There’s lots of organic content too, like the tamari, maple syrup, nutritional yeast, brown rice and sprouts, and “you can’t beat the value here, along with the good calories,” he says. “Our job as chefs is to make sure people are getting a complete meal – all the proteins, starch, vitamins, greens, grains. It keeps us creative, and on our toes.
“Our plan is to keep raising the bar for quality and value.”
Makhan and the crew at Aux Vivres aren’t the only ones in expansion mode. Panthère Verte, a whimsical Mile-End restaurant that started out some years ago as a local delivery service for organic vegan lunches, has now launched a downtown enterprise.
To solidify the lure of his wildly popular falafel sandwiches, owner Haim Shoham has now shelved the bicycle delivery service to concentrate on two restaurants, the St. Viateur original and a spot below Sherbrooke St. right alongside Concordia University. There, he plans to establish a wider audience with his original salads and innovative vegan cuisine.
He’s in good company, since this restaurant is right next door to what might be the biggest new vegan venture Montreal has ever seen, although CEO Giacomelli, along with co-founders David Côté and Mathieu Gallant, would like to play down any preconceived notions about vegan food with this simple mantra: Eat what’s good for you and be aware of where it comes from.
This is Crudessence, a raw foods mecca where nuts, grains and seeds are the mainstay, along with locally grown greens. “We buy about 30 fresh and 70 dried organic products and use many types of greens and sprouts in our salads,” Giacomelli says. “And we have our own organic container garden on the roof of the Palais de Congrès.”
At Crudessence, plant-based foods are cleverly reconfigured without the use of ovens or a stovetop. “Here’s how you complement simple raw food,” Giacomelli says.
“First, fermentation, like the yogourt we make from fermented cashew cheese, which comes after soaking the cashews; second, sprouting, like letting lentils sprout instead of cooking them and third, dehydration, which is done after we blend seeds, spices and water, then spread the mixture and dehydrate. That’s how we make crackers and scones.”
Along with their much-loved Om Burger – mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, vegetables, flax seed – the salads are a work of art, especially the signature Crudessence salad, a mix of greens, carrots, beets, avocado, sprouts and sauerkraut, served with hummus and sprouted, dehydrated nut crackers.
“We want vegans and raw foodies and all the people off the street to come to us,” he says, which doesn’t mean this crew is pandering to the lowest common denominator. The restaurant serves 95 per cent raw, 100 per cent vegan and 95 per cent organic food and is, Giacomelli says, “dedicated to sourcing our food locally where possible, which we encourage because it’s more responsible, in our opinion.”
With a background as a civil engineer, Giacomelli acquired an MBA before he joined Côté and Gallant, who had been working their raw-food magic in their first restaurant on Rachel St. Now, their cooking classes have been attended by upwards of 5,000 people and they’ve launched a pilot “lunch and learn” corporate program. The two restaurants have been given a “boutique” flavour with books, equipment and packaged ingredients including their signature Kombucha line of drinks.
There are 70 people on staff now, a dozen of them full-time salaried employees, including an executive chef and head chef for each restaurant. The company includes a catering division, a prepared-foods section and a couple of thriving takeout counters – all services based around “living foods,” he says. “There’s a main kitchen that prepares components of dishes for the restaurants, although all dishes are assembled on site, where juices and smoothies are made.”
And with co-founder Côté participating in fitness regimes like the Esprit de Corps fundraiser where he prepared raw foods for a 10-man relay team, people are taking another look at how much more easily performance athletes can assimilate raw foods. “We even have a raw food and sports nutrition class,” Giacomelli says. The idea of all of these ventures is to educate people to live differently, with plant-based foods as an excuse, he says.
“When Mathieu and David started, their idea was to motivate people, then I came along and saw how we could grow. “I’ve seen how powerful this movement is.”
Aux Vivres, 4631 Saint Laurent Blvd., 514-842-3479, www.auxvivres.com
Panthère Verte, 66 St. Viateur St. W., 514-903-7770; 2153 Mackay St., 514-903-4744, www.thegreenpanther.com
Crudessence, Academy: 5333 Casgrain St., 514-271-0333; Restaurants: 105 Rachel St. W., 514-510-9299; 2157 Mackay St., 514-664-5188, www.crudessence.com
They’ve been sprouting all over the city: restaurants
serving mostly organic, mostly local,
completely vegan food – meaning no meat,
no fish, no dairy and, in some cases, no cooking.
Despite this, or maybe because of it, the audience
is growing and the reviews are (mostly) off the
charts.
“Vegan used to be hippie; it’s now hip,” says Julian
Giacomelli, co-owner of Crudessence, the latest vegan
restaurant to make its presence felt in the city. The
cool, white-painted brick and pale wood ground
level restaurant on Mackay St. is the latest in a string
of openings from the team who have launched this
raw foods venture, now consisting of two restaurants,
two take-out counters and a cooking school.
And while they prefer the title “plant-based
foods” to describe their fare – for fear the vegan
moniker might turn people off – Crudessence is the
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