Les quartiers Chinois

MONTREAL - Montréal has many virtues: it's bilingual, friendly, multicultural, has bars that are open all night and best of all -- is drivable from anywhere in the Northeast. This weekend my friends and I packed into my Toyota Tercel and drove through Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts for a spring adventure.

I have always loved Montréal. These days the strong Canadian dollar may mean it's not the steal it once used to be, but my two visits in the past year have confirmed it to still be a fun place. And so it was this time. I seriously could see myself living here at some point in the future.

There's one aspect about the city that is certainly not world-class: its Chinatown. I've been to quite a few Chinatowns (although not to the most famous ones -- such as San Fransisco and Vancouver -- and Montreal's does not measure up. Rather than just mope about the state of Montréal's Chinatown, I've decided to list a few that make Chinatowns so great, and why Montreal's doesn't measure up:

1. Intriguing names

Ocean Wealth. Bao Bao Bakery. Most people come to Chinatowns for the food. Since there won't be any comforting chains or golden arches, the key determining factor on where to eat (minus a recommendation) is the names. Therefore, in a good Chinatown, places will go out of their way to make sure that you will be intrigued into stopping by. This may be through the use of not-quite-correct English or maybe overly descriptive names. Either way, it's going to beat another "East Wok" or "Happy Garden" in the race to decide where to eat.

In Montreal, the whole city seems to be caught up in a rash of bland names. We walked by a restaurant named Restaurant. Several cafés named Café, and more "Bistro"s than we could count. The same thing has leaked into Chinatown, where we were faced with the prospect of chowing down at the Ughyur Restaurant or Vietnam House. Ho-hum.

2. Hideaways

Boston has a restaurant known as the Wai-Wai. Reaching it is not easy. It's one a far-flung block of Chinatown, populated mostly by underground Eastern style hair salons. Here it's possible for a man to get a haircut for $7, as long as he has a high tolerance for karaoke. The Wai-Wai is down a flight of stairs, and barely visible from the street. The decor is vintage 1954 Hong Kong style. The air conditioner probably has not worked in the last two or three decades. Inside you can get a very greasy but very tasty barbecue pork and rice (cha siu fan!) along with some strange looks not usually found outside of Asia.

Montreal's Chinatown is rather compact. It consists of two blocks starting from Rue Rene Levesque down toward the Saint Lawrence. In the middle there is an intersecting pedestrian-only block. That's it. There aren't too many places to get lost and find little alleys in three blocks. There might be some really cool places hidden elsewhere in Montréal (there's a rapidly growing Asian, especially Vietnamese, population), but Chinatown isn't the place to look.

3. Knick-Knacks

In London I bought a small turtle statue. One time with my sister and friend, we purchased three "rice paddy" hats. These not only provided entertainment for the evening, but along with a pair of overalls, served as my costume for a party a couple weeks later. And it's the perfect entertainment in between a large meal and what will surely be an equally large dessert.

This is getting a tad repetitive, Montreal didn't have very many fun shops. My friend was not able to find red bean Popsicles, and there were precious few funny hats. Not even a replica PLA hat to replace the one I bought in Beijing and the star fell off. Since we did our fair share of partying this weekend, I guess saving a few dollars on trinkets isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I don't mean to say that there is no redeeming qualities in this Chinatown. I had an excellent dim sum meal at La Maison Kam Fung, and I did see a few trinkets that caught my eye at one store. But the best Chinese place was way over in the Plateau area, an antique store filled to the brim with dancing Buddhas, lacquer dish sets. There was a sense that somewhere, underneath all the crap, there might be buried treasure.

I offer one piece of advice to the planning committee in Montreal: demolish the sex shops-and-theater area on Rue Saint Catherine near the Chinatown Gate. Allow Chinatown to expand into that area. There are certainly enough places for people to get a C$10 lap dance in the city.

I assure you: the Chinese-Canadians will make very, very good use of the space.