Eating and drinking
Three rooms, one kitchen
Everything is cooked in one kitchen on the ground floor, behind the old receiving hall. The menu changes when the market does, which in Québec City means four times a year, and abruptly. Winter brings root vegetables, pork, pulses and whatever came out of the freezer cellar; salad is worth ordering only in the short summer.
Breakfast doesn't need booking. For dinner in the dining room we hold tables until eight, and after that reception gives them away.
Ground floor, street side
Table du Quai
The dining room is in the warehouse's receiving hall, the part that opened straight onto the street for carts. The floor still falls about four centimetres towards the door, so the tables have packers under one leg. It seats thirty-eight at bare wood tables, and there is no music before seven.
Dinner is three courses or one, as you like. The kitchen does a fish of the day from the river or the gulf, a braise that sits on the stove all afternoon, and a dish without meat that gets as much attention as the rest. Bread is baked in the morning for the breakfast counter and finished for the evening service.
- Breakfast
- 07:00 – 10:30
- Dinner, Tuesday to Saturday
- 18:00 – 21:30
- Sunday and Monday
- closed for dinner
Ground floor, by the courtyard door
Bar Finlay
The counter came with the building. It is oak, about five metres long, and generations of elbows have worn it through the varnish in two places. We had it cleaned and waxed, and left the marks.
Behind it you'll find Québec gin and cider, rye from Ontario and the Beauce, a short wine list that leans French and cold-climate, and beer from two breweries on the island. A pot of soup is on from six, a plate of cheese and pickles is available all evening, and the courtyard door stays open from June to September.
- Monday to Thursday
- 16:00 – 23:30
- Friday and Saturday
- 16:00 – 01:00
- Sunday
- 16:00 – 22:00
The old loading bay
Comptoir Matin
Eight stools stand along a plank counter in the loading bay, where the big doors used to be. It opens before the dining room for anyone catching the first ferry or the early train, and serves coffee, eggs, toast with cretons or butter and honey, and a bowl of oats that has kept people upright through worse winters than this one.
There's no table service, and nothing to pay at the counter: tell reception on the way out and it goes on the room.
- Every day
- 05:30 – 09:00