September 2026.

This little restaurant was quite a surprise. It’s a chip off the old block of the more haute cuisine Laurie Raphael next door in the popular procedure of successful restaurants birthing a more accessible “bib gourmand”-type version. It’s unique, and the fixed menu turned out to be incredibly good.

We walked in reserved at 530 and heard pounding rock music and then saw a long thin room (pictured) with a few people seated at a bar, no tables. We nearly turned around and walked out. Three of us seated on a corner of the bar were greeted by a cheery guy explaining that the fixed menu of eight items was $80. You could order à la carte but beware the dishes came out in the fixed order so you might have to wait, plus single dishes of the eight weren’t very large… Again, we nearly walked out.

We ordered cocktails. The server (same guy) went to work immediately and effectively produced exactly what we requested although only one of our requests was on the menu. They were delicious, putting us in a frame of mind to go ahead with three fixed dinners. Our server increasingly seemed knowledgeable, pleasantly chatty, and efficient without being officious.

Québec melon topped with iberico ham and smoked Parmesan was a combination of the three flavours very inviting and tasty. Next came tuna and smoked whelk floating in a gazpacho with aïoli and radish, fearlessly sour but balanced and fresh with contrasting tastes and consistency. Looking at one another tentatively but hopefully delighted we finished our cocktails and waited.

A salmon gravlax with pickled vegetables, cassis and two other ingredients was at least as delicious and fresh as the two preceding dishes and we stopped the server with a bunch of questions about whether the food was coming direct from the main restaurant, whether he had taken a mixology course, and other queries. No, it’s just two of us he said, and told us they’d both had lots of training. We ordered a Cotes du Rhone from the famous Hermitage producer Jean-Louis Chave which was substantial and fragrant, a bargain at $70.

Halibut and corn with a miso hollandaise, Québec mushrooms and lapsang souchong confirmed for us we were enjoying food quality way beyond the moderate cost, the kind of thing you’d expect under a Michelin star or two (paying a couple or three times the price). Unbelievable. Thick slices of hanger steak with beans and kale complemented our wine. The meat balanced with the other ingredients and served in a sea urchin and roe sauce was so tender and perfectly cooked it could have been beef filet. Pork collar seared with shrimp, coleslaw and a red wine sauce which we were told had been sous vided had me worried as it was almost black, but one bite of the pork revealed its perfect tenderness dashing my expectation of its being chewy and stringy. The wine was disappearing and we were all quantity-satisfied. Chatting with a couple next to us we agreed this was something quite unusual.

The next two dishes were cooked ham, tender and tasty, and a “floating island” of squash custard which was essentially the dessert item and for some reason the custard didn’t quite measure up to the seven preceding dishes. But it didn’t seem to matter. This was the best meal we’d tasted in six days of travel in Ontario and Québec City and for quite a while previously anywhere else. Quite the find.

You would want to get there at 530 even though we didn’t see online any mention of the fixed dinner. Once focused on the food the frankly garish ambience just disappeared from our attention. Server turned the music down when requested. If you are in Québec and love delicious treats don’t miss this strange but spectacular little spot.

I don’t think my usual scoring recognizes its surprising pleasure. Food 9.7 (with one exception), service 9.4, ambience 6.2, peace and quiet 7.6, value 8.4.