Les Jardins Sauvages, Saint-Roch de L’Achigan, Quebec

One of the neatest restaurants in Quebec, Les Jardins Sauvages, is owned and operated by Chef Nancy Hinton and forager/farmer François Brouillard. Aside from being a country eatery, they create and sell a line of products derived from wild plants and mushrooms at a farmer’s market stall at Marché Jean Talon in Montreal.

Chef Nancy Hinton, a constant winner of the University of Guelph Innovation Gold Award, grew up in Quebec City and trained under the tutelage of Quebec’s star Chef Anne Desjardins. Nancy writes: I first set foot into his ‘table champêtre’ in ’93 as a guest chef, when it was a casual meeting place for friends, foodies and chefs, a laboratory of sorts. For the following years, I would take my autumn vacation time to stage our wild mushroom event, which has since become a wild success. At the end of 2005, I took the reins of his kitchen, readily realizing that there was no better place to cook. Low key, but real, with quality at my fingertips. This was slow food, terroir, locavore and ecolo – before and beyond all the buzz words. I was embracing the philosophy, while for François, it was just the way you did things. As a team, we now showcase these local and unique ingredients in tasting menus on the weekends. The menu changes weekly and is a set prix fixe, five to seven courses, bring your own wine.

Taught by his grandmother, Brouillard has been picking weeds as long as he has been walking and talking. He began selling them using the slightly more attractive term “wild edibles”, as a sideline for his organic farming business. When Normand Laprise of Toqué discovered him at the market in the early 90’s, he encouraged François to focus on the wild stuff and collaborate with chefs. With the help of Normand, Anne Desjardins of L’Eau à la Bouche and Daniel Vézina of Laurie Raphael, the pioneers of Quebec Regional cuisine as we know it, he was the first to put wild edibles from fiddleheads to spruce tips to milkweed pods onto the market and menus of Montreal’s top restaurants. He has now been in business for 30 years.

Contact Les Jardins Sauvages at the number below to reserve a Food Day Canada table.

Contactez Les Jardins Sauvages directement, au numéro ci-dessous, afin de faire votre Journée des terroirs réservation.

Les Jardins Sauvages
17 Chemin Martin,
Saint-Roch de L’Achigan,
Quebec H4A 2G8
T: 450 588 5125