The 411It’s been a while since we have done a vegan brunch review – the main reason being that there aren’t too many vegan brunches available in Montreal. In essence, brunch menus can be vegetarian friendly but to go one step further and make it vegan friendly is more difficult. Vegans need to avoid dairy and eggs, not to mention all meat. You can drop meat from a dish but eggs and dairy become much more difficult to substitute especially for brunch, so if you are a vegan and love brunch then you do not have many options available to you. Making brunch vegan is also tricky because you must be creative. Putting fruit on a plate and some granola on the side is technically vegan but it isn’t creative and over the years I have discovered that you can do many things to brunch to substitute non-vegan items. I have had some amazing dishes using substitutes like almond milk or tofu for bacon. When I heard that crudessence was offering brunch I felt it was a much needed addition to add to our not-so-long vegan brunch list.

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Sain Bol – A new favourite spot

The 411

Healthy, market fresh, vegetarian friendly, gluten free options, constantly changing… These are words you would never associate with brunch. In a world of bacon and eggs, healthy tasty options seem to be foreign. Often times, if you want something healthy and tasty, you will need to look really hard among a sea of options which tend to be one or the other : places that are healthy and good for you often do not come off as tasty, while places that come off as tasty tend to not focus on health. Sain Bol, on the other hand, is a gift; a rare gem where chef Frederic Houtin serves up some amazing dishes inspired by market fresh and in-season ingredients.

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Le Montrealais – A classy all you can eat buffet

The 411

All you can eat brunch buffets, often those few words can increase my anxiety more than hearing “we need to talk”. You may ask why would such a few tasty words cause so much grief? I will answer that with two words quality and quantity. Most buffets offer the latter quantity but when it comes to quality they are lacking. I have found that most all you can eat buffets have food that is too mass prepared and is not fresh enough let alone warm enough. Now le Montrealais has a reputation of excellence when it comes to brunch buffets I mean it is situated in the Queen Elizabeth hotel, which is a five star hotel so you can imagine what kind of food one would expect. So with the bar set nice and high lets see if we can take the edge off those six words.

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Chez Jose – Vegetarian delight on Duluth

The 411

Everyone has a favourite brunch place they like to go to, and as I go on various brunch reviews with different friends I always try to learn from what makes their place so special to them and others. It is in this sharing of information that I get to make my site more complete and help introduce you to some places you may not have known existed. This is the case with Chez Jose, a little place on Duluth with a funky, no-frills décor and amazing plates to try out.

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