“Cheers!” we said, clinking our glasses and looking into each other’s eyes (the Quebec tradition to ward off bad sex) before taking the first sip of the Bandol rosé we got for half-price one Sunday evening in summer at Pullman wine bar.
We’d hightailed it to the Parc Avenue wine bar the moment we found out that all bottles on Pullman’s extensive list of mostly natural wines are half price on Sundays!
It must be a joke, we figured. But no, it’s true. It’s been that way for almost three years, said the restaurant’s Catherine Goupil. So we ordered a bottle of Chateau de Pibarnon 2017 to satisfy my recent descent down the rabbit hole into loving Bandol rosé (this bottle’s now heart-breakingly sold-out, but at the time we got it at about $30 or $40 off the regular price).
At Pullman, we also ordered some food, because you have to eat to drink (it’s a restaurant, not a bar). But the amazing thing is we could just order some marinated olives ($5 – made addictive by slivers of candied lemon peel – sweet and salty), some spiced almonds and pecans ($7) and a plate of green beans with truffle oil ($9) and savour every sip of that wine.
We had such a great time that we came back the next week, too. This time with more friends and more of an appetite. We split plates of Russian-style gravlax with cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, caviar, shallots, chives and seasoned salt and pepper ($15), marinated raw scallops with fried capers and fennel ($14, I think) and the boned quail with a sweet-and-source Bourbon sauce (14).
And it was all made gluten free and dairy free for me!
How many times have I been back to Pullman since then? At least four, I think. I’ll generally go with a small group of friends and split a bottle or two and a snack. It’s a brilliant way to discover more wines, most of which are private import and not available at the SAQ. Most restaurant mark up wine prices about three times the retail price, so half price means the restaurant isn’t making much money on the wine. With reasonable food prices, they’re not making much on food either.
So how is this “50% off on bottles on Sundays” a good deal for them? It brings people like me back with friends again and again. It makes me talk about how awesome they are for offering it. And, says Goupil, it’s a way for sommeliers-in-training and all kinds of wine lovers – amateurs as well as those in the restaurant business who don’t work on Sunday and Monday – to taste more wines.
Share the wine love, essentially.
Pullman
3424 Ave. du Parc, Montreal
514-288-7779
Hours: Sun-Tues 4:30pm-midnight, Wed-Sat 4:30pm-1am
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