Cafe Pi (Montreal)
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
Candice Vallantin is a free-lance journalist who was born in France and raised in Vancouver. Candice has travelled extensively and has been published in Readers’ Digest Canada, The Globe and Mail, Canadian Geographic Travel (amongst others) , and has even put in a stint at Cafe Pi as a waitress! She has her own website (http://www.candicevallantin.com/ ) and it is worth checking out!
Montreal has a tradition for chess-cafes. When I first started playing chess there was Cafe En-passant (located at carre St.Louis) that was open 7 days a week and (it seemed) 24 hours a day. You could play chess and eat sandwiches. Later backgammon invaded and took over…for the past 20 years it has become a popular greek restaurant! (a warning to those who think of betraying chess!)
A few other cafes tried there luck over the years, some with more luck than others. Today the ‘in’ place is Cafe Pi.
Arpad Kiss has been operating this popular chess-cafe located 4127 St. Laurent in central Montreal since 2001. Today his daughter Vanessa works with him. I usually spend an hour or two there whenever I am in Montreal. You can drink coffee, eat sandwiches or whatever is on the menu, while you kibitz a chessgame. Or you can play chess yourself, or backgammon or poker if that is your thing! Hugh Brodie runs a blitz tournament once a week. Open 7 days a week.
Recently Candice decided to do a short video on Cafe Pi:
”Took me long enough. It’s one of those things I’ve been putting off for ages but I finally did it: my first video. I’ve been working a couple days a week for a few months at this little coffee shop called Café Pi on St. Laurent and it seemed like a perfect subject for my first shot at film. The place is packed with regulars, old men who spend the day and night there playing chess. Since they know me well enough now, they didn’t seem too distracted by the camera.”
