Ought: Dream rider and Montreal restaurant picks
Matt and Ben from Ought shared some of their favorite Montreal restaurants, the importance of eating well on tour, and their dream rider.
Tiffany [T]: This is Tiffany from Eater’s Digest on WMBR, and I’m sitting down with Ought. Do you guys mind introducing yourselves?
I heard that you guys just came from New Hampshire so I was wondering if you had a home-cooked-meal sendoff before your tour of the states.
M: In fact we did, yes. We stayed with Tim Darcy’s mom in Keene, New Hampshire, and last night, she made a lovely chili. And this morning we made an egg scramble, which was a treat. It was an active decision – we could have come down today because it’s not that far of a drive to Boston, but we wanted the home experience.
B: And the night before, that was our last night in Montreal, and I really wanted to get a chickpea curry roti, which is a Caribbean dish even though it sounds Indian, but they were closed. [The restaurant] is called Les Jardin du Cari if you’re in Montreal. It’s on St-Viateur and St-Laurent.
Le Jardin du Cari in Montreal (Photo: Yellowpages)
B: But instead I had to go to Cheskie, which is a Jewish bakery in the same neighborhood, and I got a tunafish sandwich, which was very nice.
T: Is there a big Caribbean population in Montreal?
M: There is definitely a strong Caribbean population. In that area, there are probably two or three roti places I can think of. It’s a very strong immigrant city.
B: Especially from the British caribbean colonial heritage, a lot of people from Jamaica mostly settled in Toronto. But the French Caribbean heritage is in Montreal primarily.
I read that you guys all lived together when you were in school. Did you guys share cooking responsibilities then?
M: Yeah, definitely. Me, Tim, and Tim all lived together (sorry, Ben). I hadn’t even thought about it until you asked, but there was definitely a lot of joint meals. Tim, Tim, and I lived together for there years, and I’ve lived with Tim Keane for four years. So we would cook together a lot, and when we had band practice, we cooked together. When we used to practice in Saint Henry, we’d make big things of beans and rice.
M: At the time, three of us were, and now two of us are.
T: Are there any particular dishes that you’d like to cook together?
M: We ended up doing a lot of Mexican style bean dishes because I think growing up in the states, there’s a strong South American and Mexican population. I grew up in New Jersey…
M: Hillsdale. So we ended up making a lot of that. At the time, Tim Darcy was a much better chef than I, so my dishes were purely utilitarian. They’d be some form of protein with bread or pasta or rice or something like that. Now I think I’ve developed into more elaborate cooking.
You mentioned a few places that you like to go to in Montreal. Do you have any other recommendations for people that are visiting from out of town?
B: Matt and I got back from tour in Europe and got off the plane incredibly jet lagged and we went straight to this pizza restaurant called Pizza St-Viateur.
Pizza St-Viateur in Montreal
The thing about Montreal is that they have terrible, terrible pizza. Matt and I and a few other people have this theory that it’s to protect the poutine as the common drunk food. So they do these things that must be deliberate to sabotage pizza. For example, they’ll put any form of meat, like pepperoni, under the cheese, so it gets not as cooked and not crispy, which is one thing I think people like about pepperoni.
M: The bread is pretty bad as well. Stale…
B: There’s generally a lack of sauce. But at Pizza Saint Viateur, if you’re willing to take a tiny step up…It’s about $20 a pie, for two people with quite a big appetite. The only problem is they don’t serve alcohol there. But that’s ok.
M: There’s a place that’s halfway between where I live now and where Tim Keane lives now that’s a place called [Les Casseroles de] MoMo. It’s very good. It’s basically just this guy Mohammed in the kitchen. Sometimes his wife or kids help out. It’s a breakfast place that has dim paratha and stuff like that. He’s very sweet. He tried to come see us at a show once. We’re regulars there. The food is very good and very cheap.
Les Casseroles de MoMo in Montreal
You mentioned that you just got back from Europe. Were there any interesting culinary traditions or types of dishes that you had that you hadn’t experienced before?
B: We all went to Athens for the first time, and we had two days before we played the first show, and the promoters were telling us good places to go for dinner. They took us out the first night, and we sat down, they gave us water, gave us some menus, and then brought two big flasks of ouzo, which is a clear spirit. Our promoter was like, “Ok, take your shot glass.” So we were sipping on Ouzo before we even started eating. And that happened consecutively three nights in a row. It was ouzo, raki, ouzo.
M: There was really good food in Turkey.
B: Especially having real spanakopita.
T: Were there any restaurants that you can remember the names of?
M: I don’t think I would remember any of them offhand. What was the neighborhood we were in in Athens?
T: Exarchia, the anarchist left-wing neighborhood. I don’t remember the name, but I do remember how to get there (laughs).
M: I feel like we always eat really well, just by necessity. It feels so terrible - you get so tired, and it makes it very unsustainable to eat poorly. So we tend to go out of our way, not to eat fancy but to eat vegetables and make sure we’re getting reasonable food. We’ve been really lucky that that’s mostly pretty doable.
I heard that the members from the band are all from different places. Does that make it challenging to reach a consensus about where to eat. Do you all have similar taste? What is that process like when you’re deciding where to eat?
M: If everyone’s really hungry, it’s literally like, “OK, yeah, fine, that’s great,” where someone needs to decide. But mostly it’s pretty easy. There are a couple fan favorites. People are usually down for Thai…
M: Sometimes people are down for Mexican or burritos…
B: Especially in the states. You can’t find good Mexican food in Montreal or Europe.
M: We definitely eat a fair bit of Indian. Sometimes it can be a bit heavy.
B: We used to have a rule: no Indian before shows. But in the UK we ate Indian twice before shows and that was...
T: Indian food in the UK is amazing.
M: Yeah, definitely. It’s so good. There’s really good Indian in Montreal, actually. [11:25] On Jean-Talon, west of Park, there are six or seven that I know of on a three or four block radius, and they’re all really good.
T: So it sounds like a mix of ethnic food.
M: Sometimes, if some place has a good veggie burger, we’ll do that.
M: But by necessity of being two vegetarians, one gluten free, and one person who doesn’t like mayo, we’re just not really drawn to fast food. So we don’t go to burger places or steak places. It kind of just ends up being places that suits everybody’s taste.
B: There’s also an important distinction because all the food we’re talking about right now is for when we’ve arrived in a city. It’s easy to get Indian food in a city. The lunch is where things get complicated. In Europe, they have really nice rest stops with great food. In Germany, you can get sauerkraut and massive tubes of pigs, which Tim Keane is super into.
M: Tim Keane used to be vegetarian, but for numerous reasons he started eating meat again. So he just eats a lot of meat now because it’s very healthy for him to do so. It’s comical to see him at German rest stops.
Is there a particular snack that you couldn’t live without on the road, because there’s so much time driving in between cities, as you said?
M: Can I guess yours and you guess mine? I’m going to go ahead and guess nuts. I think you’re going with cashews.
B: And almonds, yes. Those two and bananas. I eat at least two banana every day and have for years.
M: His doctors have been recommending that he not do that. It’s too much banana.
B: And I’ve said fuck off (laughs).
B: Yours [Matt] is pretzels.
M: Yeah, and also almonds, and corn nuts too, but those aren’t very good.
Now that you have two records under your belt, have you had more power in terms of requesting certain things on your rider?
M: The biggest difference is between North American and Europe because of the fact that in Europe, a lot of promoters are state funded, so they generally have more money. So you get your rider (for us, it’s hummus, vegetables, and water, beer, and wine…)
M: Yeah, and in the US, most places don’t receive any funding, so they won’t necessarily have as much money to fulfill certain things, so it just looks different. In the US it’s different from place to place.
B: Yeah, we’ve always been quite humble with riders. We’ve seen other bands riders – the bands will go unnamed – where we’re just like “Wow. You guys are audacious.”
So what’s on it [your rider]? I saw there were vegetables and hummus…
M: We often have sparkling water. Chips and salsa are a recent addition.
B: Hummus and vegetables. Nuts including cashews. Fruit including bananas.
M: A bar of 80% or higher dark chocolate.
B: Two bottles of white wine, two bottles or red wine, two cases of beer, and a bottle of Irish whiskey – Jameson or Bushmills. It changes.
Hummus and vegetables
Chips and salsa
Nuts (including cashews)
Fruit (including bananas)
A bar of 80% of higher dark chocolate
2 bottles of white wine
2 bottles of red wine
2 cases of beer
1 bottle of Irish whiskey (Jameson or Bushmills)
T: Those are all fairly accessible items.
M: Yeah, no one has to go out of their way. It’s nice when you get in and you’re hungry and there’s something healthy to eat. So it’s nice when you get it, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a fuss when something isn’t there.
B: For examples of other bands’ riders, there’s one example of a band who will go unnamed but if any of them hear this, they’ll know I’m talking about them, but they probably won’t considering their age, which is a clue. It’s beer for the crew, but the beer has to be out of sight of the lead singer. And there’s another one that’s weed and two packs of cigarettes and a stunning amount of alcohol. Truly remarkable.
M: I guess it’s one of those things where it’s kind of interesting for us because we tour half the year. But a lot of these bands, they tour 10 months a year or more. So I find it funny where I see the amount of stuff on that [their riders], but it’s also like, it’s your life, so these are things to make them feel..home? It’s definitely silly, but it’s also your job and you’re doing it 300 days a year or more.
If you could request something. If you did have the power to make a bogus or outlandish request, what would you ask for?
B: I can think of reasonable things. Club-Mate would be huge. Salmon would be amazing.
Club Mate (Photo: Wikipedia)
M: Didn’t we briefly have avocado on the rider?
M: For some reason, there are a lot of downer attitudes about my enjoyment of pretzels in the band. I remember one time asking mostly jokingly to have pretzels on the rider, and there was pretty extreme backlash.
B: I would have backed you up. I must have not been there.
M: I won’t name names, but it was one person, and they know who it is.
B: It’s funny because they’re both named Tim.
M: [laughs] That’s so true! I could have just said TIm.
On the title track of More than Any Other Day, there’s a lyric that goes “Today, more than any other day, I’m excited to go grocery shopping.” When’s the last time you were really excited to go grocery shopping, and what were you going to make?
M: We got home from touring from April last year until December 1st. It was pretty non-stop, so I got home and was simultaneously so excited to finally make my own food but also utterly exhausted. I went out to eat probably more than I should have at first, but when I got re-situated, I remembered how much joy there is in cooking. Tim Darcy, for my birthday last year, made me a recipe book where a bunch of friends put their favorite recipe, including Ben.
T: [To Ben] Do you remember your recipe?
B: I honestly don’t. I remember it was something Irish.
M: They all hand wrote it, and it was very sweet. I’ve sadly been neglecting that, but the whole winter I meant to go through it.
B: You know what it might have been? I think it might have been this mixed drink I came up with called the Irish Cactus. The Irish Cactus, briefly put, is you make a cup of black tea with some milk and honey and let it sit for a day in the fridge. And then you put a shot of tequila in it, and it just tastes like cold tea. Something really magical happens where they completely cancel each other out. It happened by accident.
The Irish Cactus Drink (recipe from Ben Stidworthy)
1. Make a cup of black tea and add milk and honey. Let it sit for a day in the fridge.
2. Add a shot of tequila and enjoy.
T: What’s the story behind developing that recipe? What scenario would that happen in?
B: My friends and I were living in an apartment and were drinking a lot. I think we just put tequila, when we were drunk, in cold tea, and it tasted really good.
The Sun’s Coming Down video features a lot of food references, like a kid staring at his ice cream falling off the cone, and there’s a diner scene and broken plates. Does that food reference have any significance to you, or is it really the role of the director?
M: It was definitely totally on the director. We made a video when them before, and they did a really good job, so we were like, “Do what you want.” I hadn’t thought of that until you said it, but there is quite a lot of food reference in it.
Melting ice cream is quite a visually interesting image, I guess. I don’t know. It’s funny how often food comes up in that video.
B: Food is very important to us as a band. Eating well, enjoying food, and the experience of eating and chatting. We’re very good about that; it’s an important act because it’s very communal. Eating can be relaxing, especially when you’ve been in a van and can enjoy a really nice meal and chat afterward. I’ve always been thrilled that that’s been important to all of us. I don’t want to be a burger band.
M: That would actually be great. That’d be fine.
M: Food plays different roles. There are definitely bands that eat a lot of fast food out of necessity or because they like it. And I feel like I’m already so tired all the time and lethargic that the idea of eating two of three meals a day that are greasy fast food, I think I would have already been done as a touring band for sure. I don’t know how people do it.
I just have one last question, and it’s a question that I ask every band. If you were to order Ought on a restaurant menu – so encapsulating your sound as a band into a dish – what would that dish be?
M: Should we come up with a mutual answer?
B: Yeah. It’s gotta be gluten free, it’s gotta be veg.
M: It can’t have mayo or anything creamy.
B: Maybe a bit of Montreal in it…
M: Maybe a gluten-free Montreal bagel?
B: Gross. Just don’t bother with the bagel at that point. it’s gotta be a complete protein. Maybe something with chickpeas?
M: Yeah, maybe a chana masala or something? ...I wish people could see what you [Ben] look like.
T: [To Ben] You look so stressed out!
B: It’s difficult because I don’t want to pigeonhole a specific dish that comes from a specific geographic region.
M: The roti maybe! Can Tim Keane eat the roti?
B: No man, it’s pure bread.
M: I guess it could be a curry. That would kind of make sense for you too because of your English heritage.
B: Shall we just go with channa masala with basmati?
Ought: chana masala with basmati and garlic naan
That’s it for my questions, did you have any other final food thoughts that you wanted to share before we wrapped up?
B: Don’t put corn on pizza. We encountered that once on tour.
T: Thanks you guys. Good luck with the rest of the tour.
Find Ought’s Montreal restaurant recommendations on our Food Map:
