It is with great joy that customers and restaurant employees met on Monday in many dining rooms in Quebec. Other restaurants, however, give themselves a few more days to prepare everything.
At Café Le Club, on Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, the majority of tables were occupied at noon by customers concentrated on their laptops.
“It’s really good to see people,” said Justine Leclerc, who works from home in marketing project management. It helps my productivity and my motivation. »
According to barista Alexis Morin, the business was as busy as before the closing.
“It shows how much people were very eager to get back to their routine,” he analyzed behind the pastry counter.
A few doors away, at the L’Évidence bistro, customers were just as delighted with this return to a certain normality.
“We’ve been coming here for years. We missed it a lot, ”said Jacques Fracheboud, tasting Benedictine eggs with his wife.
According to the owner, Mourad Fhal, the telephone has not stopped ringing since the beginning of the morning, customers wanting to check if the establishment was indeed open.
At the chic and gourmet restaurant Chez Lévêque, on avenue Laurier, about fifteen employees were busy at lunchtime in a dining room with a refined decor, accompanied by the smell of veal blanquette, vegetable soup and snails in cream.
All the tables were occupied and the employees felt like they were coming back to life. “Psychologically, it was hard. I am a dynamic person, so being stuck at home, I would go crazy, ”said Frédéric Triquet, head of meat cutting and passionate about charcuterie.
For him, Chez Lévêque is a family that he has finally been able to find. “Restoration is in our blood, in our hearts,” added her boss, Patricia Lévêque.
Measures that hurt
Despite the festive atmosphere that wins her over, Patricia Lévêque is bitter towards certain government measures. “I couldn’t believe it when they announced on December 30 that we were to be closed for New Year’s Eve. If they had closed us on January 3, we would not have lost so much food and it would not have changed much in the health situation, judged the general manager. It pissed me off. »
She hopes that restaurants will soon be able to fill their rooms to 100%, rather than 50% as is currently required. According to her, it is difficult to be profitable with this constraint, especially for small restaurants.
“They don’t need to shut us down anymore,” she added. We are not yo-yos. »
The loyal clientele was also there in the Florida decor of the Miami Déli, not far from the Préfontaine metro station, according to waiter John Henry. Very happy to be able to talk to them, he nevertheless felt that a good part of them are “tired” of depriving themselves and would be very affected by another closure.
“They have made every effort requested by the government and the situation is not improving,” lamented Mr Henry, a few feet from a large hanging shark.
A few days delay
The Joséphine restaurant, on rue Saint-Denis, will reopen on Tuesday instead. When passing the Duty, a dozen people were busy cleaning the tables, polishing the glasses, reprinting menus and finishing the set up of the dishes, among other things. Reopening the restaurant is complex, according to butler and sommelier Samuel Gagnon-Mackay, so an extra day was needed.
For their part, some Montreal and Laval restaurants of the Les Enfants terribles banner will welcome customers on Wednesday, while another, at Place Ville-Marie, will wait until Thursday. The one in Magog reopened on Monday.
“You have to contact all the employees, build the schedules, bring in the orders, cook, clean, change the beer”, lists the founding president, Francine Brûlé, to explain these delays.
Les Enfants terribles are also looking for staff everywhere, so they will start with limited opening hours in several branches, to improve them as they find sufficient employees.
The Association Restauration Québec (ARQ) recalls that restaurateurs have suffered a lot since the start of the pandemic. According to their calculations based on the number of permits issued by the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, one in six restaurants in Quebec and one in five in Montreal closed their doors for good between February 2020. and January 2022. This represents 1239 restaurants in Montreal alone.
This is an unprecedented situation, since this number was almost always increasing before 2020, indicates the ARQ. When the government assistance programs stop, the ARQ expects more restaurants to add to this sorry situation.