Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Sugar shack

CC took me to do a Quebec cultural thing, which is to celebrate maple syrup by eating a bunch of breakfast-esque food for dinner smothered in maple syrup, in a historic-seeming building staffed by people in 18th century costumes. This is called "sugaring off."*

We went to famous Sucre de la Montagne, founded in the 1970s by Pierre Faucher, who is famous. Sucre de la Montagne is a maple sugar farm and a huge restaurant. (They served 1,500 peopled the day we were there.)

They make the maple syrup right there!


CC's dad explained to me how famous Pierre Faucher is. It seemed to me that part of Pierre Faucher's success was due to how he'd evoked an 18th century Quebec masculinity (all the dudes who work there had on these cute, like, fur trapper guy costumes) that appeals mightly to 21st century Quebecois. Faucher himself is, I guess, the star practitioner of this manly maple syrup farming thing.


His picture is all over the restaurant.

Then we got our picture taken with the real guy!



*This name seems vaguely obscene to me (verb+"off," you know?) so I often mis-call it "sugaring up" which seems more PG, but then CC gets annoyed.

8 comments:

Tom said...

I too find "Sugaring Off" a little off-putting and sexually suggestive. Also, that man has gigantic hands!

You guys look great! It's that real maple syrup glow!

your small american said...

Yeah, dude, the guy asked Steph's dad, who took the picture, if he could "keep" us.

Anonymous said...

looks like karl marx to me...

DSF said...

I totally saw that guy on an episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and swore I would stay away from crazy Quebec. That dude freaked me out! I'm glad to have had the vicarious experience through you and CC though.

Jennifer Miller said...

so? could he keep you???

Vgirl said...

Yeah, sugaring off sounds gross...but everyone knows that real maple syrup is totally worth the risk of being kidnapped by a manly sugar farmer.

Could-be-a-model said...

Man, those Canadians are weird. And apparently dangerous!

your small american said...

We got away no problem. CC protected us with her feminist yoga attack. And on the way out we got some maple sugar candy stuff that you eat off of the snow!