The Owners of L’Orchidée de Chine Have a New Restaurant on the Plateau

The owners of once-beloved Peel Street restaurant L’Orchidée de Chine just opened a new spot on St-Laurent Boulevard.

Owners Eva Lau and Joe Zhou quietly opened 31° Latitude on Jan. 10 between Prince-Arthur and Pins. The new restaurant is run by virtually the same team behind their former Peel Street spot (save George Lau, who co-owned it with sister Eva and has since retired from the food industry, the Montreal Gazette reports). The kitchen and wait staff remain the same, however, Zhou told Eater Montreal Monday.

It will also serve many of the same Szechuan dishes patrons came to love at L’Orchidée de Chine, this time focusing on “only the best,” Zhou says. That includes dry garlic spare ribs, General Tao’s chicken, and other crowd favourites.

Zhou also notes that patrons who are craving a particular dish from the L’Orchidée menu can ask for it explicitly and the kitchen will happily oblige. Given the restaurant’s popularity (Zhou says the 70-seater has been “very busy” every night since opening), that’s probably going to be happening a lot.

“A lot of old customers are coming back,” he says.

The restaurant got official praise from former Montreal Gazette food critic Lesley Chesterman on Twitter last week, who called the opening “great restaurant news.”

L’Orchidée de Chine closed in December of 2018 after 31 years in its downtown location. Since opening in 1987, the restaurant served the likes of Pierre Elliot and Justin Trudeau, Nicole Kidman, and Roger Moore. In 2017, Chesterman said the restaurant’s General Tao Chicken was the best in North America. The closure was a loss for many, but its owners felt it was time to move on after much of their regular patronage began to age out or move away from the downtown core.

STATUS — 31° Latitude is now open at 3627 St-Laurent Blvd. It is open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and for dinner from 5:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. from Sunday to Wednesday and until 11:30 p.m. from Thursday to Saturday.

• Brownstein: Beloved L’Orchidée is reborn but spareribs stay the same [Montreal Gazette]
• 31° Latitude [Official]