Le Club Chasse et Pêche

Since 2004 at the pass

The risotto arrives with braised suckling pig folded through its grain, a dish tied to Claude Pelletier, chef at Le Club Chasse et Pêche in Montréal. Pelletier has held the post since 2004, long enough for the station to read less like a title than a discipline repeated service after service. The restaurant opened on December 31, 2004, in Old Montréal, after the former Le Fadeau space changed hands and temperament. What remained useful was the sense of enclosure; what Pelletier built inside it was a kitchen with Québec product at its center and no interest in noise for its own sake.

His role has carried more than the pass. In 2015, his title included co-owner and executive chef, which fits the work here: part steward of the house, part cook responsible for the plate leaving the kitchen. The career line is spare, but the duration gives it weight. Pelletier’s authority comes through continuity, through returning to the same room and the same standard rather than treating the restaurant as a platform to be left behind.

Game, fish, and a short card

The program follows the name without turning it into costume. Hunting and fishing supply the grammar: game, fish, poultry, red meat, seasonal Canadian ingredients, and the kind of bourgeois cooking that accepts richness as a responsibility. The menu stays concise and à la carte, with entries, a Chasse et Pêche main that shifts through earth and sea, proteins handled for depth, and five desserts to finish the line. A short card is a pressure system. There is less room to hide.

Pelletier’s signature sits in that pressure. Suckling pig risotto and risotto au cochonnet braisés both rely on the same patient structure, rice taking on fat, stock, and pork until the dish becomes neither garnish nor vehicle. One version has been described with braised suckling pig and foie gras shavings, a combination that asks for restraint at the pass because the ingredients already carry force. The method is not minimal. It is controlled.

The room keeps its club hush

The room holds the private-club suggestion in its name, though the house was never an exclusive club. That difference matters. Le Club Chasse et Pêche uses intimacy as atmosphere, not as a gate. In Old Montréal, near Château Ramezay, the dining room sits apart from the street’s traffic, with the feeling of a place designed for lowered voices and plates that do not need to announce themselves from across the room.

During service, the pass gives the room its pulse. The counter rhythm is built around courses with weight: fish, game, poultry, red meat, risotto. Nothing in that sequence is casual, but the room keeps the cooking from feeling ceremonial. The house’s work is to make the long method feel lived in, and Pelletier has had since 2004 to set that rhythm there.