Here is the Chalet Bar-B-Q, a block from Girouard Avenue. As I'm driving home from work, getting off the Decarie Expressway, I drive up the exit ramp to Sherbrooke Street West, the smell of chickens cooking permeating the air, and I always think one of two things: it's either I wouldn't want to live near the Chalet Bar-B-Q because of the smell of cooking or I think I'd like to eat supper there and I should go more often . . . The Chalet Bar-B-Q was opened around 1940 and I doubt they've changed the decor since then. The place has a rustic appearance with wood paneled walls, friendly waitresses some of whom have been there since the the 1970s, and we always make the usual order: creamy coleslaw, a quarter chicken and french fries, served with their own BBQ sauce and a toasted white bun.
I am not sure they have these establishments in other places but there is a Quebec-based chain of trendy St. Hubert BBQ restaurants that can now be found in Ontario. In addition to this, there is the Cote St-Luc BBQ on Cote St. Luc Road near Girouard; and the New System BBQ cars seem to deliver to remote locations from their restaurant on rue Notre Dame. Back in the 1940s the Chalet Bar-B-Q didn't provide cutlery, they did have finger bowls and you were expected to pick up the chicken and enjoy it that way, but that's long changed. Imagine that. Before the ubiquitous McDonald's.
BTW, NDG Park is known to many of us as Girouard Park, that's what we always called it.
 |
| That's Girouard Avenue at the far left, as we drive south, cross Sherbrooke Street West, and arrive at my grandmother's flat at 2226 Girouard Avenue |
