As Montreal braces for its outdoor mid-winter festival, much of the US East Coast braces itself for the kind of weather that Montrealers see everyday. We went back to Montreal last summer, returning as parents to a city we had greatly enjoyed as single folk to see if our first family vacation would enhance or ruin our fond memories. On our first visit, we recorded a podcast of our reflections from our hotel room in Montreal. This time we also recorded a podcast, except that it took us more than five months to get around to this one, so our reflections are, ahem, a little more reflective, and almost definitely more rose-tinted as we recall happy times eating delicious food in warm weather while contemplating what shoveling ten inches of snow in biting Arctic winds feels like.

They say that returning to somewhere you have been happy is a mistake, but in this case, viewing it through the eyes of our adventurous three year-old, it was a real joy and revealed layers of the city that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. 

If you're planning to visit Montreal, we'd recommend the summertime when the city comes alive outside and the local produce is in full riot. If you have small children, the city's parks are magnificent and numerous, and seemingly all unique. As upon our first visit, the natives are both friendly and polite, and you need to know no French to feel comfortable, although outside the city it can certainly be useful.

Some readers may remember back in the early fall when we posted about Bandeja Paisa, the gut-busting combination platter that has (inaccurately) been called the national dish of Colombia. Embarrasingly, though we had done plenty of online research about the many constituent parts of this dish, we had not eaten it at what can honestly be described as an authentic Colombian restaurant. So, on a freezing afternoon in January, in the esteemed company of our friend and guide Juan Camilo Osorio - a native Colombian from Bogota, now living in Queens, and three other friends, we set out to make amends.

Cositas Ricas79-19 Roosevelt Avenue,Queens, NY 11372at 80th Street

Fergus Henderson of St. John Restaurant near Smithfield Market is most famous for his widely-copied dish of roasted veal marrow-bones and parsley salad which we had eaten and loved at both Gabrielle Hamilton's fabulous Prune, in NYC, and more recently at L'Express in Montreal. Now we wanted to try the original.

To see pictures of our lunch and read more about the restaurant, visit our website WeAreNeverFull.com.