When I first moved to Montreal for college, in my late teens, I discovered a fine downtown treat: “des steamés de la rue St-Laurent“. These steamies are in fact hot-dogs cooked with steam and are served with mustard and cabbage… could sound gross to the uninitiated, but trust me, they were fucking delish… In those college days, I could get 3 steamies and a coke for $2… a real bargain for students.

Later on, it became a place we stopped by after a night out in the bars when we needed something to soak up the alcohol in our stomach… never go to bed drunk if you have the chance to put a couple of steamies in there…

Then I moved away and I forgot all about the steamies… Until a few weeks ago when I was listening to some French songs and one mentioned those mouth-watering St-Laurent famous hot-dogs and I started really craving one. Or three.

We had already planned a visit to Vermont for Easter and I knew we’d be passing through Montreal, so I thought I could take a few minutes to stop and introduce the local “delicacy” to DR… YEH… Steamies!

So after a nice visit with DR’s mom in Brockville, we finally arrived in Montreal, parked the car, rushed to Archambault to look for Quebec movies on DVD that I must add to my collection, then made our way to St-Laurent street for some food.

(If my story was like a Wizard of Oz type movie, this is where it would start showing in colour)

We arrive, I recognize the area, I haven’t been here in 16 yrs now. I see a restaurant that looks familiar, we walk in… it’s changed man! Where are all the pictures of the celebrities who posed with the owner? Where are all the pool tables? And why are there tables??? We never used to sit, we used to stand or lean against the long bar on one side of the room… It just looks so cheap all of a sudden… I order anyway, 2 steamies each and some diet drinks… the guy puts mustard, yes, cabbage, yes, relish, NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO…. fuck no!

I’m not happy, this is not what I remembered… and why are DR and I the only customers in the place, where are all the other blue collar guys? It used to be packed all the time… oh well, so much for the steamies I had gone on and on and on about to DR. Disappointed, we leave and continue our walk towards Old Montreal, I had to take a picture of City Hall for my collection of City Halls of the World…

As we walk along south on St-Laurent, 4 doors down, I see Montreal’s Pool Room. The infamous Montreal’s Pool Room of my youth, home of the St-Laurent Steamies… It looks exactly as I remembered, it’s full of people, a long line up of hungry dudes waiting to get served so they can play pool and laugh and live life and hit each other on the shoulders like dudes do when the do dudes things… It should’ve been us in there, drool on the side of our mouths… but no, we got the bad steamies from the shitty place above. And we’re not hungry anymore…

Next time… Next time for sure!

Montreal’s Pool Room, will not forget the name again…

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