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Gourmet, the magazine of good living

This is l'Auberge des Falaises

This is L’Auberge des Falaises whose chef, Hervé Regis came from Tours in France and worked in leading restaurants in Québec before setting up in partnership with Reine and Denys Cloutier (formerly at the Manoir Saint-Castin on Lac-Beauport, Québec). With its putty-colored bricks, terra-cotta-toned shutters, huge square windows, and intricate wrought iron, the inn has the look of a Mediterranean villa. The Cloutiers took advantage of the hillside setting to design a restaurant with superlative views over the cedars to the Malbaie river’s mouth. The warmth of wood-paneled walls is set off by borders of midnight blue, plain and with pale pink flowers. The color scheme is picked up by the tablecloths to create an elegance that is pretty but not fussy. Similar attention to detail is displayed on the menu, which offers tempting dishes such as smoky magret d’oie (goose breast) imported from France, snow crab with endive, and a light, milky oyster soup with garlicky croutons. Hervé shows a deft hand in his feuillatine d’huître napped with a delicate Roquefort sauce. Famished skiers can opt for boeuf à la ficelle, dipping bites of the boiled beef into crunchy sea salt and mustard, whereas less robust appetites might try the chef’s râble de lapreau farci aux foies et aux épinards (rabbit stuffed with spinach and liver).

There is small but quality wine list featuring all the traditionally well-known Burgundies and Bordeaux, cru Beaujolais such as Brouilly, Chiroubles, Fleurie, and Moulin-à-Vent, a light but fruity red Chinon from the Loire, and a Mâcon that three other Malbaie auberges join forces to import, the Château de Viré.

Chef Regis is imaginative with his ingredients but cannot always dream up a name to match his inventions. «That is why my sauce of grapefruit juice, honey and Champagne used over broiled pintadine (guinea fowl) is called sauce confuse! » He occasionally marinates a whole salmon to produce his version of gravlaks, using grapefruit and lime juice plus greenery from the cedar trees outside the hotel, a combination that after three or four days gives the fish wonderful aroma.

The house was built in 1885 and its age is reflected in the rooms upstairs. Each is decorated in a different Laura Ashley country print with the signature of Madame Cloutier on the wall: a small straw hat garlanded with flowers. «The furnitures is even older than the house» says Denys. «It was all in the attic when we arrived». In one bedroom guests have to choose between pale pine bed heads: One has the silhouette of two fat pigs, the other two goats. Outside, the cedars ensure both privacy and peace, appreciated as much by the goldfinches drawn to the feeding tray on the lawn as by the guests.