Pierre du Calvert restaurant Old Montreal

The charm of the hostelry Pierre du Calvert is hard to surpass. The restaurant in the old city of Montreal (vieux Montreal) 405 Bonsecours, is situated in a charming, 300 year old building. The hostelry Pierre du Calvet, built in 1725, is an ancestral family mansion. With its exquisite decor, antique furnishings, family heirlooms and European character, it is known also as a Hotel-Chateau.The restaurant is also an inn that has nine rooms for guests, (it is the oldest historic house open for public accommodation in Montreal)  and houses an art gallery of very pricey modern art.


As you walk in the door of this quaint chateaux you are struck by the solid looking stone and exposed beam ceiling of the bright foyer. An array of tropical birds squawk and chatter amidst plants in a bright atrium behind the concierge desk. Off to the sides are some quietly elegant smaller dining rooms.

Our host led us down some stone steps to the main dining room. An ancient room with a high ceiling and tall windows draped in heavy gold fringed raw silk curtains. The painted panel rooms with massive hand carved antique buffets and silver antique decanters suggested Old World elegance. Before dinner we descended a set of steps to  the art gallery, more like a museum of avante garde bronzes and large colorful painting, as large in price as in size.

Dinner at Pierre du Calvert Montreal

To start, we tried slivers of apple with smoked sturgeon. Then we chose the fixed price menu with a cold tomato soup with crisp Canadian bacon. Next a deer parfait--and walnuts--a sweet, pate with this toast and walnuts, followed by a light berry sorbet, slightly icy. Mark had the smoked duck, thinly sliced, on a bed of endives with bleu cheese. All very nice, and well presented.

Main course: We tried the Pheasant supreme with cranberries, fiddle-heads and red cabbage, and the veal bavette, red onions gratins with Brussels sprouts and some asparagus, in the dining room gazing at old black and white photographs of ancestors formally dressed and posed in early twentieth century style. I loved gazing at the historic photos and the lacquered paneled walls in earth tones as we drank a fine Montrachet.

Dessert: a bread pudding with chocolate to go with the coffee, steaming hot, as a send off into the cool Canadian twilight. Out into the starlit night of the Old City of Montreal, we heard the lonely sound of street musicans. I heard someone playing a "like a bridge over troubled waters" plaintively on an alto saxophone, coins tossed by couples strolling from the myriad of dining establishments of the old city back to the hotels. We passed a movie team working on a set in the China town section, lit by large lights, and policemen.


Would very much like to stay at the Pierre Calvert next time we are in Montreal. Pricing seemed reasonable, considering the atmosphere of ancient respectability, and the dining.