I first had tabouleh at a cafe in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, some twenty years ago. The place was run by a couple of hippies struggling to raise a young family. It was a tiny storefront, squeezed into the boardwalk amongst the bigger pubs, the pool hall, and a dozen other more prosperous businesses. When you walked in on the ground floor, there was barely room for the food preparation area and one table, pushed right up under the window. But if you knew the secret of the place, you would head up the stairs and enter a magical world of mismatched cutlery and dishes, Xeroxed menus in duo-tang covers, and tables made from old trundle sewing machine bases.
It was dimly lit in the big room at the top of the stairs. On hot July days it felt so good to retreat to the cool, dark refuge and escape from the blazing yellow sun beating down on the sidewalks. Martha dragged me in one day to try a spiced apple juice - or was it a julep of fruit juice and vanilla ice cream? William even got a job there, earning himself the moniker "Bowie Bill" for the music he played while he worked. The Mirva was probably my favourite place in Montreal, from that day until the night it closed its doors for good.
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