Hey!
First of all, welcome to the board!
For the food recommendation (beer/wine/produce/cheese), I recommend the mega thread I made on the subject. Its a year+ old (yeah, I need to review it 
) but its still very current and covers a lot of themes and topics:
For ice cream, I will recommend the following:
Kem Coba
One of the highlights of Montreal ice cream. They do their own soft serve, hard ice cream and they change often. In the summer, there is a long line. They are really good.
Chocolat Favoris
The talk of the south shore. Their thing is soft serve that can be dipped in a number of different chocolate and toppings. Not my thing (I’m not much of a dip guy and prefer the kem coba method) but I can’t argue against its success.
Crèmerie Meu Meu
Classic from the Plateau! Their thing is home made hard serve.
Bilboquet
If I had to choose a #2 after Kem Coba, it would be bilboquet. They were the hot new thing before Kem Coba came along
Ripples
Their 6x chocolate hard serve is to die for. Home made ice cream.
Friday- Au Pied De Cochon- may change this if we end up going to their new cabane à sucre. Overhyped or must-do for a first time visitor?
Cabane à sucre is a must but there are probably no more tickets. All the tickets of Au Pied de Cochon Cabane à sucre usually goes in a day. Au pied de cochon is a good 2nd choice!
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Saturday- I cannot decide between Le Virunga and Liverpool House- I could not get a reservation at Joe Beef which is all over the news here so I did LH instead. Tell me the truth, is this restaurant group overrated? Should we skip it and go to Le Virunga, which sounds unlike anything we have near us?
All members of the Joe Beef group are worthwhile. I would recommend keeping Liverpool House. I usually try Le Vin Papillon as a walkin first (they don’t take reservations), try to get in Joe Beef (sometimes there are cancellations) and then go for Liverpool House if nothing is taken. If you have reserved LH, keep it (its a bit of a bad more not to cancel reservation at least 24hr in advance)
I do not know anything about Virunga (that doesn’t mean its bad but take it as you will)
_ Sunday- this will be our day trip to the sugar shack. Evening I reserved Tiradito late which seems like it would be a nice contrast to the sugar shack._
I have never heard of Tiraldito. Its not negative but I cannot vouch for it either. If you can share the logic behind the choice I might be able to help with other suggestions.
> Monday- I reserved Damas. I love middle eastern food and this looks fantastic- we’ve never had Syrian food. I figured at this point we’d be in the mood for something different.
Damas has a great reputation. Other potential good choices in that vein is Alep and Petit Alep (see critic here: Le Petit Alep report (Montreal, long)
At other timesof the day we also want to do poutine at La Banquise, bagels at St Viateur and/or Fairmount, Hof Kelsten, the markets, Schwartz’s (open to alternatives for that as I have heard the wait is ridiculous and I am allergic to lines in general).
All of them are good. The traditional competitor to Schwartz is The Main in front however it changed owners a few years ago and I’m not sure if it still holds up (Leonard Cohen was a Mains guy)
Foxy and Candide are also on my radar-- should we consider either of those instead of what we have already? I’m looking for variety and contrast.
I liked Foxy and Candide (see my comments Candidate review - #8 by Captcrunch and Foxy review )
Candide felt more of an experience than Foxy however. Depending of what you want, I would replace Tiradito with Candide first and Foxy second. I would keep LH however.
If you have any more questions don’t hesitate!
