One of the many tough things to swallow about The Mirror's demise last year was the disappearance of their annual Best of Montreal Poll. It always fell somewhere between a high school popularity contest and genuine roundup of our city's best offerings, but either way, it was something Montrealers enjoyed, even rallied around, and certainly debated over once it dropped in newsstands. Anyone who has lived here more than a year has fond memories of picking up a copy and weeding through the list to see if their friend's band made it, if any burger joints finally beat McDonald's, and/or if anyone had found out about their favourite place to have sex in public.

This one time, I went to La Petite Idee Fixe and All Along the Watchtower played well over ten times within the span of two hours. In the silence between songs, my friend and I would look each other in the eyes waiting for those all-too familiar lines: "There must be some kind of way out of here..."

Soft, crispy, buttery, flaky, sweet, fluffy.... How do you like your croissants and where are the best places to get them in Montreal?

At MIR on Union st., you can taste great molecular food and wash it down with perfectly-paired cocktails. Best of all, it won't create a galactic hole in your pocket. It will, however, take you into gustatory hyperspace...

Winter just doesn't seem to want to go away. Temperatures are dipping back below -10, snow is on the way later this week and some of us are wondering whether we're in Montreal or Winterfell. A great antidote? Have some southern Italian sunshine delivered right to your doorstep!

If you start with the first National Women's Day, held by the Socialist Party of America on February 28, 1909, then International Women's Day has been going on, in one form or another, for over a hundred years. It initially grew out out of early-20th-century socialist movements in the Eastern Europe, Russia and the US, emphasizing women's suffrage, equal rights, workers' equality and nondiscrimination, and has officially been celebrated on March 8th since it received UN support in 1977. Those of us living in Montreal can uphold the holiday's long legacy today in a lot of ways. Here are three for the more politically and artistically minded among us.