Moncton's Le Château à Pape is no more after weekend fire
February 01, 2010
Moncton, N.B., is known for many things -- its railway hub, the Northrop Frye literary festival, the Magnetic Hill optical illusion in which cars roll uphill, and the highest per capita concentration of Tim Hortons in Canada -- but fine dining is not usually among them.
As in other Maritime cities, fussy chefs tend to obscure Moncton's gastronomical pleasures, which are invariably taken live from the sea, cooked as little as possible, if at all, seasoned with salt, and eaten with fingers.
Since 1925, four generations of the Gosselin family worked to change that.
Beginning with a fish-and-chips place on Main Street run by Guillaume "Willie" Gosselin (known to his descendants as Pape), the Gosselins built a culinary dynasty that has operated for the past 15 years out of a century-old Italianate Victorian mansion on the banks of the muddy Petitcodiac River, complete with a rooftop "widow's walk" balustrade for watching the frothing tidal bore as it rolls in from the Bay of Fundy.
Named for the patriarch, Le Château à Pape was passed from Willie's son Pius to his son Pierre, who employs his own children as servers and cooks. From coq au vin to chateaubriand, the Gosselins brought an elaborate Gallic flair to the land of lobster rolls and fried clams, and earned themselves a ranking among the top 100 restaurants in Canada.
In the hands of Gosselin chefs, scallops would find themselves stuffed into mushrooms and covered with garlic and melted cheese. Chickens would be braised into Acadian fricot, a winter stew made with potatoes and the Maritime herb summer savoury, which was a particular favourite of former governor-general Roméo LeBlanc.
Even fiddleheads, those bizarre little greens that unfurl from the floors of northeastern forests in early spring, would undergo a two-step cooking process, first boiled in salt water before being sautéed in butter, vinegar, basil and white wine.
Most famous, however, was the hands-on wine cellar, to which guests were invited to descend and poke around until they found a bottle to their liking, usually priced at just above cost.
This past weekend, in the early hours of Saturday morning, a police officer coming off his shift at the nearby RCMP detachment was cleaning snow off his car when he noticed smoke coming from the kitchen.
Two hours later, the battle was lost, and firefighters retreated from the restaurant's elegant interior, with white linen over antique tables. They could only try to contain the fire by dumping water from aerial towers. By dawn, the last ember was doused, and Le Château à Pape is today a frozen, blackened wreck, structurally unsound, and doomed to demolition.
Pierre Gosselin declined to comment on Monday.
"They're grieving right now," said his brother Michel, also a chef. "It's totalled. It's a write-off." He said it is 90% certain they will rebuild.
The heritage building, once one of the finest residences in Moncton, was built in 1902 as a home for produce wholesaler William H. Edgett, and later sold to the merchant and realtor Donald A. MacBeath
It seems the love the Gosselins put into their restoration -- new walls over old ones, false ceilings, and especially the new metal sheeting on the roof -- was a major factor in its destruction.
"The fire had a lot of conduits or channels to travel that were very hard to get at," said Moncton Fire Chief Eric Arsenault. His team was also unable to cut holes in the roof to vent the hot gases, which might have allowed the fire to die down.
"Basically, our firefighters were fighting a fire in an oven," he said. "After two hours of aggressive interior attack, they pulled out, and we went into a defensive mode and used our aerial water towers."
As they did, the temperature fell and the wind picked up, which "doesn't help matters at all."
The fire remains under investigation and unexplained, but arson is not suspected.
Fire Chief Arsenault said the city is distraught by the loss of a favourite attraction and popular wedding venue. "I liked the porterhouse steak," he said.
It is not the first time the restaurant burned. In 2005, a fire reportedly started in an oven around suppertime on a Monday, and spread to the exhaust vents before sprinklers put it out, prompting a fire prevention officer to close the restaurant until they removed a grease buildup.
"I was not impressed with the shape the kitchen was in, the buildup of grease, " the officer said. "They didn't keep up service on their appliances."
Michel Gosselin said the stoves have since been changed from propane to natural gas, and the problems solved.
Pierre Gosselin once told the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal that, despite his restaurant's flair on the plate, his personal tastes are quite simple, and he tends to make himself workaday dishes like barbequed chicken and peanut butter sandwiches.
"I am like a mechanic who never repairs his own car," he said.
Cleaning Commercial Kitchen Exhaust Systems Since 1971
5734 Bankfield Avenue
Culver City, California 90230
310-636-8361 x 203
Grant Mogford
February 01, 2010
Moncton, N.B., is known for many things -- its railway hub, the Northrop Frye literary festival, the Magnetic Hill optical illusion in which cars roll uphill, and the highest per capita concentration of Tim Hortons in Canada -- but fine dining is not usually among them.
As in other Maritime cities, fussy chefs tend to obscure Moncton's gastronomical pleasures, which are invariably taken live from the sea, cooked as little as possible, if at all, seasoned with salt, and eaten with fingers.
Since 1925, four generations of the Gosselin family worked to change that.
Beginning with a fish-and-chips place on Main Street run by Guillaume "Willie" Gosselin (known to his descendants as Pape), the Gosselins built a culinary dynasty that has operated for the past 15 years out of a century-old Italianate Victorian mansion on the banks of the muddy Petitcodiac River, complete with a rooftop "widow's walk" balustrade for watching the frothing tidal bore as it rolls in from the Bay of Fundy.
Named for the patriarch, Le Château à Pape was passed from Willie's son Pius to his son Pierre, who employs his own children as servers and cooks. From coq au vin to chateaubriand, the Gosselins brought an elaborate Gallic flair to the land of lobster rolls and fried clams, and earned themselves a ranking among the top 100 restaurants in Canada.
In the hands of Gosselin chefs, scallops would find themselves stuffed into mushrooms and covered with garlic and melted cheese. Chickens would be braised into Acadian fricot, a winter stew made with potatoes and the Maritime herb summer savoury, which was a particular favourite of former governor-general Roméo LeBlanc.
Even fiddleheads, those bizarre little greens that unfurl from the floors of northeastern forests in early spring, would undergo a two-step cooking process, first boiled in salt water before being sautéed in butter, vinegar, basil and white wine.
Most famous, however, was the hands-on wine cellar, to which guests were invited to descend and poke around until they found a bottle to their liking, usually priced at just above cost.
This past weekend, in the early hours of Saturday morning, a police officer coming off his shift at the nearby RCMP detachment was cleaning snow off his car when he noticed smoke coming from the kitchen.
Two hours later, the battle was lost, and firefighters retreated from the restaurant's elegant interior, with white linen over antique tables. They could only try to contain the fire by dumping water from aerial towers. By dawn, the last ember was doused, and Le Château à Pape is today a frozen, blackened wreck, structurally unsound, and doomed to demolition.
Pierre Gosselin declined to comment on Monday.
"They're grieving right now," said his brother Michel, also a chef. "It's totalled. It's a write-off." He said it is 90% certain they will rebuild.
The heritage building, once one of the finest residences in Moncton, was built in 1902 as a home for produce wholesaler William H. Edgett, and later sold to the merchant and realtor Donald A. MacBeath
It seems the love the Gosselins put into their restoration -- new walls over old ones, false ceilings, and especially the new metal sheeting on the roof -- was a major factor in its destruction.
"The fire had a lot of conduits or channels to travel that were very hard to get at," said Moncton Fire Chief Eric Arsenault. His team was also unable to cut holes in the roof to vent the hot gases, which might have allowed the fire to die down.
"Basically, our firefighters were fighting a fire in an oven," he said. "After two hours of aggressive interior attack, they pulled out, and we went into a defensive mode and used our aerial water towers."
As they did, the temperature fell and the wind picked up, which "doesn't help matters at all."
The fire remains under investigation and unexplained, but arson is not suspected.
Fire Chief Arsenault said the city is distraught by the loss of a favourite attraction and popular wedding venue. "I liked the porterhouse steak," he said.
It is not the first time the restaurant burned. In 2005, a fire reportedly started in an oven around suppertime on a Monday, and spread to the exhaust vents before sprinklers put it out, prompting a fire prevention officer to close the restaurant until they removed a grease buildup.
"I was not impressed with the shape the kitchen was in, the buildup of grease, " the officer said. "They didn't keep up service on their appliances."
Michel Gosselin said the stoves have since been changed from propane to natural gas, and the problems solved.
Pierre Gosselin once told the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal that, despite his restaurant's flair on the plate, his personal tastes are quite simple, and he tends to make himself workaday dishes like barbequed chicken and peanut butter sandwiches.
"I am like a mechanic who never repairs his own car," he said.
Cleaning Commercial Kitchen Exhaust Systems Since 1971
5734 Bankfield Avenue
Culver City, California 90230
310-636-8361 x 203
Grant Mogford
