A Tale of Two Montreal Bagel Bakeries

Salmon spread, BLT and traditional bagels at St-Viateur

Following our consumption of smoked meat, next on our list was Montreal-style bagels, which were brought to the city by Jewish immigrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries. 

Montreal-style bagels differ from New York ones, which are considered better for sandwiches because they have smaller holes and are chewier and saltier. On the other hand, Montreal bagels are crunchier, not as dense and thick.

The traditional bagel was a winner at St-Viateur

St. Viateur and Fairmount are the two oldest bagel establishments in Montreal, and we decided to try both of them for our breakfast. 

Since the TV series Heated Rivalry came out in December and mostly set in Montreal, writer and director Jacob Tierney features many of his favourite places, and bagel shop St-Viateur is one of them. The character Rose Landry played by actress Sophie Nelisse wears the shop's T-shirt in the show, and actor Francois Arnaud who is Scott Hunter in the show likes the bagels at both St-Viateur and Fairmount.

In interviews he has said New York bagels aren't bagels, just bagel-shaped bread. Ha!

We first went to St-Viateur and it was not quite busy yet, which gave us time to carefully peruse the menu and make our choices. We settled on traditional on a sesame bagel, which has smoked salmon, cream cheese, tomato, onion, capers and a lemon wedge.

The shop also has bagel-themed merchandise

Another was the BLT, or bacon, lettuce and tomato on a wholewheat bagel with a pesto or mayonnaise spread. We asked which one was better and the staff suggested both which is what we did! The last one we sampled was an all dressed bagel with salmon spread. 

The traditional hit all the right notes, the sesame bagel had a slightly crunchy exterior, soft inside, accompanied with thick slices of smoked salmon that were complemented with cream cheese, and the richness cut by the onion and capers.

Meanwhile I didn't try the BLT but heard it was very good too, but the salmon spread was the weakest of the three. It didn't look very appetising with this bright orange gloopy sauce, when I had been expecting a thicker consistency. On top of it, the spread had a fishy taste.

Then we digested our food by walking to the Fairmount shop, which was opened by Russian immigrant Isadore Shlafman in 1919. His shop was first called Montreal Bagel Bakery, and in 1949 moved it to Fairmount Street, and later adopted the Fairmount name.

Fairmount is one of the oldest bagel shops

Shlafman's grandchildren continue to run the business, the bagels still rolled by hand and baked in wood-burning ovens.

We really liked the smoked meat in between the onion bagel, making smoked meat such a versatile protein! It's good with any kind of carbs! 

When comparing the smoked salmon bagel, St-Viateur tasted better than the one at Fairmount, though we still liked the all-dressed bagel at Fairmount. We also liked the blueberry bagel with a simple (or lavish) spread of butter that melted on the toasted slices.

During our visit at Fairmount, I saw some people come in just to get a bagel sandwich for work, and it was packaged in a simple square box that was easy to carry around. 

Smoked meat in an onion bagel at Fairmount

It made me wish I could have bagel sandwiches more often!

It Can't Get More Canadian Than This

Carney asks Williams to "do the leg thing" in photo op

I was wondering when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney would meet superstar Hudson Williams of Heated Rivalry fame and it happened today!

They met at a gala tonight in Ottawa to promote the Canadian film and television industry, and the two men who have dominated my social media feeds in the last week finally shook hands, hugged and even had pictures of Carney holding up Williams' left leg. BFFs indeed.

Carney praised Tierney (second from right)

Carney praised the TV series on Crave, saying viewership in the first week grew over 400 percent, and one-third of those viewers have re-watched the show. The prime minister added that blueberry smoothie sales have also gone up exponentially.

He also credited the series creator Jacob Tierney for making Heated Rivalry in Canada despite the smaller production and marketing budget because he was given more freedom to produce it the way he wanted.

"So Jacob did the right thing. He did the smart thing. He came home to Canada," Carney said. "He came home to a nation that celebrates what makes us different."

It's proof that despite limited funds the show has been a massive success mostly due to Tierney faithfully bringing author Rachel Reid's book to the small screen. He used unknown actors as the two leads, while many online have pointed out how the camera shoots focus on the characters so there is no need for a lot of extras. Others say it's shot like a movie, with the colours reflecting the characters' inner feelings. 

The Canada fleece will be available "soon"...

Today the Mayor of Ottawa declared it was "Shane Hollander Day", which is kind of weird naming it after a character, but it seems Mark Sutcliffe was determined to claim him first.

Nevertheless, Carney got the biggest prize -- the coveted fleece jacket that Williams actually wore in episode 2. Yesterday it was announced that the Team Canada fleece will be commercially available soon.

All over social media people are buzzing today about seeing Carney and Williams together and how proud they are to be Canadian.

It's crazy!

 

Popularity of Heated Rivalry Spawns Numerous Tangents

Heated Rivalry has blown up as the hottest show now

This week my social media has blown up with either clips of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's decisive, call-to-action speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or of scenes from Heated Rivalry, the Canadian TV series that has turned the two stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie into celebrities overnight.

In real life and in fiction, both are pushing back against angry men who want to aggressively take over the world and demand subordination from trad women.

There is so much analysis of Heated Rivalry that it's pretty crazy how everyone has fallen for the two characters, Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov, who are hockey players on rival teams and are smitten with each other.

Analysts opined why the show appeals to women

Aside from the sensual sex scenes, many say female viewers are so obsessed with the show because the two actors are gorgeous men who play a very physical game, but when it comes to their relationship, they are very sensitive -- which analysts like psychologists say is what women want in men.

There is the yearning in the dialogue as well as subtle body language to hint their intentions which female viewers love picking up in the show.

Heated Rivalry was inspired by the book of the same name written by Canadian Rachel Reid in 2019, but it turns out there was a real heated rivalry story many years earlier between two female hockey players, Canadian Caroline Ouellette and American Julie Chu, who faced off against each other in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Both were team captains and both wore the number 13. While they were fierce rivals on the ice, Chu and Ouellette became friends and then lovers, but kept their relationship private for many years. After they were both played in the Olympics four times, they hung up their skates and have two girls and live in Montreal. Ouellette is the assistant coach for the Canadian women's hockey team for the upcoming Milano Cortina Winter Olympics next month.

Storrie and Williams became celebs overnight

Another tangent is that the phenomenon that is Heated Rivalry the show, is not new in Asia. As pointed out in Lingua Sinica's Substack, BL, or "Boys' Love" has been going red hot for years in Thailand, Taiwan, Japan and China.

The shows appeal mostly to women and some men, with storylines that range from mutual love without physical touching to those that include sex scenes. Thailand has the most mature BL scene, which generates a lot of revenue not only from the shows but also from meet-and-greets with the fans.

These events in Thailand can last five to six hours, where tens of thousands of fans from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, fill stadiums to see their favourite stars in person. The fans snap up all kinds of memorabilia, which means lining up for an hour just to buy them. General admission to these fan events alone costs HK$2,600 (US$333), and together with airfare and hotel, means these fans are around 30 to 40 years old, and mainly female.

So in a way the West is finally discovering BL, which is already hundreds of miles ahead in Asia. And with Shane Hollander the character and Hudson Williams the actor both half Asian, Heated Rivalry has gained a huge fan base across the Pacific.