- Hi, what's up everybody?
I'm out here on a kinda rainy day
in the Cote-des-Neiges neighborhood of Montreal.
I think it's really important
when you're getting to know a city
to really explore all aspects
and all neighborhoods of the city.
And that sometimes means
getting away from the downtown areas,
getting away from the tourist centers,
getting away from all the common traditional places
that you might go.
And exploring and doing something different.
And today we're going to La Maison du Cari
to have some excellent authentic Caribbean food.
And so when you're all kinda
poutine and smoke-meated out in Montreal,
which can happen pretty easily,
you can head over here and have a change of pace,
and have some really delicious authentic food.
So, let's get going.
(funky music)
- Hi.
- (Lucas) How are you?
- I'm good. How are you today?
- (Lucas) What's your name?
- My name is Savvy.
- My name is Lucas.
- (Savvy) Nice to meet you Lucas.
- Very nice to meet you too.
Um, I've heard such great things about this restaurant.
Are they true?
- Well, I'll let you judge that for yourself.
- I would like to try, um, some of the roti.
- (Savvy) Sure.
- (Lucas) They're filled with the curry.
- (Savvy) Yes, you have a choice
of beef, chicken, goat, shrimp.
- Why don't we try the beef, the chicken, and the goat.
- (Savvy) Okay.
- Get a little bit of each.
- (Savvy) Sure.
- And then, I know also the doubles
is a traditional Trinidadian snack.
- (Savvy) Snack, yeah.
- And I'd like to try one of those too.
- Sure.
- This place is so cool.
It just has a, like it has a warmth to it.
- We try to make it cozy and homely and comfortable.
- Yeah, now for people who aren't super familiar
with this style of food what are,
how would you explain it.
- Well this is Caribbean, okay?
Which is way different from Indian,
because people try to put us together as Indian,
but our curries are completely different.
It's more of a Caribbean-style.
- (Lucas) 'Cause it's curry, okay.
- It's curry as well, but just in a Caribbean style.
- What would be some different flavors,
or how would you tell that apart,
if you were eating them?
- I think it's the way we cook
and our spices that we use make us different from Indian.
- Tell me a little bit about the people that come in,
some of the clientele.
- We have a very mixed clientele.
We have a lot of the local Caribbean people,
that they come and, you know,
they say when they want home food
and they can't do it themselves they come here.
- Well, I'm looking forward to trying some of this food.
Heard really good things,
so thank you for speaking with me.
- You're welcome.
Enjoy your meal.
- Bye. Beep.
(upbeat music)
- Couldn't be more excited
'cause I love this kind of food.
What are some signature things and flavors,
just to give a quick crash course in what you might expect.
You're gonna have, like, goat curries and stews,
and all of these wonderful things
that sort of make up the diaspora of Caribbean cuisine.
The place we're at right now,
the Caribbean Curry House,
the specialty is the roti, the wrapped roti.
Where you have the traditional Indian-style flatbread
which was brought to the Caribbean
by south-Asian subcontinent indentured servants and workers,
and then they brought that tradition of the bread.
And it was sort of incorporated.
And when it was brought up
to places like Montreal, Toronto also,
it became popular to stuff the flatbread
with different kinds of meats and curries
and potatoes and all sorts of delicious things.
I'm just gonna bite right into this.
I'm just not gonna mess around.
This is super tasty.
Holy, this is spicy.
Oh!
That is some heat, boy.
What I really love, you saw it puffing up, right?
So it's got that extra layer.
And you can see it's made with these ground peas.
It gives it a nice grainy texture.
it gives it a more, sort of,
like a creamy sort of earthen flavor to the outer wrapping.
It really just sort of dissolves.
The flavor of the curry:
spices, coriander, cumin, bay leaf.
A really elaborate spice mixture.
The Caribbean curries I would say are brighter.
Indian subcontinent curries
are gonna be a little more grounded,
more muted and earthy, deep and rich.
And now we have goat.
Um, goat is a super common thing
to eat in the Caribbean.
A goat curry is going to be very common.
Goat of course is going to taste
a little bit different.
Goat's a little hard to prepare.
It's a little harder to prepare well.
It can tend to lean towards gaminess.
It's gonna resemble beef in some ways.
It's gonna have a little characteristic gaminess.
The curries here, it's gonna be the same
as the curries with the beef and the chicken.
Lastly we have a doubles.
Now, this is gonna be interesting.
Because the Trinidadian doubles,
this is the bara, the outer fried flatbread.
This is the channa, this is the chickpea mixture inside.
Now, those of you
who have been loyally following this show
will know that we have had doubles on this show before.
Long long time ago.
This is like OG Dining on a Dime.
But we went to doubles place in Brooklyn.
I promptly got my ass handed to me,
because the main thing was one doubles
is still a doubles, it's not a double.
And I made the mistake of being like,
oh, I'm gonna eat my double now.
And the commenters were just,
they just lit into me.
The other thing is I ate it wrong.
I, like, I picked it up like a hamburger.
And I was like, hmmm, my delicious double.
That is also wrong.
You don't eat it like a sandwich.
You kind of like, would eat it more like you would have,
like a piece of roti and some stew or some curry.
So, having learned the hard way,
I'm very happy and thankful
to be able to have my redemption doubles.
I apologize for the episode three years ago.
I mean it was a good episode.
But I apologize for my mistakes in that episode.
I will now eat my doubles, thank you.
Curried chickpeas in the channa.
The soft fried bara.
And you've got a nice tamarind sauce
that gives it a little bit of sweetness.
And you've got a little bit of spice in there as well.
Doubles is a delicious snack.
So this was $2.75, super cheap.
When I got into a taxi to come here,
the guy saw that I was going to the Caribbean Curry House.
He was like, what are you doing there?
And he said, well where are you from?
Are you from Montreal?
And I said I'm not from, obviously I'm not from Montreal.
He could tell by talking to me.
And he said, well how did you know about that place?
How'd you find out about that place?
And I said, you know, a local told me about it.
And he said, that place is really good.
You know if you are looking for real,
you know, genuine authentic food,
that's like a little bit off the grid.
A little bit off the map,
he's like, that's the place to go.
Another good way to find a place to eat lunch,
and the way you know that a place is gonna be good,
you go, you look, you see there's a line.
And there's a line of people right over there.
Right next to me.
Get in the back of the line
and you eat whatever they're serving.
And you're definitely gonna be happy about it.
I really hope you enjoyed
this episode of Dining on a Dime.
From Caribbean Curry House
in the Cote-des-Neiges neighborhood in Montreal, Canada.
If you'd like to watch more, please click here.
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