What this page does differently
There are very good food itineraries for the Eastern Townships. Tourisme Montréal publishes one, village by village. Tourisme Cantons-de-l’Est publishes several. Mordu made a series with Tastet. They are useful, and we link to them.
What they can’t do is tell you what doesn’t work. A tourist board can’t write that one vineyard closes at 5 while the next is forty minutes away. We cook here four nights a week and have since 2017, and every week we watch people arrive from Montreal having mis-planned their day.
So here is a two-night itinerary, with real distances, real closing days and the mistakes to avoid. We name our competitors where they are better than us at something. You can follow this entire page and never set foot in our dining room: it still holds.
Before you go: five things nobody tells you
1. The region is compact on a map and slow in reality. Granby to Dunham: 36 km, but 36 minutes. Granby to Frelighsburg: 45 km, 44 minutes. These are country roads, not highways. Count a minute per kilometre and you’ll never be wrong.
2. Almost everything closes early. Vineyards, cider houses and Wine Route shops generally shut in late afternoon. Morning and early afternoon are your working hours. Evenings belong to the tables.
3. The good tables close at the start of the week. We open Wednesday to Saturday. Many of our neighbours keep similar hours. A statutory-holiday Monday in the Townships is a sandwich day — check every address before you drive.
4. Book the table before the room. Rooms can be found. A forty-eight-seat dining room over four nights cannot.
5. Someone has to drive. This is wine, cider and beer country. The only honest itinerary is one where you sleep here. We made the list of real places to stay around the house: Where to stay near Maison Boire.
Day 1 · Friday · Montreal to Granby, by boulevard Mountain
Leave Montreal around 10 a.m. 81 km, roughly 1 h 10 via Autoroute 10 east, exit 74.
Take exit 74, turn right onto Pierre-Laporte and take the second left, boulevard Mountain. Then straight on to rue Principale and turn left. Boulevard Mountain is a run of Granby’s old houses, passes the Miner golf club — 30, rue Long — and brings you into town two minutes from the house. The drive takes the same time: more highway, less town. The route in detail.
12:30 — Lunch at Pavane
Pavane, at 120, rue Principale, a hundred metres from the house. A gourmet bistro from chef François Côté — formerly Toqué!, Joe Beef — and sommelier Elsie Gélinas, added to the MICHELIN Guide in 2026. The name is a nod to Riopelle. They serve lunch on Fridays.
120, rue Principale, Granby · on foot · they have no website: phone them
3 p.m. — Lac Boivin, to walk
Close to ten kilometres of trails, including four hundred metres of boardwalk over the marsh. The land is designated an Important Bird Area: more than two hundred and sixty species recorded. An hour on foot is enough to reset the legs after the drive.
700, rue Drummond, Granby · cinlb.org
5:30 — The table
Maison Boire, 13, rue Court. Maple-ember cooking, MICHELIN Guide selection 2025 and 2026, in an 1893 Victorian house. That’s us: forty-eight seats, Wednesday through Saturday from 5 p.m., kitchen closing at 10.
8 p.m. — Le Palace, if the programme suits
A hundred metres from our door, close to a hundred professional shows a year: comedy, theatre, music. A 5:30 dinner and an 8 p.m. curtain fit without rushing.
135, rue Principale, Granby · palacedegranby.com
Day 2 · Saturday · The market, then the Wine Route
8:30 — Breakfast
C’est Belge has a second address on rue Robinson Sud, a kilometre and a half out. It closes Monday and Tuesday — on a Saturday it is open, and it is the quieter of the two.
246, rue Robinson Sud, Granby · 1.5 km
9:30 — Marché public de Granby et région
Under the downtown hall, two hundred metres from rue Court. Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., May to November — go in the morning, not at half past noon, or you arrive while the tables are coming down. This is where you meet our market farmers.
176, rue Principale, Granby · 200 m · marchepublicgranby.ca
This is the main day. Leave at 9:30, not 11.
The Brome-Missisquoi Wine Route gathers twenty-four vineyards across a hundred and sixty kilometres, and accounts on its own for more than a third of Québec’s wine production. You will not do twenty-four. You will do three, and it will be a fine day.
11 a.m. — Dunham (36 km, 36 minutes from Granby)
Dunham isn’t a village, it’s a territory: nine working vineyards, five of them on a kilometre and a half of rue Bruce. Domaine des Côtes d’Ardoise, planted in 1980, is the oldest commercial vineyard still operating in Québec. Le Ruisseau — bought by Château Ste-Agnès in 2025 and renamed since — makes, among other things, a maple sparkling wine; its dining room is called Le Sarment.
A distinction worth borrowing, and the chef makes it himself: there are the vineyards he pours and the ones he sends you to visit. In Dunham, Val Caudalies is the first kind — for its late-harvest Vidal; Côtes d’Ardoise and Le Ruisseau are the second. Only one of the eight fits an afternoon before service: Vignoble de la Bauge, at Brigham, 26 km out. All eight, with addresses.
1 p.m. — Frelighsburg (45 km from Granby, 20 minutes from Dunham)
One of Québec’s officially most beautiful villages, at the foot of Mont Pinacle. It is also home to two of our suppliers: Ferme Le Rizen, who grow organic Asian vegetables, and Ail du Pinacle. Clos Saragnat makes a straw wine from dehydrated grapes — the only one we know of. Christian Barthomeuf and Louise Dupuis, who founded the place, retired in 2024; Pierre and Gabrielle took it over in July 2025.
Lunch is here: Beat & Betterave, at 41, rue Principale — a cultural café and nano-brewery, a music room, beer brewed on site since 2020. Brian has the best burger and the best lemonade in the region here. Closed Tuesdays, and no reservations: you turn up.
Check hours before you drive down: several of these open only a few days a week, in season. Vignoble Pigeon Hill, at Saint-Armand, opens Saturdays only, June through October — the tightest constraint on the loop, and one more reason this day falls on a Saturday.
3:30 — Bedford (51 km from Granby)
Atelier Tréma, at 133, rue de la Rivière: a ceramics studio, a shop, a café, a flower counter and a wine bar under one roof. Open seven days, holidays included. Brian says they make the best sandwiches of any café in the region.
It is also the hand that makes several of our plates. The café where the chef eats is the same studio that throws the dishes you eat from at night.
133, rue de la Rivière, Bedford · 51 km
5 p.m. — Stanbridge East (46 km from Granby)
The village earns the detour on its own: the Missisquoi Museum, its mill and its twelve-sided barn. And above all Espace Old Mill, a mid-nineteenth-century mill turned market farm, restaurant, shop and inn. The kitchen garden was designed by Jean-Martin Fortier; the restaurant holds a MICHELIN Green Star, renewed for a second consecutive year, and the inn, La Cecil House, sits above the dining room.
We’ll say it straight: it is one of the finest houses in the region. If your weekend comes down to two dinners, theirs and ours answer each other well — the farm on one side, the fire on the other.
7, chemin Caleb-Tree, Stanbridge East · espaceoldmill.com
The Sutton and Knowlton detour, if you have time
Sutton has an ecosystem of its own: the À l’Abordage microbrewery, in an 1843 building, and the workshop of La Compagnie Robinson, whose vegetable-tanned leather binds our menus and dresses our tables.
It’s a forty-kilometre detour from Granby. It works, but not on the same day as Frelighsburg.
Day 3 · Sunday · The chef’s Sunday
On Sunday the house is closed. Here is what Brian Proulx does with it — two versions, not two stages. You pick one or the other: geographically, they don’t chain together.
Version 1 · the Lac-Brome round
Breakfast at C’est Belge. Then late morning into early afternoon at BALNEA spa + réserve thermale, in Bromont: an 82-acre nature reserve around a private lake, 22 km of trails, and the Lumami restaurant with its own market garden. What you book there is the Thermal Experience — hot, cold, rest. For the chef it is the finest spa in Québec, by a distance. Their hours change often: check their site.
319, chemin du Lac-Gale, Bromont · 21 km · balnea.ca
Then the antique dealers of Lac-Brome, Knowlton sector — a signposted circuit run by Tourisme Lac-Brome, close to fifteen shops between Knowlton and West Brome. Two open on Sundays year-round: Antiquité Lebel Objet, 7, chemin du Mont-Écho, and Belles choses, 305, chemin de Knowlton. The rest open by season.
A hello to Caroline Couture at Boutiverre, 290-A, chemin de Knowlton. She blows our glassware, from bottles reclaimed around the region.
And to finish, a lobster roll at the Marina Knowlton, 78, rue Benoit: the only terrace directly on Brome Lake, on an 1890 boathouse. Outdoors only, no reservations, first come first served. Mid-May to mid-September — out of season it is closed, and this version of the Sunday ends at the antique shops.
Version 2 · east
Drive to North Hatley, on Lake Massawippi, for lunch on the terrace of the Bistro Le Tap Room, at Manoir Hovey: English gardens, the lake in front, a fireplace and century-old beams inside. Same chef as the main dining room, Alexandre Vachon. Lunch runs 12 to 4.
575, rue Hovey, North Hatley · 69 km · manoirhovey.com
On the way back, Le Domaine Bergeville, at Canton de Hatley: the only estate in Québec making nothing but sparkling wine. Their Gastronomique range is built for the table, and they make a red sparkling.
This is the version that works all year. When the Marina is closed, this is the one to take.
Then Autoroute 10 west. An hour. You’ll be in Montreal for dinner.
The off-beat version: Wednesday to Friday
This is the advice we give most often and that people follow least.
Come midweek. Rooms are cheaper and available. Vineyards are open and empty. Tables have space, and service is easier — here as elsewhere, a Wednesday evening runs at a different tempo than a full Saturday.
The calendar works: we open Wednesday through Saturday. Wednesday night with us, Thursday on the Wine Route, Thursday night somewhere else, Friday outdoors, then home. Three nights for the price of two weekends.
The honest catch: some small addresses open only Thursday to Sunday. Phone before you plot the route.
Two more arguments for it: all-you-can-eat bavette is served Wednesdays and Thursdays — $60, for tables of eight and under, never Saturdays — and the public market also opens Thursday late afternoon, from mid-June to the end of August.
Four seasons, one paragraph each
Spring. Sugaring season runs mid-March to early April, depending on the freeze. Lac Boivin is in full migration. Mountain trails, on the other hand, close during thaw — don’t count on them in April.
Summer. The public market, the terrace, the rail trail. The easiest season and the busiest. Book further ahead.
Autumn. High season. Harvest, colours, pick-your-own. The second week of October is usually the peak of the colours, though it moves. It is also when everything books three weeks out.
Winter. Skiing at Bromont — seven slopes, 123 runs with about 90 of them lit, December to April. The Thermal Experience at BALNEA. The Parc des Montagnards on snowshoes. Le Palace. And embers, which never make more sense than in February. In January and February we send nobody onto the Route des vins: several tasting rooms do open, but a vineyard in January is a frozen field — it isn’t the same road. Sunday version 2, on the other hand, works all year.
The detail of each season, stop by stop, is on An afternoon in the Townships.
The address book, plainly
Distances road-routed from 13, rue Court, Granby, in free-flow conditions.
Booking your evening with us
We are a stop on this road, not its compulsory destination. But if the fire appeals: forty-eight seats, Wednesday through Saturday, from 5 p.m. The kitchen closes at 10.
The drive from Montreal, plainly · Where to stay near the house · An afternoon in the Townships, season by season · The maple fire
Itinerary verified 2 September 2026, from Granby. Seasonal hours change: call each business before you set out. We have no commercial arrangement with any address named on this page.