Haute Saison: Feeling at Home in Villeray

There are evenings when you’re looking less for a restaurant than for a place to settle in with friends, with the feeling that someone was expecting you. Haute Saison, a short walk from Jarry metro station, was designed for those evenings. Behind the wine bar are Érika Lafleur and Antoine Lacroix-Vézina, the duo behind Café Saison des pluies, who first opened the space to keep up with an avalanche of catering requests. The café’s kitchen was overflowing with film-set orders and daily deliveries, so when a space opened up nearby, they jumped at the opportunity.

Like Being at a Friend’s Place

“We wanted to welcome people the way you would at home, in a really warm space, a bit like a living room where you have your friends over,” says the co-owner. The name evokes the busiest time of year, when everything picks up, tables fill up and everyone feels like celebrating.

At first, the wine bar only opened on Fridays. “The people in the neighbourhood adopted the concept right away,” she says happily. Thursdays and Saturdays soon followed. No surprise for a team with such deep roots: “I’ve lived in Villeray for years. My kids are growing up in the neighbourhood’s back alleys.”

It All Starts With a Sauce

In the kitchen, chef Yanrick Bernier-Jeffrey, trained at the W Hotel, shaped by time in New Zealand and inspired by Italian cuisine and his travels, builds every dish around a sauce. Goat cheese spread, meat sauce, yellow pepper sauce beneath shrimp seared on a small charcoal yakitori grill: there’s always that interplay of vinegar, sugar and salt that keeps the palate awake.

The short menu changes with what comes in and is ordered almost like a table d’hôte for sharing. You pick, pass the plates around and taste everything. During our visit, our favourites were the grilled shrimp, the fried oyster mushrooms and the bucatini vongole, but the menu changes often, so it’s best to let yourself be surprised by what’s on it the night you visit. The vegetables come from the Jean-Talon Market and the pasta from Pastificio Etna, two Villeray classics the team loves working with.

A Drink, With or Without Alcohol

Manager Marc-André Dumais puts together a list of natural wines made with minimal intervention and in tune with the menu, in collaboration with Dieu du Vin and Ward. He also creates the cocktails, alongside a lovely mocktail program, so those who don’t drink alcohol are just as well looked after as everyone else.

A Space to Celebrate

Outside of wine bar nights, the room can be booked in full or in part, for about thirty seated guests or up to 42 standing. Weddings, showers, birthdays and holiday parties follow one another. “It warms your heart when people come to eat at your place,” the co-owner says.

If the room works as well for dinners with friends as it does for large gatherings, it’s partly thanks to a close-knit group. Designers Audrey Savard and Juliette Blouin, a couple who are friends of the team, drew up the layout, and Charline Lemieux handcrafted the banquettes, the furniture and the fabric wall. The decor, which the co-owner took care of herself, gives the 32 seats the feel of an apartment where you’re happy to linger.

In the end, everything comes back to hospitality. “Our watchwords are conviviality and sharing,” she sums up. Whether you live in Villeray or are coming from elsewhere, Haute Saison makes you want to push open the door on a Thursday evening and stay for one last glass.

Written by Marie-Ève Godin
Photography by Alison Slattery

Updated on October 17, 2026

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