Based in Sutton for almost three years, Julie Bélanger-Cateysson is launching her business, La Botanique cocktail. She offers bartending for events, consultation for bars and restaurants wishing to establish original menus (like Brouërie) and set up cocktail boxes with local ingredients from surrounding farms.
She rented a commercial kitchen in Sutton. “My goal is to partner with local farms and buy their surplus, among other things, to avoid waste. If there is a surplus of peppers or another crop a year, for example, I could take inspiration from that to create a syrup or a shrub, [un vinaigre à boire]. ”
It was in New York that Julie fell in love with the profession. She had worked in catering before and during her studies in advertising, marketing and events. Not fluent in English, the graduate moved to the Big Apple to become more fluent in the language of Shakespeare. She then took a job as a waitress at the old East Side Company, one of whose partners also owned the legendary Milk & Honey cocktail bar.
I was lucky to find myself there. I didn’t know anything about alcohol. They took me under their wing. I became friends with one of the bartenders and I would come home before my shift to help him prepare his syrups. I learned a lot.
Julie Bélanger-Cateysson
She will have lived in New York for two years, then on Long Island for five years.
When she returned to Montreal eight years ago, Julie participated in the opening of Mimi la nuit, worked at Ludger and held representative positions for wine and spirits agencies. Today surrounded by a crowd of high quality agricultural craftsmen, she is passionate about supplying short circuits and the fight against food waste.
With this in mind, the frugal locavore proposes to use leftovers from the big bag of (organic) cranberries for the “atocas sauce”, apple cider vinegar from Frelighsburg, honey from Dunham and two spirits produced near her home. .
The Rudolf Sour
the shrub is a vinegar syrup which has the wonderful quality of making a cocktail (with or without alcohol) particularly thirst-quenching. Julie mounts it in sour with an egg white or a vegan emulsifier. The frothy texture perfectly balances the sweet bite of the vinegar. The bartender very rarely decorates his creations, because these ornaments are most often found in the trash!
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PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Egg white (or emulsifier) cocktails should be shaken twice, without then with ice.
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PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Julie Bélanger-Cateysson has chosen local spirits, Normand from La Chaufferie and Comont gin, to make her cocktail. She poured her shrub house in a small bottle just like his company, La Botanique. A homemade holiday gift idea, maybe?
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PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Amer Kebek is undoubtedly a favorite of bartenders Quebecois.
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PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
The Rudolf is served here in the pretty Léa cup.
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Ingredients
- 1 oz of Comont gin
- 1/2 oz of Normand, apple brandy from La Chaufferie (or other Quebec apple brandy)
- 1 1/4 oz of
- shrub
- cranberry-orange (see recipe below)
- A woodland bitter pipette from Amer Kebek
- Two pipettes of Noroi vegan emulsifier (or one egg white)
Preperation
- 1. Pour all the ingredients into a shaker and shake very vigorously, dry.
- 2. Open the shaker, fill it with ice and shake again until the instrument is good, very cold!
- 3. Filter into a cup (Julie uses the Léa from the Alambika boutique) and serve.
Shrub cranberry
Ingredients
- 1 cup fresh or thawed cranberries
- 1 whole organic orange, cut into wedges
- 1 cup of local honey
- 1 cup of organic apple cider vinegar from Quebec
Preperation
Pour all the ingredients of the shrub in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes.