Else's Pub and an Old Acquaintance

Today I had the pleasure of wandering down to a local pub, called Else's, at the corner of Roy and de Bouillon with my roommate, Kate. Methinks this was her not-so-subtle way of hinting I need to get out more. A couple of days ago I had mentioned to her that one of my old classmates, Lori, worked there and that she had sent me a note back a while ago saying I should drop in and say hello. This little tidbit was all Katie needed to try and motivate me to go visit. In fact, she probably mentioned it 4 times over the past 2 days before actually offering to go down there with me. I'm not sure if she thinks that I harbour a crush for Lori or what (and for the record, Lori is a beautiful girl, but from what I recall she has a long-term boyfriend, so I won't be hitting on her anytime soon), but she seemed bound and determined to get me through those doors. So I went. And I'm happy I did.


The pub felt like a cross between a café and a local watering hole. According to the mini-biography on the back of the menu, the bar had been operating under a restaurant permit until the fines and whatnot became too costly to ignore, so the owner finally gave in and decided to serve food. So now the "restaurant" has a limited menu (and when I say limited, I mean it's one page with maybe 12 item choices) to go with its extensive selection of beer and liquor. I also noticed that they hold some sort of semi-regular poetry and music night, definitely in-keeping with the artsy-hip vibe of the plateau. Overall, it has a really comfortable, casual, almost lived-in quality that I found pretty appealing. I like places that have a bit of a personality to them and this definitely has that.

We found a table near the windowthat ran through a history of the changes to the Montreal Canadiens' famed red, blue and white jerseys on its tabletop, and in moments, along came Lori to greet us. Thankfully she recognized me and remembered my name (hey, part of me was afraid she'd have forgotten!) and before long we had caught up on a lot of the generic stuff. It's not like we were close buddies at Western. We just took an evening French Lit course together, after all, but I was still happy to see a familiar face. Hopefully I'll run across her from time to time. Regardless, I'll keep exploring Montreal and reporting back my findings. Til next time...