As I’m reflecting on three years of Alentours, I’m deciding to guide our narrative. I’ve found there to be dissonance between the reality of our restaurant and what others imagine that we are.
I’ve previously been nominated for a prize called “Healthy Chef of the Year”.
The dish in this picture is fried meatloaf with butter sauce.
More specifically, pork and lamb meatloaf with a beurre Nantais et chimichurri.
Aware of sounding disrespectful – why would I be nominated for this award? And is it a problem that I am? Let’s answer it by outlining all the unique ways in which we run a restaurant.
So, here we go…
We run 100% on clean energy, specifically hydro-electric.
We hire a private company that composts all our organic waste materials.
We source all of our food from a 150km radius from Québec City. There are just three exceptions – salt from Ontario, yeast from Montréal, and milk/cream from Ayer’s Cliff.
Our wines are exclusively Québécois, from within a radius of about 250km from the restaurant.
All of our spirits are first fermentation material to bottle from Québec.
Our beers, brewed locally, are also fermented principally with local malts.
Every cut of meat we serve is butchered in-house from whole animals.
We hold ourselves to the highest standards of food waste management; we pride ourselves on creative uses of whey, mushroom stems, cheese rinds, corn cob syrup, and all the like.
We have worked through multiple iterations of how to manage our staff in a modern and ethical way, finally becoming the only restaurant in Québec City to refuse tips and guarantee living wages based on a 40-hour work week.
And the most important detail…WHY?!
We fervently believe that the gap is far too wide between how restaurants in Québec currently operate and how they need to operate for a sustainable future.
Our mission has never been a question of “Can a restaurant function sustainably?” but “How can a restaurant function sustainably?” Of course, it can be done. We’ve spent years analyzing what works and what doesn’t. How many hundreds of pounds of onions does one need to peel, cut, cook, and freeze for the winter…How does a small business get the word out when it’s too small to invest in marketing …What’s the sustainable balance of information and pleasure in a fine dining experience?
Our beginnings were rough, immediately having to perform before developing the specific culinary expertise needed to deal with our chosen limitations. We’ve gotten to a point where I’m proud and confident to undertake this niche culinary journey every week.
So then, why the meatloaf?
An animal’s body is not just steak. If we want to move toward sustainable meat eating, we absolutely must demolish the idea that whole muscle preparations are more worthy and valuable of their place on a menu than ground or braised meat. We need to move through the narrative of “hmm, meatloaf?” to “Alright, meatloaf” to “OF COURSE, meatloaf”.
Putting out a restaurant into the world is somewhat artistic – our guests will have their own interpretations and opinions of what we do. What’s important to us is to clarify the narrative of what we do. We are proudly un-defined, tip toeing a blurred line between neighborhood and fine dining. We do not view ourselves as radical referees of the local movement, but stark critics of the unwillingness to surrender to the simplicity of the ingredients in reach. We are a family business - not looking to build an empire, but happily meander through life fueled by a mission of change.
We aren’t pushing our limits to receive praise; we’re doing it to guide a sustainable future.
Some have found us to be ground-breaking, some have found us to be too much or not enough, and some have found us (and our fried meatloaf with butter sauce) to be healthy.
The reality of our work cannot not be judged by how easy it is to understand.
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