Casual Restos [in Montreal, Canada]: The Kim Hour menu never ends

The exterior of Kim Hour restaurant on St. Michel blvd, pictured in Montreal on Friday June 1, 2012. (Photograph by: Vincenzo D'Alto , Montreal Gazette)

Kim Hour's shiitake mushrooms stuffed with shrimp paste proved hard to pick up with chopsticks. (Photograph by: Vincenzo D'Alto , Montreal Gazette)

Asian restaurant offers food from Thailand, Cambodia, China and Singapore

June 15, 2012
By Sarah Musgrave
The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

Kim Hour

• Good bet
• $$
• 7682 St. Michel Blvd. (Near the Metropolitan Expressway)
• Phone: 514-725-7118
• Website: n/a
• Licensed: BYOB
• Credit cards: MC, Visa
• Wheelchair accessible: Yes
• Vegetarian friendly: Limited
• Open: Daily 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
• Price range: Appetizers $3-$15.95, mains $6.95-$20.95

MONTREAL - What a scene it was at Kim Hour on a recent Friday at lunchtime. Two birthday celebrations going on simultaneously around large circular tables, complete with cakes and candles. A group of elderly Asian men sharing wine and getting progressively louder as the afternoon wore on. Wriggling babies being shushed by various family members. Single businessmen talking on cellphones while eating Cantonese-style lobster. (Doing both at once is no mean feat, and fascinating to watch, I must say.) All the while, servers whisked back and forth, carrying loaded plates and clanking dishes into carts. We’d shown up for the midday rush, but I got the sense that there’s rarely much of a pause at this bustling, pan-Asian restaurant.

Located on a traffic-heavy block across from the treasure trove that is the St. Michel flea market (which is how I came to notice the place), Kim Hour restaurant shares a strip mall with the grocery store of the same name. The eatery, previously housed in the supermarket, got its own banquet-hall-style premises a couple of years ago. The connection to the shop implies that everything will be fresh; that may be illusory, but it certainly seemed to be the case when we visited.

The menu is, not unexpectedly, vast. The print is wearing off the spiral-bound pages, giving the food photos and fading prices a slightly ghostly quality. It covers dishes from various countries of origin: Thailand, Cambodia, China, Singapore and the ever-mysterious land of “Special.”

I was interested in the Cambodian preparations, since they’re rarer in this city. Phnom Penh soups are marked with a three-chili rating (out of a possible four), and come with fish or shrimp. The bowl arrived steaming and fragrant, filled with basa filets that held together in the heat, and plentiful helpings of hooded straw mushrooms, arcs of pineapple, chunks of tomato, all swimming with herbs, spices and sprouts. The rust-coloured broth was inspiringly sour and tangy, a cacophony of lemon grass, piquant basil, tamarind, citrus and general fishiness. A close relative of Thailand’s famous tom yum – logical, since that country was at one time Khmer territory – this was a bowl full of intrigue, and truly memorable for its splashy flavours.

The house noodle dish brought us soft golden egg noodles tossed with small bits of pork, shrimp, bean sprouts and more – in other words, the works. This was a mild, relaxed, comfortingly carby sort of plate, familiar from Chinatown meals.

We were feeling seafood, and anyway, it’s hard to pass on salt and pepper squid. The strips of calamari, battered and deep-fried, were flecked with garlic and chilies, chopped onion and peppers. What wasn’t to like, except for the taste of cooking oil in the coating? Still, entirely munchable, and even as the nuggets cooled I was angling for more – it was easy to imagine snacking on them out of a grease-stained paper bag.

A laminated page of specialties (it doesn’t automatically come with the menu, so you may want to ask for it) showed pictures of unusual items like a bitter melon omelette, a lobster and pork pot, and fried chicken with shrimp paste. Our shiitakes stuffed with shrimp paste looked like a real party platter – this is a preparation popular for new-year festivities – but turned out to be so slippery that it was more like a party trick. I couldn’t quite get my head, or apparently my chopsticks, around this one, and the coating of a glutinous egg-white-flecked sauce only added to the challenge. Still, the texture of the dried mushrooms was rewardingly chewy, and with pink mounds of gentle minced shrimp, the pairing of tastes hinted at greater potential. Something I’d order in a group, as a bit of a curiosity piece.

To drink, you can join in the endless rounds of jasmine tea on ice, or choose roads less taken, such as Vietnamese iced coffee or jackfruit smoothies. Save for desserts, of which there are none, the menu here just keeps unfolding: there were swaths we didn’t get to, like the fried rices, the family-style hot pots and the salads. (I was sorry to miss those, because some, like the hot and sour squid and the papaya salad, were heat-rated at four chilies.) There are also weekend-only offerings to consider, like siu mai (dumplings) and Cambodian beef stew.

Kim Hour serves some appealing humid-weather food. If you’re inspired to cook and not too full to shop, the grocery store has all sorts of Asian herbs for planting, tropical vegetables, colourfully packaged goods and just about anything else you might need, including jewellery.