Nothing beats the sugar shacks in and outside of Montreal
Sugar shacks in Montreal are an iconic food experience. While there are urban venues offering it, the ultimate way to do it is to explore off-island. Nothing beats slipping into the countryside and tasting the local bounty available at the very end of February into late April when spring brings the seasonal opening of the sugar shacks. It’s hands-down one of the best things to do in Montreal this spring, one of the best things to do with kids in Montreal and among the top options for day trips from Montreal. Producers throw their doors wide open, offering sleigh-rides, hiking, games, tastings, demonstrations and most importantly, truly decadent maple-based meals that can rival even the best brunch and dinner services found in the city.
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Sometimes, the idea of heading out of town for a sugaring off experience just isn’t realistic. Great news: Verdun puts on a yearly “lumberjack party” called Cabane Panache, with square dancing, oodles of maple syrup treats, woodcutting competitions, festive music, traditional food and more. The festival runs in late March and is the perfect excuse to don your finest Sunday flannels and experience the sugar shack season in the heart of the city.
Travel time: Accessible by metro
This bistro in Parc Jean-Drapeau turns into an urban cabane à sucre when sugaring off season hits, from mid-March to mid-April, including the requisite live music and festive feel. It’s got all the sugar-filled wonderland promise of an all-you-can-eat buffet, with all the must-haves: from puffy omelettes (drowned in maple syrup, natch) to baked beans, roast ham and crispy-fried pork rinds. The kids will love the maple taffy on snow. Resos recommended!
Travel time: Accessible by metro
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This culinary festival runs from mid-March to the end of April and brings the rural experience of a sugar shack right to Parc Morgan in the heart of HoMa. It’s a family-friendly outdoor culinary fair with live traditional music, a bar and a section for maple taffy. For food, it’s a petite bouchées format: the area’s restaurants will prep small maple-themed plates at $3 a pop. Get as many as you wish, and don’t forget to vote for the best in the annual contest.
Travel time: Accessible by metro
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Situated in Saint-Isidore-de-Laprairie just south of Montreal, the Domaine Labranche sugar shack has been run by the Desgroseilliers family for eight generations. The family has certainly diversified since those early days and part of what makes the Domaine Labranche so unique is that in addition to its maple production, it operates a winery as well as an apple orchard, producing a range of exceptional products. This family farm is the perfect destination for anyone interested in discovering additional pillars of Québécois agricultural production adjacent to the maple industry.
Travel time: 30 minutes
Right off the Richelieu river, the Érablière Meunier is a large maple operation with over 6000 trees that vaunts an impressive array of family friendly attractions from hiking and off-road biking trails to sleigh rides, bean bags, hopscotch, inflatable bouncy castles, DJ-hosted dance parties, fresh donut and taffy tastings, face painting and more. Their menu is straightforward but full of mouth-watering classics, and if for whatever reason you can’t make it out to them, they have a full catering brigade to bring the sugar shack to you.
Travel time: 30 minutes
Seek and you shall find an authentic cabane à sucre experience in this wooden shack in the woods, dating back to 1941, outfitted with tables topped in red-and-white gingham. Cabane à Sucre Constantin Grégoire provides old school experiences like outdoor fireplaces to sit around, lots of trails to snowshoe through and for the kids, rides aboard a horse-driven sleigh. And of course the star of the show: a copious meal featuring pork, pork, more pork and all the trimmings. This is a BYOB, too.
Travel time: 35 minutes
The Charbonneau sugar shack is a classic sugar shack with a dangerous all you can eat format. An endless stream of maple house staples issue from the kitchen including pea soup, pork sausages, traditional tourtière, beans, creton and famously, their singular, much lusted-after, oven baked omelettes. If you’re making the trip, be sure to arrive hungry.
Travel time: 35 minutes
The Famille Constantin sugar shack is the perfect remedy for families with restless kids who have saved up a whole winter’s worth of pent-up energy. The grounds feature inflatable bouncy castles, puppet shows, a doll museum and a petting zoo for younger children as well as an ATV circuit and an after-dinner dance party for older kids. If all those activities don’t knock the kids out, the hearty meal certainly will. A trip will guarantee a peaceful car ride back into town.
Travel time: 40 minutes
A deep-woods sugar shack with miniature train rides, carnival games, a petting zoo and classic maple-taffy tastings, this spot has also—also!—carved a special niche for itself in the crazy world of weddings by providing customizable key-in-hand ceremonies for newlyweds to be. The team at Le Chalet des Érables are experts in the field with in-house caterers and a variety of venues ranging from pristine white chapels to hidden forest glades with capacities ranging from an intimate 50 to a regal 1000, offering idyllic boreal destination weddings without straying too far from home.
Travel time: 40 minutes
Sucrerie Bonaventure has recently undergone major construction in an effort to limit some of the more extreme rustic realities of the traditional sugar shack experience, including replacing their previously muddy yard with a paved parking lot, the inauguration of a brand new dining room, an exterior foyer heated with a magnificent fireplace and even a DJ to replace the fiddle bands of yore. All the regular trappings are here, including the fabulous meal. It’s perfect for those who want a sugar shack experience without the mud on their boots.
Travel time: 40 minutes
A Saint-Marc-sur-Richelieu institution, the Auberge Handfield is a delectable all-you-can-eat buffet-style sugar shack open for breakfasts, lunches and dinners with a prodigious, fully customizable menu. The Auberge’s grounds feature event spaces designed with weddings in mind, as well as rooms uniquely tailored to business meetings and conferences. The most exciting feature however is the on-site spa, offering whirlpool baths, chocolate body wraps, massages and more; all with a view onto the Richelieu River slowly rolling by.
Travel time: 40 minutes
With over 100 years of service under its belt, the Saint-Eustache-based Cabane à Sucre Lalande has a wealth of experience in the maple industry. This experience has guaranteed its position as a popular seasonal pilgrimage for both locals and Montrealers alike because of their horse rides, fresh taffy, traditional meals, legendary Mother’s Day brunch and dynamic rotation of live entertainment.
Travel time: 40 minutes
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely heard its name bandied about: The Cabane à sucre Au Pied de Cochon is a mythic temple of gastronomic overindulgence, owned and operated by celebrity chef Matin Picard as a complement to his famed Plateau restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. It may lack the sleigh-rides and petting zoos, but the Cabane à Sucre au Pied de Cochon is all about the food. In addition to hyperbolic examples of traditional Quebecois seasonal fare, the Cabane à Sucre au Pied de Cochon is a cutting-edge food laboratory and a harbinger of exciting future trends.
Travel time: 45 minutes
This lively sap house is another kid favourite with a petting zoo, makeup artists, caricatures, balloons, sugar toffee tastings, dancing in the evenings and endless music. For adults, there are winding hiking trails through the grounds, full demonstrations of both maple syrup and maple butter production, in-house cider tastings and—of course—the main meal itself. That features nearly forgotten old-fashioned classics like the grand-père au sirop d’érable, delicate dumplings boiled in maple syrup.
Travel time: 45 minutes
Next to a scenic orchard of apple, plum and pear trees, Martin Picard and his former sous-chef Vincent Dion-Lavallée opened this cozy 38-seat wood fire-heated space just paces from the Cabane à Sucre au Pied de Cochon. Built with the aim of providing a more traditional, less overtly experimental sugar shack dining experience than that of its sister enterprise, the emphasis remains on quality and locality, with many of the ingredients coming from the property’s garden, farms and the woods nearby.
Travel time: 45 minutes
Another quintessential Montérégie sugar shack, L’Érablière au Palais Sucré has a bevy of activities for young and old including tractor rides through the grounds, a small zoo with chickens, goats and ponies, and maple taffy tastings made on fresh snow. Most important though is the meal itself which is not for the faint of heart, or really, for vegetarians: The menu is pretty heavy on delicious animal proteins, but there are thoughtful accommodations for the lactose and gluten intolerant among us.
Travel time: 45 minutes
Hidden in a copse of dense maple in the heart of the Laurentides, the Cabane aux Délices des Sucres serves up faithful renditions of Quebecois classics in an intimate, familial cabin just paces from the actual production and pumping facilities. The dining room has total capacity of only 70 though, so reservations here aren’t such a bad idea. A pleasant albeit unusual surprise for a sugar shack, the Cabane aux Délices des Sucres is also a BYOB restaurant, so don’t forget to pick up a good bottle on the way for the full experience.
Travel time: 45 minutes
It’s a great apple picking spot in the warmer months, but in spring this family-run farm near Oka offers a beautiful blend of maple-fest and apple-delights at its Cabane à Pommes, with a menu that offers classics like split pea soup, cretons and omelette and puts an orchard twist on dishes like apple-bacon sausages and applewood-smoked ham. Reserve yourself a full-on dining room experience, where you can feast at shared tables and enjoy the whole happy ambiance.
Travel time: 45 minutes
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Off the western tip of the Island, down the Ottawa River in picturesque Rigaud, that’s where Sucrerie de la Montagne plies their trade. Resembling a small village lost in time, Sucrerie de la Montagne employs old-fashioned techniques and machinery to produce their famous maple products, lending the entire operation a tangible authenticity. Although everything is made in-house and of extremely high quality, it’s certainly their old-fashioned bakery and the bread it produces that somehow manages to generate the most excitement year after year—especially when topped with a generous spoonful of maple butter.
Travel time: 1 hour
On the South Shore in Montérégie, this family-run sugar shack offers the expected nap-inducing meal and has an in-house shop crammed with syrup, candies, fudges, caramels, toffees, pies, jams and more with which to reinforce your pantry. That being said, this particular sugar shack is likely best known for its rentable marriage hall, ideal for couples with a sweet tooth looking to tie the knot in true bucolic splendor.
Travel time: 1 hour
La Cabane à Tuque is pioneering a novel, ecologically-conscious, 100% vegetarian approach to sugar shack culture. Their harvest is collected in the truly old-fashioned style, with buckets and a whole lot of hard labor while the guesthouse itself is hempcrete-insulated with radiant-heated adobe floors and features walls made up entirely of recycled bottles. The menu is at turns familiar and revolutionary, achieving many of the same classic sugar-shack flavours using exclusively vegetarian and often vegan ingredients that includes tempeh, millet, buckwheat and chaga fungus.
Travel time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Travel time: 1.5 hours
This Saint-Esprit shack is a great spot for a real family-style eating frenzy, with all dishes plopped into the centre of the tables and a convivial self-serve format that will remind you of home. It’s got the personal touch of a small family business, and a special way in the kitchen too—can’t beat their wieners in syrup, and their yummy maple-sugared bacon (a special weekend order) would give Snoop Dogg’s Billionaire Bacon a run for its money.
Travel time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Located in Mirabel, this beautiful and tiny family-run spot provides a vista with its delicious traditional fare, partially prepared in the wood burning ovens for that inimitable flavour. The split pea soup is probably among the best we’ve had (you gotta like it chunky) and the rest of the fare is simple, but simple perfection. Good to note: they’ve also got gluten-free and vegetarian menus available upon request.
Travel time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Érablière au bec sucré stands for tradition, sans bells and whistles and full of rustic realness—including the comforting smell of a wood burning stove. From the shabby wood cabin to the family-style self-serve buffet table, you’ll feel like you’re one of the gang here. You can even try your hand at maple water collecting before rolling up taffy around popsicle sticks at the outdoor troughs, filled with the freshest snow. It’s also BYOB.
Travel time: 2 hours
Not far from Gatineau, this day-trip worthy outing has got it all for families: the tube-sledding is worth the trip in itself. There are 8 different tubing runs at Domaine de l’Ange-Gardien for all levels of thrill seeking. Pair that with mountains of mapley grub for a next-level sugar high, and presto: best parent ever award. There are also sleigh rides and beautiful snowy trails to explore.
Travel time: 2 hours
In the wilds of Yamachiche you’ll find this small certified-organic farm that puts on a mighty delish sugar shack feast on weekends throughout the melting season, for 8 to 10 guests max at a time. It’s bijou and friendly. Everything in the traditional meal is organic, produced either on their own organic meat farm or nearby by small local producers, including standouts like the buckwheat crèpes cooked right on the wood stove. With gluten-free and veggie options, they’ll happily adapt the meal to your dietary requirements with advance notice.
Travel time: 2 hours 15 minutes
This charmingly rustic wood shack at the foot of the Mont-Blanc ski resort offers an elevated take on maple season, with three set menus to choose from—the basic (which is still next-level, with Gaspor Farm pork and dishes like puff pastry stuffed with pulled pork and mushrooms), the more-ish, and the most-ish. The latter adds extra fancy items to the experience, including foie gras mousse with maple and old fashioned donuts.
Travel time: 2 hours 15 minutes
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