[matthew6]

Since tacos seems to be all the rage, I decided to check out Cartel on Fairmont. The location seems familiar to me on arrival - oh yeah - this used to be Berlin.

First impressions were quite good. It's dark, with a lot of candles and the decor is very dark wood heavy. Those are pluses in my book. As for negatives - it has a bit of that cheesy lower St Laurant vibe with that repetitive heavy beat lounge type music that goes along with it. Anyway on to the food....

I ordered some fish tacos and an eggplant taco. The eggplant taco wasn't so hot - a bit soggy and overwhelmed by the feta (an odd choice?) but the fish tacos were delicious. Crispy deep fried fish morsels topped with a tangy slaw, an avocado puree and crema with a small wedge of lime on the side. Apparently these are 'tapa' type tacos so they are not too large. I had four and they filled me up quite well. This was also 'two dollar tuesday taco' so by my calculations this comes out to roughly half price depending on what type of tacos you choose.

Verdict - A definite recommendation from me (especially on tuesdays)

It seems that Montreal is finally making amends for places like Carlos and Pepes.