This is my 2nd food trip in Montreal and unlike my first one, which was planned out with intense internet sleuthing, I wanted this one to be more spontaneous. I connected with locals, who were seriously kind and helpful. One moment I’d simply be asking for a place to grab a decent coffee and next thing I knew, folks were googling places for me and writing down names of restaurants, cafes, and even drawing me a map!

On my first day, I arrived at YUL airport in the early evening and only had time to grab dinner. My top choice was to explore Timeout Market Montreal since I had already had a great experience at their other location in DUMBO, Brooklyn. I honestly didn’t expect it to be much different than the NY location, but I was extremely curious to see if the food selections would be great enough to get me to come back throughout my stay.

One thing to keep in mind though, this place has crazy business hours so check the schedules before making a trip there. I went on a Tuesday night and it was closing at 9 pm so I only had about 1.5 hours. When I got there and it was pretty quiet, and I had to do a quick scan to make a speedy decision. Everything was written in French, but I saw this place called Marusan and another word from their menu was ” Japonais” which I guessed that it was Japanese so I asked the staff for recommendations.

Of course, the one thing that seemed great to me happened to be something I couldn’t have and that made me want it even more! That dish was ” Cari au Karaage ” AKA Chicken Karagge (Deep fried chicken) with rice and curry. So I ended up ordering Spicy Tonkotsu Ramen ($15) which honestly was really good! I rarely ate everything that came with my ramen, but I slurped it this time.

The FOMO still lingered greatly and I promised myself that I would have to come back for that Karaage dish before leaving Montreal. This fancy food court is quite big for someone like me whose French wasn’t her language so it could be quite challenging and overwhelming so I decided to take it easy tonight and let this meal sit in.

By the way, Marusan doesn’t serve drinks so either get it from the bar area, drink stations, or other restaurants. I chose to get this $5 soda called Violette. With my understanding, it was a citrusy soda mixed with some purple liquid which turned out to be quite tasty and subtle.

I decided to call it a night since my body started to give up on me from being on a long flight from San Francisco all the way to MTL. I promised myself I would be back for that Chicken Karaage soon enough.

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