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At 18 months in the works and counting, there’s finally an opening date for the much anticipated Montreal restaurant from Michelin star collector Joël Robuchon. It’ll be open in the Casino de Montréal as of December 7. Having initially been slated to open sometime around this month, that’s not too late, and now it won’t overlap with other, uh, important projects from the government agency who run the casino, such as “roulette but with a mechanical bull”.
You’ll be able to make reservations at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon from October 15, barely a week away. Aside from that, details are still sparse — it’s already known that a known factor to Robuchon, Éric Gonzalez (previously of Casino de Mont-Tremblant and L’Auberge Saint-Gabriel), will serve as executive chef. Benjamin Oddo will serve as pastry chef, somewhat of an internal hire given his previous work at Le Baccara, another casino-based restaurant in Gatineau.
Loto-Québec, the body behind Quebec’s casinos, announced today that the restaurant will seat 56, and the majority of those seats will be centred around a workshop area front-and-centre to the chefs at work. There’s also a new promotional video, but it’s really just important people saying nice things without offering much news.
The Casino has quietly been hiring people for L’Atelier — with five years of experience, you could be Robuchon’s Maître d’Hôtel. With just one year of experience, you can be an Official Atelier de Joël Robuchon dishwasher, which pays damn well at $19.55 per hour.
The casino project is the tenth iteration of Robuchon’s Atelier restaurants worldwide — eleventh, if you count the New York Atelier also set to open sometime soon. The majority of his Ateliers have garnered Michelin stars, so could this be Montreal’s first Michelin star? That’s a question best left until this winter.