Archives de Catégorie: Interview

Winter wont’ be a pain in the a.. anymore.

par dans Beer, Book, culture, humour, Interview, launch, Montreal et taguée , , | Permalien

Wednesday October 26. Montreal. Winter is getting closer everyday and some of us are desperate just thinking of the snow, the cold and all the “happy” consequences of this season. But fortunately there’s a solution to every problem, at least my grandma told me so.

“Petit guide pour survivre à l’hiver” is the name of this medicine. In a small funny book, Pascal Henrard (author) and François Turcotte (illustrator) have imagined solutions to make you feel better about that sad period of the year.

Absurd humor, puns, stupid games, even more stupid games, four-words crossword about winter, nonsense… 48 pages of this kind of craziness I personally like a lot.

I met Pascal Tuesday at the launch of this book. Actually two books were launched, the other one is another guide that will help people to survive their family. I asked him why he hated winter so much and he needed to write a guide to survive it. And you know what, his answer is rather paradoxical…

David: What do you think of winter?
Pascal: I love winter!

David: What do you like about it?
Pascal: It’s a pleasure to go outside, to ski, to skate, I love cold actually, even though I have a car I love it! You just need to have good tires after all.

David: What about the other guide, to survive family. Do you have to survive your family?
Pascal: Well, sometimes it can be hard. You don’t choose your family, but I’m talking here about the extended family, I think it’s ok with my wife and my kids (ironic smile appearing).

David: What is the best piece of advice to survive winter?
Pascal: Read the book! It’s the only way to survive winter.

“Petit guide pour survivre l’hiver” (Pascal Henrard, François Turcotte – Marcel Didier)
“Petit guide pour survivre à la famille” (Pascal Henrard, François Turcotte) Éditions Marcel Didier

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Thank you Festival d’été de Québec! Thank you Elton!

par dans festival, Interview, Music et taguée , , , | Permalien

Nooooooooooooooo ! The FEQ is over… where is my handkerchief? As Metallica would say, it’s sad but true. For those who are not familiar with this acronym, FEQ stands for Festival d’été de Québec (Quebec City Summer Festival). It’s a festival that have become bigger every year. Now it’s a place where Black Eyed Peas, Rammstein, Iron Madien, Charles Aznavour and actually any big artist is willing to come.

I was a reporter for MSN.CA blog Vivre dans la nuit during this FEQ #44. This year the two big names were Metallica and Sir Elton John. What a show he gave! What a man! Ok, I must confess I was raised with Elton’s songs. I had my first beer listening to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, kissed a girl for the first time with Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me playing on the radio of my car, and I certainly won’t mention what happened the same night while we were hardly listening to I’m Still Standing… Lire la suite →

How I met Anthony Calvillo and SuperSoup the same day

par dans food, Interview, Non classé, restaurant, Sport, travel, wine et taguée , , | Permalien

Last week I went on a trip to… Toronto. It was one of the shortest trips I’ve ever done. Not spending even a night there, a simple professional round-trip to interview Montreal Alouettes star quarterback Anthony Calvillo. I am rather versatile and don’t hesitate to write articles about anything, Culture, Gastronomy, Lifestyle, Sexuality, Tourism, Science… name it. But if there if one field that is of no interest for me it is Sports! So what the hell was I going there? Well, first let’s start another paragraph, I’m getting bored with this one.

Better. So my quick visit to Toronto had nothing to do with Anthony Calvillo as a football player, but as a dad! Dove Men+Care (this is no equation, put your calculator down) was having a panel with four All-Star Dads. In 2010, the famous brand started “a conversation about what it means to be a man in today’s society”. Anyway I had to do different articles for one of my clients, MSN.ca, with the fatherhood angle.

On our arrival at 11:00 am Danielle Delaney (the PR lady from DDMG Communications) had the great idea to bring us to a restaurant before going to the interview. “us” was Sonia from Mamanpourlavie.com and..me, yes it is a rather small “us”. Danielle didn’t know the place we were heading to. Someone had told her this restaurant was awesome, so she decided to give it a try.

Five minutes in a cab and here we are, in front of a sign reading “Fred’s not here”. When you know that Fred is the owner of the restaurant, you realize his absence could be problematic. When the cat’s away, the mice will play! No ?

Fortunately the sign was wrong, Fred was here! And no mice in the horizon. The only things that danced this day were the tasty flavors in our mouths. I chose from the two-course Lunch Menu “Our Famous Baked Lobster & Crab Soup” only because it had “Famous” in it. Well, I’m not exactly the kind of guy that takes the best decisions when it comes to order food. I usually end up staring at my neighbor’s plate thinking “Why didn’t I order that ?!”. But this time I was more than happy with my choice. Take a look at the picture of what they call a “soup”. There was a soufflé on the top! As if the waiter had mistaken the order and brought me another dish… Looking closer to it, questions emerged from my foggy brain (see the picture of the fog)… Is it a soup? Is it a soufflé? Is it a bird?… a plane? No, it it SuperSoup! Not only it looked great but also was subtly good! The famous was deserved 100 times! Yummy.

The second dish was a “Certified Angus” New York Strip Steak with Duck Fat Frites. No kidding? Fred, it’s 2011 and you put the word “Fat” on your menu? Way to go sir! I like it! The “frites” (they must be French Fries under cover) were not that fat anyway and the meat was delicious. As for the liquid part of the meal we had a nice Californian Red Wine. Careful waiter, excellent food, warm decoration, Fred’s not here is definitely a place I will go back to on my next trip to Toronto.

As for the interview with Anthony Calvillo? Nothing to say, he was sweet, a real pleasure to meet him even though I had nothing to say to him about Football. And this is I met John Calvillo and SuperSoup the same day !


www.fredsnothere.com
321 King Street West, Toronto
(416) 971-9155