Autopsy time for the once-popular The Claremont restaurant, which had once promised to revive a chunk of Sherbrooke at the border of Westmount and NDG.
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According to legend, the Claremont was hampered by an oversight.
The restaurant did not have a liquor license when it opened about a decade ago and so customers had to comply with the rubber sandwich rule and buy token plate of olives or something in order to acquire a cold and tasty alcoholic beverage.
Management would frequently ring up the provincial booze authorities and inquire about getting a dedicated booze license but were inevitably told to call back some other later.
Well during one of those lulls, a booze license was indeed made available but a neighbouring interloper in the form of the Crossroads, now Liquid Lounge, grabbed it first. (You snooze, no booze - Chimples)
There was some rule about not allowing two bars in close proximity so the Claremont was doomed never to get their long-desired liquor license.
Nonetheless for quite some time the restaurant was packed with booze-drinking clients, including some well-heeled anglos, some of them members of the nearby Mount Royal Tennis Club, no doubt discussing kinks in their backhands and their plans to move out west.
But the clientele slowly started dwindling.
I walked by a few evenings back and saw not a single patron inside.
The last time I went there was for lunch about five years ago.
Everything on the lunch menu was like $17 and the guy I met got a parking ticket.
My lunch company suggested that next time we meet, it should be at a place with parking.
And on the visit prior, one of the owners - a high school friend - shopped his ownership share in the restaurant to me, which I politely declined.
The nearly-adjacent Liquid Lounge - far less posh - is still in business, suggesting that NDG has won this border war with Westmount.