Lotbinière isn’t always the first place you find on a map. But it’s simple enough: the MRC begins about fifteen minutes south of the Quebec City bridges and stretches west along the river. If you’re driving up from Montreal, it’s the exit you’ve always passed without taking. We decided to take it, after discovering Lévis.
What you find behind is a territory of straight side roads, agricultural land that changes colour every kilometre, and villages built around a church, a diner and a market. The river reappears intermittently on the north side, along the Marie-Victorin route, between two rows of trees. Distances are short: you move from a vineyard to a smokehouse in twenty minutes, and those twenty minutes matter, because you cross the fields where the products you just tasted come from. Beer, wine, duck, smoked goods, berries, fresh bread, village coffee: you cover a lot of culinary ground in a single day.
What struck us about Lotbinière was how freely people here talk about their craft without you having to push them. A brewer explaining his water treatment. A chef cutting herbs just metres from our table. A winemaker telling us about her first plantings in 1998. A third-generation butcher behind his counter. We pushed open doors we wouldn’t have thought to push, including a garage door in an industrial park. We improvised a picnic on the back patio of a shop. We tasted black currant a few steps from the plants.
That’s what makes this road trip worthwhile: the beer, wine, duck, smoked meats and bread all come from here, and you can shake hands with the people who make them. In collaboration with Tourisme Chaudière-Appalaches, here are the addresses we loved during our road trip through Lotbinière.
Oxymore Microbrasserie
On a Saint-Gilles street lined with small businesses, Oxymore’s address sits behind a garage door in an industrial park: you’d never guess a microbrewery was hiding there. The inside completely contradicts the facade, with a welcoming room and owners who take time to explain everything. And there’s a lot to explain, because their beer is rooted in the territory right down to the water: they start with Saint-Gilles water, treat it with reverse osmosis to remove minerals, then rebuild the water profile that suits the style they want to brew. The hops come from the region too, and the rest of the ingredients follow the same logic. Talking with them, you understand why two beers from the same brewery can have such different personalities. We really recommend their tasting flight, to savour several of their products.
Saint-Gilles
Domaine de l'Oie Toquée
Saint-Agapit is less than twenty minutes from the Quebec City bridges, which makes the feeling of being in the countryside the moment you park at Domaine de l’Oie Toquée almost surprising. You walk in and the main impression is arriving at someone’s home: a warm, rustic room, a few tables, and the chef coming to talk with you. Gaston Couillard, who worked at Le Galopin and Le Bonne Entente, took over the estate in 2003 and opened his farm restaurant in summer 2009. It was a long-time dream and you feel it: passion is everywhere. He cooks what he raises, what grows in his garden seasonally and products from around the area, so the magnificent garden in front of the house serves as both pantry and backdrop. Eating an herb cut metres from your table changes something, and you immediately understand his vision of a farm restaurant. It doesn’t get more local than this. The estate welcomes both individual diners and groups, with reservations 24 to 48 hours in advance, and the three-bedroom inn lets you stay for dinner without worrying about the drive home. The perfect stop for a multi-day road trip: come eat and sleep here, then hit the road the next morning.
Saint-Agapit
Le Canard Goulu
One of our biggest finds on the route sits at the end of a side road in Saint-Apollinaire. The family business was founded in 1997 by Sébastien Lesage, and his shop now occupies the farm’s very first chicken coop. You’ll find rillettes, magrets, terrines, confit duck and the rest of their home production, but mostly people who know their products inside and out and ask what you feel like cooking before recommending anything. Behind, there’s a small terrace that’s truly lovely, where you can settle in with your own lunch. We came in to buy two or three things and left with an improvised picnic, completed on the spot with what we’d just chosen. It’s exactly the kind of stop we love to make on the road.
Saint-Apollinaire
Vignoble Le 10-vin
Still in Saint-Apollinaire, on Rang Marigot, Le 10-Vin is a young family business that completely owns its artisanal side. Caroline, an art teacher, signed much of the vineyard’s visual identity, from the labels to the mural greeting visitors, and it gives the place a personality you don’t often see in a domain this size. The first vintage is now available and can be tasted on site, among the hammocks and picnic tables. The vineyard grows 14 varieties of grapes, six intended for the table, which you can pick yourself when the season allows. During harvest, you can also volunteer to lend a hand, which remains the most honest way to understand the work behind a bottle. You could easily spend a full summer afternoon here rather than simply stopping to leave with a bottle.
Saint-Apollinaire
Charloise (La)
On the Saint-Eustache road, in the municipality of Lotbinière, La Charloise grows just about everything that can grow here. Charlotte Reason and Charles L’Écuyer bought the land in 1997 and started planting the following year: thousands of blueberry plants, black currant bushes, gooseberry plants and, over the years, a few thousand grapevines. That makes them pioneers of viticulture in Lotbinière, and you hear it in the way they talk about the seasons. At the shop, you move from the estate’s wines to black currant wine, then to jellies, jams and syrups from the same plants, and the tasting quickly becomes a guided tour of the fields you see through the window. What we loved most was being able to follow a single fruit from the plant to the glass without leaving the property. With the picnic area and u-pick blueberries and black currants in season, it’s a stop you can’t miss.
Lotbinière
Café Lotbinière
In the village of Lotbinière, Café Lotbinière occupies the agrifood hub and fills the role of the village café you always hope to find between stops. It’s a simple, thoughtful café-bakery-restaurant where sandwiches, homemade soups and pastries showcase what’s produced around here. Out front, L’Escale brings life to the village heart with its hand-painted furniture by artisans, its public piano and rowboat, and in summer it becomes the obvious place to sit with your coffee. They also sometimes offer special menus, like an English-style tea. In the middle of a day on the road, it’s the break that puts everyone back in good spirits. On Highway 132 in Sainte-Croix, you smell La Boucanerie Del Tonio before you see it, the smoke smell settling even into the parking lot. Anthony Blanchet smokes everything on site, from house-made bacon to pulled pork, brisket, gravlax and cod, and this patience shows in the depth of the meats. Duck confit chicken thighs smoked and then fried are the kind of bite you recommend once you’ve tasted them, and the beer-marinated fish and chips follows close behind. The menu changes regularly, giving good reason to return, and portions are genuinely generous. The patio overlooks the Route des Navigateurs and fills quickly on nice days, with cars and motorcycles making the same journey as us. It’s exactly the type of restaurant you hope to find on a road trip. On Highway 132 in Sainte-Croix, you smell La Boucanerie Del Tonio before you see it, the smoke smell settling even into the parking lot. Anthony Blanchet smokes everything on site, from house-made bacon to pulled pork, brisket, gravlax and cod, and this patience shows in the depth of the meats. Duck confit chicken thighs smoked and then fried are the kind of bite you recommend once you’ve tasted them, and the beer-marinated fish and chips follows close behind. The menu changes regularly, giving good reason to return, and portions are genuinely generous. The patio overlooks the Route des Navigateurs and fills quickly on nice days, with cars and motorcycles making the same journey as us. It’s exactly the type of restaurant you hope to find on a road trip.
Lotbinière
La boucanerie Del Tonio
On Highway 132 in Sainte-Croix, you smell La Boucanerie Del Tonio before you see it, the smoke smell settling even into the parking lot. Anthony Blanchet smokes everything on site, from house-made bacon to pulled pork, brisket, gravlax and cod, and this patience shows in the depth of the meats. Duck confit chicken thighs smoked and then fried are the kind of bite you recommend once you’ve tasted them, and the beer-marinated fish and chips follows close behind. The menu changes regularly, giving good reason to return, and portions are genuinely generous. The patio overlooks the Route des Navigateurs and fills quickly on nice days, with cars and motorcycles making the same journey as us. It’s exactly the type of restaurant you hope to find on a road trip.
Sainte-Croix
cabane du boucher
Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly is one of those riverside villages where you naturally slow down, and Cabane du Boucher sits on the Rue de l’Église. It’s a third-generation deli-butcher shop, run by Alexandre, a butcher-charcutier, and this dual nature explains everything: you order a sandwich at the counter, but the meat comes from the same place as the old-fashioned charcuterie sold just next door. The butcher’s burger, with bacon, onions, pickles, cheese and house-made BBQ sauce, pretty much sums up the philosophy of the place. Fries arrive hot, poutines are generous and there are microbrewery beers to go with them. If you’re a group, the charcuterie board is worth the detour, if only to taste what a butcher makes when he has the time. After a day driving between farms, ending with a sandwich made from local products is rather fitting.
Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly
