Montreal: Justine Bistro

Montreal Dining: Justine Bistro
This very small French bistro is located in the northeast of the city and is partnered with Justine au Vin. It’s an authentic French place and even the waitress doesn’t know much English so we ordered some stuff without knowing what we were getting. The dining area has maybe 10 tables and the tiny kitchen can be seen behind the bar. It was quite a hike from the apartment because you have to figure out how to cross an aqueduct and get through a not so nice neighborhood. But the neighborhood the restaurant is in is fine.
Our waitress has minimal English and we have minimal French but we gesture and try to figure things out. For example, she told us what the soup was, a word none of us knew. So she described the vegetables as being white inside with purple outside and we guessed Turnip which ended up being correct. The wines by the bottle are sitting on a shelf and she suggests we look at them and decide what we want. There are maybe 8 choices. Ironically, none of them are French wines but Argentinian, Spanish and Italian. We pick an Argentinian wine, bonterra, I believe. All the bottles are the same price as are the glasses. Terri, Dave and Vive have a glass of white pinot gris to start (I’m not feeling well—I seem to have caught a bug Rakesh brought with him).
For dinner, we have the turnip soup which tastes great to me. It’s a simple soup with the simple taste of turnip, nothing else. We have a goat cheese salad just like the one at Justine a Vin with grapes and apples and we have a mushroom dish with puff pastry. The mushroom dish is quite tasty but sooo rich. For mains, we order the steak with potatos and ravioli with pesto. The steak, from my perspective, is just okay. It’s a bit tough, and not really flavorful. Ditto for the potatoes. But the ravioli are wonderfully flavorful and good perfectly al dente. There is some kind of creamy pesto sauce on them. I’m not a big ravioli fan, so this is a pleasant surprise.
After our meal, we head back to the apartment, this time with a better idea of how to get there and the walk isn’t quite so long.