Quebec City likes the circus. All throughout the summer of 2015, the city showed a free circus called
Crépuscule in a city park. Crepuscule rivaled, if not surpassed some Cirque du Soleil shows I've seen. As I was watching the show, I couldn't help but notice there was a sign on a nearby building to the left of the stage for Cafe Du Monde. I visited New Orleans earlier this year and sampled the famous beignets at the
Cafe du Monde there. I was with someone who had never had a Cafe du Monde beignet, so we decided to see if this was another location of the New Orleans version of the restaurant. It was not.
This Cafe du Monde was a fancy restaurant overlooking Quebec City's cruise terminal. It wasn't beignets we were initially thinking about, but a nice dinner sounded good as well. After we were seated, it took me a few moments to realize I wasn't having to translate the menu. I suppose it's a sign that Cafe du Monde was a touristy restaurant if they handed the English menus to the Americans horribly attempting to speak broken French. Out of all the meals I ate on the trip, this is the only restaurant which this occurred.
I ordered the Smoked Salmon Gougere. The menu described this as 2 chou-pastry puff with smoked salmon, dill cream cheese, capers, and onions. Smoked salmon seemed to be a fairly popular food in Quebec. I was noticing restaurant after restaurant had smoked/cured salmon of some form on their menu. This was my opportunity to have some of the salmon in the city.
French fries were also served on the side. I found it interesting that in almost all restaurants, mayonnaise was offered before ketchup as a topping for fries. I've always preferred mayo opposed to ketchup for fries anyway. Perhaps I've been channeling a French Canadian for my fry condiment choices.
We decided to get dessert. Our waitress was very insistent that fried ice cream was ordered. According to her, fried ice cream is a dessert found only in Cafe du Monde. I've seen fried ice cream on menus plenty of other places, including on other menus in Quebec City. Much to her disappointment, I ordered Rice Pudding instead. The rice pudding came served in a huge glass which was probably a foot and a half tall. The server then portioned it out into a smaller bowl with a small pitcher of maple syrup topping.
I enjoyed my meal at Cafe du Monde. It was the most expensive meal I had while in Quebec and it wasn't beignets, but everything was good!
