Lisa, Brian, Marisa and I started the day in a cute diner on Mont Royal: Beauty’s Luncheonette, a Montréal institution since 1942.

While waiting for our table, we chatted with the host, a 94-old weasel who made sure everyone was seated. He had passed on the torch of cooking to his son long ago, but he’s probably pretty much part of the furniture, as we say in German.

I left the others for some shopping and blogged and mailed while keeping an eye on Germany defeating France at the world cup, and then met them again for coffee in the late afternoon. From there, a taxi to the other side of town for pre-dinner drinks.

We had reservations at a hot spot in town: Joe Beef. Now you might know I’m a vegetarian, but I have no problem with a meat restaurant. And here in Canada they will happily accommodate me and leave things out.

In the heart of Montreal’s Little Burgundy district, it’s a classic spot on the Montreal restaurant scene, everybody knows it and you simply have to have reservations if you don’t want to queue for a very long time.

Brian had organized all this. He and Marisa had been to Montreal several times, as Marisa’s sister studied here. Practically locals, they know the good stuff.

The menu was a bit hard to decipher, written on a chalkboard, but so full with stuff, small opera glasses would have been welcome. We had fantastic porcini mushrooms over egg, a great salad and some foie gras mousse as starters. I was already full after that…

While they made some yummy vegetable spaghetti for me, the others had their meat. Lisa tried horse for the first time and it did pass the test. She would have to bear with the horse jokes for the rest of the weekend though.

Desert was a yummy rhubarb ice cream and some intriguing donuts with cheese and a caramelized onion on top.

Add two bottles of wine to that, and we left Joe’s after roughly three hours… we wanted to go to the Jazz festival, and opted for a digestive three-mile walk over to the festival.

Alas, I think we all were simply too full to take anything in, be it food or music… we simply had to get home to sleep an digest.

The next morning, they went to grab breakfast again. I skipped. I had a fruit salad, and that was it for the day.

If you want to find out more about eating in Montreal, and maybe lighter than we did, here are the 35 epic sandwiches in town. Indulge!