amber ales, and radler beers - a half beer/half fruit soda concoction - that have become popular (but I don't care for) in Canada and parts of the U.S. They did have blonde ales available, but unfortunately they didn't have the Boréale Blonde, a locally-brewed beer that I have fallen in love with on previous trips to Montreal. But they did have the Yakima IPA from the Le Castor brewery located about 45 miles west of Montreal. It was actually a very good beer and one that I had many times during my visit to Montreal.
The food menu at Bier Markt featured a number of interesting appetizers including bacon poutine (it was all I could do to NOT order that), angus beef tartare, and beer-braised duck wings. They had sandwiches, hand-tossed pizzas, pork or chicken schnitzel, P.E.I. mussels, grilled Atlantic salmon, and steaks including a 1.5 kilogram (a little over 3 pounds) bone-in tomahawk-style ribeye.
I went pretty basic on my trip to Bier Markt - I got the burger with frites (fries). It was served on a sesame-seed bun and topped with what was a surprisingly fresh slice of tomato, iceberg lettuce, kosher dill pickle slices, and shaved red onions. The burger was, well, all right. I thought I might have been more happy getting something else, but I was sort of in a mood for a burger that day.
After I finished my lunch and went to the washroom, our server brought out a plate of warm powdered-sugar donuts drizzled in caramel as an after-meal dessert that Bier Markt is sort of famous for. While I wasn't expecting anything after the burger I had, I have to say these were a nice touch at the end of the meal. The donuts were light, but the sugar and caramel gave them a decadent quality in taste.
I have to say that Bier Markt was a nice place, but the food was just sort of average. They had a nice selection of beers - many of which I wasn't all that familiar with - but the atmosphere was that of an upscale sports bar. I was impressed with the layout and the comfortable atmosphere in the place. If you're in Montreal and looking for a place that has sports, a good beer selection, and an interesting menu with some upscale bar food, Bier Markt would be worth the stop.
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