WWFB: “We Need to Talk About Montréal’s Speakeasy Problem” Edition (Part Deux)
French Canada sure does love to hide its drinking establishments.
The scene: Montréal, Canada. You discover a magical door to a dimly lit basement speakeasy…by passing through Canada’s smallest bar. It’s like Hipster Inception, and you are there for it! 
First we went into El Pequeño Bar in the old town, a 141 square foot slice of Havana nostalgia that had standing room for exactly 8. I know this because my husband and I were joined by a party of 6 gregarious middle-aged tennis-playing Canadians who were excited to drink mojitos with exotic foreigners from Wisconsin.
The decor was awesome, the bartenders were charming and had perfectly coiffed novelty mustaches, and the company was hysterically funny, but honestly? I prefer the mojitos at Maxie’s in Milwaukee: They have a more pleasing liquid-to-ice ratio.
Behind the teeny tiny bar they had a panini press that they were using to churn out some pretty tasty looking Cuban sandwiches but we had dinner reservations later so we didn’t try one.
After saying our Wisconsin goodbye (which is the opposite of an Irish goodbye, but probably with the same amount of liquor), we approached an unmarked door next to El Pequeño and rang a buzzer. Well, actually, it was marked “SORTIE” which we assume is French for “SPEAKEASY.” Kinda defeats the purpose of hiding your drinking establishments, but who are we to second guess our host nation?
Soon we were whisked inside by a mysterious yet overtly friendly Canadian who escorted us down a dark staircase and into a dimly lit, low-ceilinged, totally hoppin’ joint called The Coldroom. Not to be confused with The Cloakroom, which is the other hipster hideaway we visited earlier in the week.
Our escort to the underworld brought us to a table in the corner from which we could survey the entire length of the room and eavesdrop on at least 3 parties’ conversations. The lights were so low that we had to use my iPhone’s flashlight to read the cocktail menu — this made us feel super old, but it’s a small price to pay for the opportunity to drink edgily in the dark.
There were a bunch of whiskey drinks and other nonsense on the menu that didn’t interest me so I ordered the one drink that sounded good, which had a name like The Stripper’s Delight or something — I’m guessing this is their way of punishing people who are so uncool as to not like whiskey. Well, joke’s on them because I liked it so much I ordered another one, but LOUDER the second time!
VERDICT: 9/10 overall. 10/10 for El Pequeño: Come for the décor, stay for directions to The Cold Room! 9/10 for The Cold Room: Come for the embarrassing cocktail names (ya sissy!), stay for the charcuterie plate. And the pulled pork sliders. And the eavesdropping.
