At Chez Julie: Seafood Specialties for Over Forty Years
From the outside, it has the look of a retro restaurant, cheap and fast food style. But look at the menu, step inside: you discover plates of seafood delights caught in the St. Lawrence. And homemade dessert with a little fruit from the nearby forest.
"It looks like an old diner from the 70s, because it is an old diner from the 70s!" Théoharris Ganas, owner of the Chez Julie restaurant in Havre-Saint-Pierre officially bought the establishment in 2010, but he has been working within its walls since childhood as his parents bought it in 1977. The restaurant has been around since the 1960s. So it's a true institution of the city, both for the local population and for visitors. To respect the taste of his loyal customers, Théoharris Ganas keeps the restaurant's signature and quality, preferring to optimize methods rather than innovate too much. But he insists on introducing more and more products from the North Coast into his dishes. "80% of our products are local."
The long and rich menu showcases locally caught species from the St. Lawrence: cod, halibut, salmon, snow crab, Minganie scallop, Sept-Îles shrimp, lobster from Anticosti Island, and the Lower North Shore. The species are served fresh during the period when they can be harvested. They are purchased fresh-frozen to be consumed at other times of the year. "We've developed our own techniques for sourcing, storing, and presenting food so that products come out at an acceptable speed and there isn't too much waste," explains Théoharris Ganas.
In the 1970s, Mario Mariotti, a Corsican chef employed by Théoharris's father, came up with the idea of making combined plates with several fish, several seafood. In the following decade, Robert Michaud, the French chef, invented seafood pizza (crab, shrimp, scallops) with a red sauce. Then, the white sauce known as "sauce bonne femme" was created, in homage to the Good Woman of Niapiskau, one of those famous monoliths that make the reputation of the Minganie islands. These geological structures of limestone eroded by the sea, wind, and ice for millions of years populate the archipelago that stretches along the coast, opposite Havre-Saint-Pierre.
Chez Julie offers other artisanal products from the region: beers from the St-Pancrace microbrewery in Baie-Comeau and Betchwan gin from the Puyjallon distillery in Havre-Saint-Pierre.
The Cloudberry Pie
For over thirty-five years, Chez Julie has been serving cloudberry pie. This little orange fruit, typical of northern regions, is picked on the coast or in the undergrowth in the region. "I think we're the only restaurant that sells it twelve months a year." This intention comes with challenges: cloudberry quantities are sometimes modest, or the labor to pick them is lacking, the price of cloudberry rises and even soars. If it's the most expensive dessert on the menu, customers understand why and appreciate it even more.
This year, hundreds of pies, pizzas, and other dishes will still be sold at the restaurant, but also at the shop, as it's the novelty for 2021. To meet the strong demand, Théoharris Ganas will open a ready-to-eat local food shop, to take away and cook at home.
Written by: Christine Gilliet (Words and Tides)
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