t Auberge Les Menus-Plaisirs in Laval, Quebec, Robert Décary remembers some
of his guests: busy local couples seeking a romantic evening alone. "Sometimes a wife comes by in the afternoon, rents a room and calls her husband to meet her here. She might put rose petals on the bed. There is a Jacuzzi. They might live just kilometres away so can pick up the kids from grandma the next morning. The husband is always surprised."
Others might book the whole auberge for a wedding, Décary continues. The reception can be in the garden terrace or a small atrium reminiscent of New Orleans, thanks to wrought iron balconies, old brick walls and ceramic flooring. The ceremony can be in room 8, with its 600 square feet of traditional Québécois elegance – cream walls with dark wood accents, a stained glass window, gas fireplace, and brass lighting fixtures that evoke the marsh plants of a nearby wildlife preserve.
My wife Oxana and I can attest to the romance of it all. We spent a night there recently, celebrating our wedding anniversary. We cherished the hideaway, even if no rose petals were in sight and the winter's first blizzard blanketed the garden.
Laval, Quebec’s third largest city, may lack the romance of neighbouring Montreal. But Menus-Plaisirs is away from the busy city core, tucked into the old-fashioned charm of Sainte-Rose, a Laval neighbourhoodhugging Rivière-des-Mille-Îles. The stately manor is where Father Antoine Labelle was born in 1833, in what’s now room 2. Labelle, nicknamed "King of the North", is credited with the settlement of the province’s picturesque Laurentian Mountains region. Later he was Quebec’s deputy minister of agriculture.
For Décary, inn-keeping came late in his long hospitality career. A local boy, he remembers passing the property as he walked to school. "My mind was always to open a restaurant," he says, "and not just anywhere. Here." He became a teacher, but at 27, bought the house, took a leave of absence, and opened a bar, then a restaurant.
Romantic
Pleasures
Romantic
Pleasures
by Peter Johansen
at Menus-Plaisirs
A