Brian Proulx has worked in restaurants since the age of 14. He holds a diploma in international hotel management and trained in Relais & Châteaux properties: maître d’hôtel and sommelier at Manoir Hovey, on Lake Massawippi, then sales and marketing assistant at La Bastide Saint-Antoine in Grasse. It was in the dining room, and on the wine side, that he learned what it means to receive guests — before opening his own house.
On June 17, 2017, at 25, he opened Maison Boire in an 1893 Victorian house, with a maple wood fire in the middle of the dining room from the very first night. The stone structure of the hearth was drawn that year, for this; the grills were commissioned from a machine shop. The grate itself belonged to his grandmother. It works four nights a week.
Cooking over embers is, for him, the hardest thing to master in a restaurant, precisely because there is no dial. He chose it anyway, and built around it a house that produces: gardens, a greenhouse, beehives, a henhouse, a pottery studio, and seventeen producers mapped with their distances. That practice earned Maison Boire LEAF Level 3 certification in 2019, two years after opening; the grand prize for Sustainable Tourism Initiative at the Prix excellence tourisme on November 14, 2019 — the first award the house ever received; first place in Canada under the LEAF programme, presented to Brian Proulx at the Restaurants Canada Show in Toronto in March 2020; then the Restaurateur of the Year Award from Aliments du Québec au menu, at the ARQ congress, on November 16, 2021.
In 2025, the MICHELIN Guide published its first Québec edition and included Maison Boire in its selection. In 2026, the house was retained. The plaques are on the front steps; the rest is at the table.
« Il n’y a que le café qui n’est pas local. »
“The dynamic in the kitchen, the calm and the efficiency in a full rush, and of course the flames doing the cooking. It’s dinner and a show — literally.”
In January 2024, photographic artist Rizlane Abdessamad became co-owner of Maison Boire, alongside Brian Proulx. Her work — ethereal long-exposure photographic pieces in which the body becomes light — turned the walls into a gallery. She presented her first solo exhibition here, across three floors.
Since then, the walls change with the seasons, like the menu. She is also behind the lens of many of the photographs on this site: the fire, the brigade, the plaques on the front steps, the plates. And in the dining room, she is often the one guests name in their reviews.
Her personal work is at rizlane.ca (opens in a new window); what the house exhibits is on its walls.
Chef Brian Proulx · Sous-chef Victorien Zemgue · Entremetier Maximiliano Guerrero Salazar. The chef’s counter, as the menu page puts it, “is the seat to ask for if you come first for the cooking: the chef and the sous-chefs are two metres away.”
At the pass, in front of the grill in flames — or in the garden, hands in the tomatoes.
Newly arrived in the brigade.
A 48-seat dining room on the ground floor, 30 seats on the terrace in summer, under the trees, among the vegetable beds, and 36 in the private dining rooms upstairs. And behind, above and up top, everything that makes Maison Boire a house that produces.
In the middle of the dining room, behind the chef’s counter, there is a maple wood fire. It is lit before service and it works until closing. The wood comes from a farmer in Ange-Gardien, 24 km away: forty cords a year, a fifth of a cord a night. We don’t cook in the flames, we cook after them — over a bed of embers that someone tends all evening long.
The maple fire →A handful of seats face the embers, across the pass. From there you watch the grill fill, the cuts turn, the plates come together, and you hear the wood work. It is the best seat in the room, and there aren’t many: ask for it when you book. The chef and the sous-chefs are two metres away.
The counter, on the menu page →Behind its glass doors, at the heart of the room, the cellar watches over private imports. Bottles range from $50 to $12,000. Our wine list is not published online, and that is deliberate: it is read at the table, as it stands that evening. Tell us your budget; the sommelier does the rest.
The cellar and the bar →Behind and above 13, rue Court: rows in open ground, beds on the terrace, a greenhouse that gives seedlings a head start in spring and stretches the season into October, and vertical growing towers whose greens are cut the same day they are served. The zinnias, borage and nasturtiums that garnish the plates grow three metres from the kitchen. The rooftop garden reclaims heat from the grill.
Circle zero →A few hens, closely watched. From coop to kitchen, their eggs travel about ten metres. The honey from the hives ends up on desserts and in the bar’s cocktails; when our hives can’t keep up with the season, honey from Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton takes over. Herbs, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, honey: between the harvest and the plate, there is a staircase.
The hives and the henhouse →Maison Boire has its own pottery studio, up top. The stoneware that carries the service is thrown and glazed by hand: no two plates are quite alike. The studio runs summer classes and takes on apprentices. And Maison Boire exhibits: the walls change with the seasons, like the menu — a mural by Zoé Boivin since 2018, Nicolas Ruel’s prints on steel, photographs by Richard Bernardin and Rizlane Abdessamad.
The studio → · The gallery →The gardens are out back, the greenhouse at the far end, the studio upstairs. By appointment, early in service, we give tours: info@maisonboire.com.
Four nights a week, Wednesday through Saturday, the same fire and the same standard, whether the room is full or not. Closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday; the only closure of the year is Christmas week. The fire is built before service and tended all evening, and in July, behind that counter, it is as hot as you would expect. This is a house, not a protocol.
If you would like to be part of it, in the kitchen or in the dining room, the Working here page explains how to meet us. You can also write to info@maisonboire.com, or drop off your CV in person at 13, rue Court.
Working here“The fires are lit and your table is ready. We’ll see you tonight.”
The chef’s counter looks straight onto the coals. It is the best seat in the room, and there aren’t many: ask for it when you book.
Wednesday through Saturday, from 5 p.m. The kitchen closes at 10 p.m.
Written by Maison Boire, 13, rue Court, Granby, Québec. The facts on this page are those of the press room and of the site’s own pages; nothing has been added.
Updated October 3, 2026
