Moishes

Bring a full wallet and a large appetite if you are dining at Moishe’s, which is Montreal’s high-end steak house. Opened in 1938 and now located upstairs on an inconspicuous block in the old Jewish neighborhood, it is not strictly Jewish. You can start your meal with shrimp cocktail or have a main course of grilled shrimp; but the more typical appetizers are herring in cream sauce and chopped liver; and many folks side their main course with latkes (potato pancakes) or karnatzlech (little sausages common at local delis).

Steaks, cooked on a charcoal grill that dates back to the 1930s, are the menu’s featured attraction. There are many cuts available, including rib steak, sirloin, filet mignon, and T-bone, not to mention sweetbreads and a mixed grill. The one we like best is the bone-in filet mignon. A huge pillow of meat laden with juice, it provides almost no resistance to a knife and offers fuller flavor than most boneless filets. We also like “Moishe’s famous Monte Carlo potato,” which is the house version of twice-baked.

Dining at Moishe’s is a plush experience. Spirits are high at the white-clothed tables in the bright dining room as couples, families, and business comrades partake of a meal that everybody knows is the best that money can buy.