Chuck Hughes opened Garde Manger in Old Montreal in 2006 with Tim Rozon and Kyle Marshall Nares with an arrangement that was simple enough: one worked the bar, one worked the floor, and Chuck was in the kitchen. There were no grand plans beyond making good food, playing good music, and having a great time doing it.
Twenty years later, Hughes is still there, but Garde Manger has become something considerably harder to define: a restaurant with a serious wine list, a kitchen that wastes nothing, and still unmistakably just fun to eat at.
We sat down with Hughes on the occasion of Garde Manger's twentieth anniversary to talk about what nobody warned him about before opening night, how restaurant culture has been turned inside out, and what it takes to stay relevant without becoming a monument to your own past.
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