Sometimes it could be a challenge to find a nice restaurant for dining on holidays and Mondays as many of the popular ones are closed. This was a lesson I learned when I planned to have my lunch last Monday at the popular Italian restaurant Lucca in little Italy, only to hit a closed door. So I walked along Blvd Saint Laurent to find a substitute, which brought me to Cafe International. It turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant discovery for me and definitely exceeded my expectation.

The decor of the cafe is modest with a bar at the front, some old fashioned Italian poster on one side of the wall and a giant mirror on the other side.

The staff were warm and polite. They quickly seated me and brought me the menus which consists a fixed menu and a menu of the day. The menu of the day offers a wide range of choices from various pastas, to risotto, fish and calamari, each of which includes a side dish, either a soup, salad or bruschetta. The fixed menu was divided into four sections: appetizer, salad, pizza and panini, each provides a variety of choices. It seems obvious they paid good attention to the menu design.

It's said the calamari is their signature dish, so I ordered it from the menu of the day and picked bruschetta as the side. I also heard that their panini sandwich is pretty good. As if I'll never get a chance for a second visit, I ordered a panini too and the waitress recommended the one with prosciutto and bocconcini.

The bruschetta was brought to the table first, the bread is slightly grilled, and the toppings consists of chopped tomatoes, zucchini, garlics and basil tossed in olive oil and vinegar, it tastes fresh and juicy with just the right amount of sweetness and sourness.

The calamari was more like a salad. The calamari rings were grilled perfectly and mixed with olive oil, herbs, freshly chopped tomatoes and onions, and served on a bed of greens consisting mainly romaine lettuce and baby spinach. The calamari was tender, elastic and oily, with a good grill aroma, the fresh veggie source, which is similar to the bruschetta toppings, spiced it up perfectly, make sure you mix them with the greens too as it also serves as a salad dressing.

The panini was cut into two halves, by the time I finished the calamari, I was almost full. So I intended to just have one bite and then pack it up to go. But it tasted so good that I would went on to finish one of the halves. The bun of the panini is in perfect brown with a strong and fresh bakery aroma , the shell is firm, crunchy but not too hard , the inside was soft, warm but not soggy. The sandwich is even more impressive, the prosciutto is thin, fresh, tasty but not too salty, the fresh baby arugula added a tad bitterness to the mix, and the grilled red pepper gives it some sweet, sour and spicy kick and the bocconcini cheese was pure, soft, but not runny, has a strong creamy and cheesy aroma. For some reason, this combination of ingredients is perfect, it's definitely one of the best panini or best sandwich in general I've ever had.

Portion of both the calamari and panini are good. At the end, I still had to pack the remaining half of the panini to go. I'll for sure come back to sample some of their other dishes.

Discovering new places to eat doesn’t necessary mean going only to the latest new restaurant in the city. Restaurant that have been open for a long time in Montreal usually share a common trait, consistency in their recipe and food quality. I was happy to go try the menu at Cafe International as it’s been established in Montreal in 1968. Since its inception, the café has maintained a warm and authentic ambiance for its patrons and commits to a true Italian restaurant ambiance right in the heart of Montreal’s Little Italy located on the corner of St-Laurent and St-Zotique.