The owners of famed Old Montreal restaurant Toqué have expanded yet again, with new restaurant Beau Mont now open in Parc-Extension.
Owners Christine Lamarche and Normand Laprise are focusing on dishes that keep things simple and highlight local produce. It won’t be as formal as Toqué, and will eventually be a hybrid operation with an épicerie-type section offering gourmet products and prepared meals.
That’s coming later in the year — for now, it’s first and foremost a restaurant. It falls somewhere between the Toqué group’s relatively casual Brasserie T and fancypants Toqué. The opening menu has no shortage of Quebec produce from snow crab with garlic cream to Cornish hen with stuffed cipollinis or a rhubarb millefeuille — a statement from Toqué dubs the menu as “a showcase for Quebec artisans”. At present, the restaurant is sticking to dinner service only.
The Beau Mont space, on Beaumont near Acadie métro, is a little more industrial than other previous Toqué ventures — but despite the open kitchen and exposed ceilings, the first images of it show that it’s still a stylish, modern bistro.
One more notable element of the new 70-seat restaurant is its location in the relatively low-income, immigrant-heavy Parc-Ex neighbourhood. Beau Mont is comfortably the fanciest table in the area, which is better known for its collection of older Greek and Indian mainstays. Is it a symbol of the neighbourhood changing (read: gentrifying)? Perhaps — although the development of a new Université de Montréal campus right next to the neighbourhood is certain to be a much bigger catalyst for actual change. But it could easily be seen as a prediction of what’s to come for Parc-Ex. To Laprise’s credit, he is collaborating with the Parc-Extension Youth Organization to give employment and training to youth in Parc-Ex, so there is some much-needed community engagement going on.
Beau Mont isn’t the first notable expansion for Laprise and team this year — he and Lamarche expanded his casual bistro Brasserie T for the first time, opening up on in Brossard back in the winter. It’s also been suggested that more Brasserie T locations will open further afield — plus Beau Mont itself will get bigger when its épicerie-comptoir opens later in 2019.
STATUS — Beau Mont is open at 950 Avenue Beaumont from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday and 5:30 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; it will be open seven days in future.