How food-focused businesses are showing the sweet side of Québec’s local flavours

How food-focused businesses are showing the sweet side of Québec’s local flavours

It’s the Québecois version of a Norman Rockwell painting: In the 1970s, Charles-Aimé Robert teaches his 10-year-old son Vallier to harvest maple sap from 200 trees around their family home in the mountain-lined, lakeside town of Auclair, just north of the New Brunswick border.

Little did they know, this idyllic memory would serve as the breeding grounds for Domaine Acer: a renowned 20,000-tap operation complete with guided tours, tastings, a boutique and café located in Bas-Saint-Laurent, about four hours from Québec City. The Robert family’s specialty has also changed since the ‘70s. It’s no longer all about maple syrup but is now focused on acer, a wine-like beverage Vallier Robert invented in 1992, which has since garnered over 100 medals and distinctions.

Left: Nathalie Decaigny and Vallier Robert, owners of Domaine Acer, a 20,000-tap operation in Bas-Saint-Laurent.
Right: Acer is a maple sap wine that Robert invented in 1992.

DOMAINE ACER AND JHA PHOTOGRAPHIE

“We offer a range of fine acers crafted with distinctive Québecois savoir-faire (know-how),” says Nathalie Decaigny, Robert’s business partner and spouse. “The interesting thing about producing acers is that we work by fermenting maple sap, and this process helps to reveal and magnify maple’s complex, hidden aromatic potential – far beyond just the sugar.”

There’s no denying that maple syrup is quintessential to Québec cuisine – after all, Québec produces 72 per cent of the world’s maple syrup, according to the Federation of Québec Maple Syrup Producers. But it’s only the tip of the gastronomic iceberg.

In fact, Domaine Acer is just one example of how growers, producers and restaurateurs throughout the province are putting unique spins on traditional delicacies and mastering culinary specialties beyond maple syrup (and poutine and tourtière and sugar pie), bolstering Québec’s reputation as the ultimate foodie destination – especially for anyone with a sweet tooth.

Left: Domaine Acer doesn't just produce acer; the business also offers guided tours, tastings, a boutique and café.
Right: Acer is made by fermenting maple sap, which Nathalie Decaigny says "helps to reveal and magnify maple’s complex, hidden aromatic potential."

JHA PHOTOGRAPHIE

“The honey is incredible. The chocolate is incredible … There are a lot of things in Québec that people don’t know about, foodwise,” says Jessica De Guille, director of operations at chocolate making ÉCONOMUSÉE® ChocoMotive, an artisanal chocolate factory located inside the old Montebello train station in the province’s Outaouais region.

Founded in 2004 by De Guille’s stepfather Luc Gielen, a Belgian-born pastry chef and culinary arts teacher turned master chocolatier, ChocoMotive uses Québec honey, among other local ingredients, to create high-quality treats. Almost everything – from the cocoa to the sugar – is certified fair trade and organic.

“If you buy a blueberry chocolate bar here, the blueberries are all hand-picked in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean,” De Guille explains. (The region is known for its blueberries) “Organic is better for the planet … but besides that, the taste is just so much better.”

The chocolate is also all hand-made on site by chocolatiers who can be seen filling moulds and perfecting pralines through a large glass window at the back of the shop.

At ChocoMotive, an artisanal chocolate factory and ÉCONOMUSÉE® located inside the old Montebello train station in Québec's Outaouais region, almost all the ingredients, from the cocoa to the sugar, are certified fair trade and organic.

CHOCOMOTIVE

There is one question visitors pose that De Guille said she struggles to answer: “Which chocolate bar is your favourite?” With more than 50 flavours to choose from, she has settled on two “coups de cœur” (literally “blows to the heart”): the dark chocolate bar with lemon and pepper and the dark chocolate espelette pepper bar with dried tomatoes and sea salt.

“Those ones are very unexpected,” De Guille says. “But with the sweet and the salty and the peppery – it just works.”

Meanwhile, on the picturesque Île d’Orléans, about a 15-minute drive from Québec City, the sisters behind Cassis Monna & Filles, another ÉCONOMUSÉE®, are also making good use of unexpected ingredients.

Catherine and Anne Monna are fifth-generation liquorists who produce more than 85,000 bottles of blackcurrant liquors per year – in addition to blackcurrant syrup, jam, jelly, ketchup, confit and basically anything else that highlights the tart berry, which they cultivate on 22 hectares of land.

Since joining their father’s business 21 years ago, the duo has helped expand it into a restaurant, cocktail bar, ÉCONOMUSÉE®, wine cellar-meets-boutique and dairy bar. Yes, a distillery with a dairy bar – home to 18 flavours of gelato, sorbet and the famous “softie,” a creamy swirl balancing the acidity of blackcurrant purée with the sweetness of vanilla ice-cream.

“When people think of Île d’Orléans, it’s classic to think about Félix Leclerc, strawberries and apples, but now blackcurrant as well,” says Anne.

This wasn’t the case when her father Bernard arrived from France in the early 1970s. Despite recognizing the island’s ideal microclimate for blackcurrant, he was hard-pressed to find the European staple. He tracked down a few shrubs, eventually leading him to become the first large-scale blackcurrant producer in Québec.

He was also the first in the region to make blackcurrant alcohol, including his showstopping crème de cassis, a sweet and fruity liqueur that has won 22 awards in the past 10 years alone.

“We always respect the same recipe and the same varieties that my father chose in his beginnings,” Anne says. “Why change a winning recipe?”

This is part of what makes Cassis Monna & Filles, like ChocoMotive and Domaine Acer an ÉCONOMUSÉE® – one of 59 across Québec. ÉCONOMUSÉEs® are businesses where artisans share their knowledge of a traditional skill with visitors, who get to enjoy a unique opportunity to partake in an enriching and authentic experience.

But ÉCONOMUSÉEs® are not the only way Québec honour its food traditions. In fact, in the heart of the Mile End, a bustling hipster enclave in Montréal, Wilensky’s Light Lunch lives by the same motto as Cassis Monna & Filles.

Cassis Monna & Filles cultivates its own blackcurrants on 22 hectares of land, which it uses to produce more than 85,000 bottles of blackcurrant liquors per year – plus syrup, jam, jelly, ketchup and confit.

FRANCIS FONTAINE

The restaurant hasn’t changed much since it opened 91 years ago – mint green walls, pressed tin ceiling, counter seating, Kik Cola clock, ring-up cash register (although the old cash register is no longer in use).

“It’s a comfort to come in and everything’s the same,” says Sharon Wilensky, who now owns the family-run restaurant. “We moved from Saint-Urbain to where we are now on Fairmount in 1952 and we have customers that remember going to the restaurant on Saint-Urbain … it’s part of their history too.”

Though the Montréal institution is known for its “Wilensky Special” – a grilled salami and bologna sandwich Sharon’s father, Moe, concocted in his father’s barbershop in 1932 – true regulars and gourmands know to add a soda, which is made-to-order right in front of them with an old-fashioned soda fountain.

“Each flavour is in a separate porcelain container,” Wilensky explains. “We have a ladle and we scoop out a portion of flavoured syrup and put it in the glass. Then we fill it with soda water.”

Wilensky’s 11 syrups – including pineapple, orange and lemon-lime – are all homemade and all available to order as soda flavours. But only a handful, notably chocolate and vanilla, are available for egg creams, a drink said to have originated in Brooklyn.

“Egg cream sodas have no egg and no cream,” says Wilensky. “It’s really just syrup, soda and milk … like a float but with milk instead of ice cream. We’ve been told we’re the only ones in Canada that make them.”

Wilensky's Light Lunch, a 91-year-old restaurant in Montréal's Mile End neighbourhood, offers up a surprising sweet treat: made-to-order sodas featuring homemade syrup in flavours including pineapple, orange and lemon-lime.

WILENSKY’S LIGHT LUNCH

Those craving a beverage with more bite might take their “Wilensky Special” to go and stroll 20 minutes to Peluso Beaubien, a specialty store that stocks Domaine Acer products: a lively sparkling acer called Mousse des bois, a fresh white maple sap wine called Prémices d’avril and a sweet aperitif called Val ambré that’s been barrel-aged for eight years.

While you might not usually pair deli meat sandwiches with artisanal acers, the duo are a worthwhile metaphor for the diverse elements of Québec culture that are woven together through food and drink. The Mile End is vastly different from the sugar bushes of the Bas-Saint- Laurent yet both are distinctly Québecois – if only due to the imprints they’ve left on Québecois taste buds.

As Decaigny from Domaine Acer put it: “Québecers want to find their own identity through the products and alcoholic beverages they consume.” And the province’s growers, producers and restaurateurs are helping to shape that identity one delicious bite (or sip) at a time.

Looking for more great tastes of Québec? Visit canadaculinary.com.

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Great Taste of Canada. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.