Garde Manger: A Cookbook
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When Chuck Hughes opened Garde Manger in Old Montreal in 2006 with friends Tim Rozon and Kyle Marshall Nares, the idea was straightforward: cook good food, play their own music, and have a good time. The restaurant stayed open until three in the morning, with DJs, bouncers, and a party atmosphere that was as important to its identity as the cooking.
Twenty years later, Garde Manger has evolved into a more polished dining destination, but Hughes has been careful to preserve its informal spirit. This new cookbook, written with Christopher Merrick to mark the restaurant’s twentieth anniversary, gathers 80 recipes that reflect its cooking over the past decade.
Seafood remains a particular strength, from the restaurant’s elaborate seafood platter to octopus with fried potatoes and nduja, salmon with warm potato salad and caviar beurre blanc, and lobster agnolotti with chanterelles and brioche crumbs. Meat dishes are just as generous, including pork chops with fried potatoes, blue cheese, and molasses barbecue sauce. Desserts such as coffee cake with streusel and malted milk ice cream round out a collection that combines familiar comforts with the ambition of restaurant cooking.
The recipes are accompanied by stories from the restaurant’s history, tracing its development from an exuberant neighborhood gathering place into a Montreal institution. For Hughes, who has spent two decades navigating changes in both the restaurant and the industry around it, Garde Manger’s longevity has depended on keeping the food and the experience enjoyable without allowing the place to become a monument to its own past.
Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.
Published on September 29, 2026
