If you buy something from an Eater link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics policy. Joe Beef , The Liverpool House and McKiernan Lunchonette are three Montreal restaurants that have managed to hug the line between high and low brow with uncommon grace. Joe Beef has quickly become one of Montreal's best restaurants and a sort of French-Canadian mecca for American chefs and other food obsessives.
Their cookbook, The Art of Living According To Joe Beef , came out last year and immediately struck a chord with many as a much-needed dose of humor and authenticity within a food and wine world that often takes itself a bit too seriously.
Stay tuned for part 2 on Monday in which Morin and McMillan talk about everything from anal-retentive restaurants to locavorism. One thing about the cookbook I loved so much was that chapter on wine. Can you talk a little bit about how that made its way into the book? I find that too many chefs are just about food. I think it's super important to be interested in both of the things that are going into the customer's mouth.
Being good in a kitchen is important but understanding the role of wine is tantamount for a restaurant in my opinion. To be serious, I go to a lot of restaurants that have a phenomenal, amazing chef but have a disaster of a wine program. Or vice versa. Many chefs would be well served to spend as much time in the wine cellar as they do in the kitchen.
How do you think understanding wine, in your case, affects the food? It's more fun to cook when you understand wine. And if you know that table 10 is going to be drinking that Chablis with the appetizers you're sending out you work in a different way, you cook the sauce down this much, you add this much pepper, etc. You're working with the dining room. Red Burgundy is a big passion of yours, how does that play into the food at Joe Beef?
