No car? No time? Fret not, tire* is here

If you haven't had the time to make your way out to a cabane à sucre and you're afraid you won't but you're still yearning for a tire d'érable, you do have some options right here in the city of Montreal...

1. You could look for one of those tire stands (not unlike the one that we found at Constantin Grégoire) that you find scattered across the city during sugaring off season. You can spot them from a 1/4 mile away. Like the buckwheat pancake stands you sometimes see during the summer, they always dress themselves up with a kind of rural Quebecois take on a Potemkin village. Jean-Talon Market has had at least 2 of these stands serving tire to fanatics and maple sugar freaks for the last 2-3 weeks.



There's also usually a stand outside the Mont-Royal Métro station at this time of year. Your best bets tend to be on weekends.

2. You could head over to Le Bilboquet for their unbelievably decadent tire d'érable ice cream [pictured up top]. Le Bilboquet makes fine ice cream, but their tire ice cream, where the chewy goodness of the tire is offset by the creamy smoothness of the maple ice cream that envelops it, may very well be their very finest flavor. Get it while it lasts because they only make it and serve it during sugaring off season. Their tire d'érable flavor, like the original, is a real overload of maple-sugary sweetness--a "mini" is as much as either of us can handle. Good thing, too, 'cause a "mini" of this limited edition flavor sets you back $1.90. It's worth it, though (if you look closely at the photo above, you can see the healthy-sized chunks of tire embedded right in the ice cream). Especially if you're not going to have a chance to make it out to the country this year to hit a sugar shack.

aj

*rhymes with beer, here, and dear.