I didn’t want to order it. But in the end, somehow I did. You ever have one of those existential quandaries when staring at a menu for too long, wondering where best to place your appetite for maximum gustatory reward and monetary value, like a game of chess? Factoring in things like what the restaurant or region you happen to be in is best known for, what you’ve never tried before, and what you don’t think you’ll ever see served anywhere else, ever, in the entire universe? 

That is how I ended up ordering foie gras nigiri at Montreal’s famed Quebecois restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. 

En route to the Canadian border from New York City, my husband, toddler, and two (adult) friends picnicked in the Adirondacks for two days, and, once in Montreal, dug into poutine (that’s French fries slathered with gravy and cheese curds), sampled excellent Portuguese rotisserie chicken (thanks for the tips, Brett Anderson in The New York Times), and ate plenty of croissants. This was not my first, nor my second, nor my third trip to Montreal, so I didn’t need to stand in line for Mile End–famous bagels and deli sandwiches. But when the Airbnb I’d booked proved a short walk from the 15-year-old institution that helped inspire the nose-to-tail dining movement of the 2000s — an era when whole-hog dinners, rooftop pig roasts, and butchery were all the rage — I figured it was as good a time as any to try it. Located in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood, Au Pied de Cochon (French for “pig’s foot”) opened in 2001, and it’s also notable for celebrating humble heritage Quebecois fare such as potted duck, and for having the audacity (or is it gimmicry?) to serve it out of a can, which is opened by a server and poured directly onto your plate.

A whole lot of ink has been spilled about Au Pied de Cochon by food writers (including our own Matt Gross), and there have been plenty of YouTube videos on its foie gras–loving chef, Martin Picard. When a food-writer friend of mine turned 40 several years ago, he booked the chef’s table for a group of ten at Cabane à Sucre, the brand’s sister restaurant, located in an old maple syrup shack in the rural outskirts of the city. I was one of the guests, and it was one of the most filling dining experiences to my memory; the courses — which veered Italian one minute, French the next, and always drenched in animal fat or maple syrup, or both — never seemed to end. 

So I expected nothing short of maximalism, with a predisposition for duck and offal, when it came to the menu at Au Pied de Cochon, too. We were seated at the bar, watching a foursome of cooks barking in French as they churned out dish after dish of seared foie gras–topped something-or-other. The menu indeed included things like veal brain in the appetizer section, a whole pig’s foot stuffed with chanterelles and foie gras in the large-format main courses, and an entire section just titled “foie gras.” Among the latter, one could order poutine topped with chunks of foie gras, rillettes with foie gras, or a traditional Acadian dish called Plogue à Champlain, which proved to be a buckwheat pancake topped with bacon, a fried egg, cheddar, and (you guessed it) a thick slab of foie gras. Feeling my waistband tighten just reading the last option, I went with the foie gras nigiri, whose enigmatic description read, “Peanuts, maple flavored rice.” 

It arrived as a quadrant of white Chinese soup spoons, with a small bed of rice tucked into each one’s concave and nearly obscured by a sliver of peachy-pink foie gras draped on top. A server brought out a small plastic squeeze bottle of soy sauce and demonstrated their preferred way of using it, by squirting a small amount of sauce into the neck of the spoon so that it pooled beneath the rice. Then it was bottoms up. 

It was refreshingly minimal: The rice was warm and delicately seasoned, with what I’m guessing included maple syrup and roasted peanut oil (there were no visible peanuts in the dish). The cool foie gras had a buttery texture not unlike o-toro, or fatty tuna, but it also dissipated into creamy liquid once inside your mouth, more or less like uni. It was so straightforward and oddly clean-tasting, I couldn’t believe it came out of the same raucous kitchen as everything else. 

Foie gras couldn’t be more controversial in the United States, where it never really had a foothold outside of the hoitest and toitiest of fine-dining establishments, unlike in France and Quebec, where it’s just part of the culture. In New York City, a long-delayed ban on the ingredient might finally be coming into effect, according to some reports. But in Montreal, you can rest assured that an appreciation for the fattened liver is alive and well — and far from a passing fad. 

Unlike Cathy, I’m a mere three-time visitor to Montreal, but on each visit I have done my damnedest to fill my arteries with lard and transform my own liver into foie gras. Our full Montreal map is below, but I also wanted to call out a few of the more unusual entries:

Please enjoy! We’ll keep adding to this as time goes on:

Last week we got so excited about the history of eating in Chinatown that we plum forgot to post the Chef vs. Robot poll. D’oh! So here it is, and it needs your vote — who came up with a better idea, Lei’s Annie Shi and Patty Lee or … Claude, an AI.

Meanwhile, there’s still time to vote on Chef vs. Robot: Kabawa Edition. Let your preference be known!