Le Jurancon – A Marseille inspired brunch

The 411

Fine French dining meets brunch – often a pairing you don’t see on a regular basis. Interestingly, brunch is not native to France and although there are more and more spots that offer brunch nowadays you would not associate it with a small little French bistro. So, when I heard that Le Jurancon was offering brunch, I was quite curious. How would it pair French dining with brunch? What ingredients and what surprises would we be in store for, and how is it that a French restaurant finds itself in the eastern part of the city? This and many more we hope to answer as well give you some idea of what Le Jurancon has to offer.

At 1st glance

When you walk into Le Jurancon you notice right away that this place is cozy and with less that 20 seats, it can fill up fast. Needless to say, reservations are almost necessary for this Sunday-only brunch. The décor is nice and well lit thanks to some large windows lining the building. The interior feels light and open with white walls, a small splash of brick in the corner and light wood accents. The menu is inspired from Marsseille as the chef is from there.

Food

The menu is a short one-pager with 10 items all in the $12 zone and each with complimentary coffee and free refills. The menu items have geographic inspired names like: Le Mareseillais, L’americain, Le Provencal etc. Almost all dishes in the menu have eggs in them with the exception of Le Breton which has crepes instead. A nice feature of the dining experience is that you get a baguette bread at the beginning and some warm butter. They also refill the bread and butter which I don’t see too often. All main items come with free coffee or juice with free coffee refills. The menu breakdown is as follows:

My friend, had the Quebecois ($8.25), naturally, which is two eggs, Toulouse sausage or bacon, potatoes with grilled baguette bread. The sausage (we did not opt for the bacon in this dish) was quite plump and juicy. It is more of a true sausage than one of those teeny tiny breakfast sausages other places try to pass as a meat side. The potatoes were also thinly sliced and nicely spiced. There was a side of salad and if you know me, I am usually not a fan, but it worked well with this dish. I should note this is probably one of the few times you will see me speaking in praise of salad on a breakfast dish. In this case, it worked because the taste is exquisite.

The Nordique ($12) is comprised of two eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, a side of potatoes and salad. The hollandaise sauce was wonderfully done and is an excellent consistency: not too runny and not too pasty. The smoked salmon portion in this dish is extremely generous which is a nice thing to get in an eggs Benedict dish. This and the fact you get free coffee all for $12 is an excellent deal especially since usually you have to pay $2 more for the same dish elsewhere and you don’t even get coffee included, not to mentioned, it’s often not that tasty.

We had to go with the chef inspired dish, the Marseillais ($10.75) which is a wonder of a dish consisting of 3 eggs scrambled, with goat cheese, vegetables, and potatoes on the side. This dish was not only unique, in that I have never had anything quite like this, but its taste made it the clear winner among all the other dishes and next time I go I will definitely have that dish again. The Marseillais delivered on taste presentation and it was filling.

Service

We had minimal staff this day. In fact, we had one waiter who managed to handle everything and get us what we needed along with giving our table proper attention. Despite being so busy, he actually spent the time with us for menu suggestions and on top of that, he talked about all the different parts of France

Vegetarian

There really aren’t too many vegetarian dishes. You can basically get 3 options. There are some smoked salmon dishes if you are a pesco vegetarian.

Wrap up

Le Jurancon did not disappoint. It took a French food inspiration and successfully applied it to brunch. This brunch menu is not your normal bacon and eggs menu but rather a more refined French inspired food selection with some hearty items like the sausage and blood pudding. The place is small and reservations will make your life easier. I truly enjoyed it and welcomed this breath of fresh air into the brunch scene. I was also very impressed on how the prices were all in the $8-$10 in most instances and included free coffee as well which makes this place a really good deal!

View Le Jurançon in a larger map

Price	$$	$10-$12
Overall		4.5/5
Wheelchair Access	NO	0/3
Parking	Parking Meter & Street	Easy
BUS	13,30,95,18	Get Directions
Metro	Beaubien	7 minutes

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