text: This past weekend a New Yorker and her Torontonian friend went to Montreal to ring in We played the whole weekend by ear wandering around town on New Years Eve day and spending the evening drinking wine on a mostly deserted and fully freezing St Helens Island After returning to our lodgings at Hotel Zero to warm up and relax the Torontonian got a hankering for oysters She would read about Maestro SVP during previous oyster restaurant researchings so we decided to give them a call to see if we could make a lastminute New Years Eve reservation The New Years gods must have been looking down on us because Maestro SVP had plenty of room for us and an awesome special menu nnThe New Years menu had courses with a few items to choose from for each course except the dessert The menu was totally in French which presented a tiny challenge considering that my efficiency in French is limited to guessing what things mean based on context clues however our waitress was very cool about translating things for me when I got stuck My friend and I took full advantage of our options and shared our orders For the first course we got the salmon and tuna tartare which came with wonton chips and the salmon ceviche which had guacamole on top Totally hit the spot We followed that up with baked oysters and cold shredded duck over a bed of shredded carrots which had a yummy cole slaw kind of taste to it Then came the main event We rang in with a big plate of tasty cold seafood on ice shrimp oysters mussels tuna tartare and a lobster and a complimentary glass of champagne Then to top the night off dessert was a chocolate lava cake with raspberry sauce and fresh whipped creamnnCouple all that with a bottle of Pinot Blanc and some New Years noisemakers and hats and we ended up having ourselves the exact New Years celebration that we were hoping for and another customer got herself an engagement ring as well