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Top of the food chain

Former Stinger Hubert Marsolais runs some of Montreal’s most acclaimed restaurants
February 22, 2018
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By Lucas Napier-Macdonald


Hubert Marsolais, attendee 92, builds oases. As co-owner of three of Montreal’s most highly regarded restaurants — Le Filet, Le Serpent and Le Club Chasse et Pêche — the former Concordia Stinger football player says he’s more interested in creating an all-encompassing experience that just putting tasty food on a plate.

Admittedly, he puts some pretty great food on plates, too.

A quick glance at the menu of Le Serpent, his chic Italian bistro in Montreal’s Old Port, shows such mouth-watering offerings as pappardelle with braised boar and caramel cake with sweet meringue.

Hubert Marsolais Hubert Marsolais played football for the Concordia Stingers in the early 1990s and now owns three of the top restaurants in Montreal.

Yet to Marsolais, a restaurant should please every sense. “In French we say ‘créer un lieu,’” the Quebecois restaurateur points out. “It means to create a place, somewhere that people can gather around food, of course, but also design, good wine and human interaction.”

And although his menus are always impeccable, Marsolais’s restaurants are known just as much for their elegant ambiances as they are for their appetizers and aperitifs.

According to a 2014 Montreal Gazette review of Le Serpent: “The decor is very stylish... The acoustics are so well thought out that in this relatively noisy room, you’ll have no problem making conversation. The floor staff is young, attractive, smiley and very sharp.”

Although many universities tried to lure the talented young Montreal football player, Marsolais chose Concordia because of its urban setting — where he thrived on the field.

“Hubert was a gifted athlete who had a great pair of hands and tremendous body control,” says Pat Sheahan, BSc 78, GrDip 81, MA 99, Stingers head coach from 1989 to 1999.

“He was one of several outstanding francophone receivers I recruited to Concordia during my career there,” he adds. “And although he was very intelligent and deeply philosophical, he also had a lighter side which made him fun to be around. That he has successful career in the hospitality business was no surprise to me.”

Marsolais studied in Concordia’s Department of Political Science in the early 1990s before leaving to focus on his career in hospitality.

He says the classes he took across a number of departments — philosophy, anthropology, sociology, women’s studies and art history among others — shaped him as the businessman he’s become.

Hubert Marsolais and Claude Pelletier Hubert Marsolais, right, with Claude Pelletier, Marsolais’s business partner of 17 years and executive chef and co-owner at three of his restaurants.

 “I am now an efficient, self-teaching person, and the diversity of the multi-department education I received at Concordia definitely fuelled that curiosity,” Marsolai says.

“That joy of being able to browse freely through multiple academic topics and having them taught in stimulating ways forged my ability to multitask, a great trait in an entrepreneur.”

Expanding his presence

With two strongholds in the Old Port — Le Serpent and Club Chasse et Pêche — and one in Montreal’s Plateau district — Filet — Marsolais has now set his sights on the Mile End neighbourhood, the cutting edge of the city’s food scene.

He recently opened a daytime eatery on St. Laurent Blvd., Il Miglio (Italian for “mile”), which serves pasta dishes in a more casual setting than his other restaurants. Marsolais calls it a “chef’s project,” where, as a testimony to his sense of style, he was asked to conceive the design and layout, executed in collaboration with Montreal-based architect Thomas Balaban.

And seemingly as penance for affiliating himself with something not at the zenith of sophistication, Marsolais and business partner Sarah Altmejd now plan to build a boutique hotel on a newly purchased plot of land on the corner of de l’Esplanade and Laurier avenues, a complete Mile End intersection.

To Marsolais, this is further realization of the lieux he loves to produce. “Hotels for me are the completion of the experience I’ve always tried to create,” he says.

“You have someone for dinner, and then you have them to sleep over. It’s the extension of a very good restaurant experience, in a way. Sure it’s a different path, but it’s the same objective of giving people a unique time that they’ll enjoy and, hopefully, remember.”

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