Over the last twenty years, Saint-Roch has earned the nickname “Nouvo Saint-Roch.” Right in its center, the Hôtel Royal William, now owned by Sept-Îles entrepreneur, hotelier, and developer Simon Dubé, has been reborn since 2018. Today, it brings a fresh dose of charm to Québec’s lower town, blending elegance, history, and great food.
Dubé’s journey wasn’t easy. Soon after buying the hotel, he faced a pandemic and a restaurant fire. A $6 million renovation followed, updating the 47 rooms and studios, refreshing the lobby, and giving the ground-floor restaurant a new Italian identity as Mila. Work has also been underway since 2026 to redesign the building’s façade on boulevard Charest.
The hotel has long been a favorite among Québec and Montréal’s artists and public figures. Its location is hard to beat, just steps from Saint-Roch’s cultural spots, restaurants, and the historic upper town. Parking is available nearby, under the Bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy. The meeting rooms work for corporate events, training sessions, cocktails, birthdays, or product launches. Many rooms and suites even have kitchenettes, so guests can cook a meal or grab a quick bite without leaving.
MILA Ristorante, the hotel’s completely reimagined restaurant, serves up refined Italian cuisine with carefully chosen ingredients. Co-owner Tchad Khalil, a passionate Italian food lover, brings years of restaurant experience to the table. He found a like-minded partner in Simon Dubé. “We wanted to create a place where every meal feels like a journey, something that comforts and inspires,” Khalil says. Mila also serves breakfast, with a hearty buffet open to hotel guests and anyone else craving a flavorful start to the day.
Saint-Roch wasn’t always this lively. Once a working-class neighborhood, it’s now a prime example of urban renewal in Québec. Development projects, creative businesses like video game studios and tech labs, a thriving arts scene, university outposts, and major organizations have all helped transform the area. The old energy is back, but with a modern twist, making Saint-Roch one of the city’s most dynamic districts.
The revitalization of Saint-Roch is part of a larger effort to expand public spaces, support local businesses, and preserve the area’s heritage. The building that’s housed the Royal William for over 25 years is one of those gems, its façade reminiscent of the long, retro-style hotels of 1920s Manhattan. “I wanted a boutique hotel that felt different from Québec’s bigger chains, a place without pretension, where you feel at home, with good service at fair prices,” says Simon Dubé.
For history lovers, the shift from sail to steam in the 19th century changed global trade forever. The first transatlantic crossing by a steamship was a major achievement. While other countries have claimed the honor, Canada holds it. The Royal William, a paddle steamer built at Québec’s Campbell and Black shipyard, made the journey from Pictou, Nova Scotia, to Portsmouth, England, in 1833, proving it was the first.
The Royal William, built in Québec in the early 1830s.
Québec recently announced a 2026–2029 plan to invest $80 million in Saint-Roch, with big ambitions for the district over the next 15 years.
Hôtel Royal William
royalwilliam.com
360 boulevard Charest Est
Québec, QC G1K 3H4
(418) 521-4488
Some places just stick around. They become the kind of spot where people gather for good times, where every corner has a story. L’Auberge de la Paix on Rue Couillard in Vieux-Québec is one of those places.
It opened in 1972 as a youth hostel, born from the free-spirited energy of the 1970s. Back then, it was a non-profit, created to give travelers a cheap place to stay while keeping the doors wide open to the world. The idea was simple: a community space where young people and wanderers could crash, share stories, and figure things out together.
The hostel sits in a building from around 1850, right inside Vieux-Québec’s old fortifications, a neighborhood that’s now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The architect was Charles Baillairgé, the city’s go-to guy for design and engineering back in the day. The building even had a carriage passageway so horses and wagons could pull straight into the back courtyard.
Then came COVID-19. The hostel shut down completely in 2020, and the non-profit couldn’t keep going. The team didn’t have the money or the manpower to keep the doors open, so they had to call it quits in March 2023.
That’s when the owners of the café next door, Chez Temporel, stepped in. Mélissa Spénard-Lefebvre and Louis-Charles Tremblay (photo) decided to take over. They swapped their café hats for innkeeper ones, keeping the hostel’s spirit alive but running it as a business now. Their background in real estate and their love for Vieux-Québec’s history made the leap feel right.
The hostel reopened in May 2023, just in time for tourist season, and just over 50 years after it first started. Since then, they’ve poured more than $300,000 into renovations, safety upgrades, and sprucing the place up.
Today, it sleeps about sixty people in a mix of dorms and private rooms. The vibe is still the same, friendly, easygoing, the way hostels should be. And don’t assume it’s just for backpackers. Families stop by for short stays, and a lot of the guests are retirees who like things simple and enjoy a good conversation.
The hostel has everything you’d expect: a shared kitchen, a big common room, a nice courtyard, free Wi-Fi, and underground parking just two minutes away.
It’s also in a great spot. There are cafés and restaurants all around, including Chez Temporel just two doors down, plus a grocery store right next door. The new owners have added modern touches like digital locks with unique codes, so everyone feels safe.
Auberge de la Paix
aubergedelapaix.com
31 Rue Couillard
Québec, QC, G1R 3T4
418-694-0735
Mélissa Spénard-Lefebvre and Louis-Charles Tremblay became the new owners of Chez Temporel in 2021, right in the middle of the pandemic. Taking over a place this loved wasn’t something they did on a whim. They wanted to keep what made it special, so they put their energy into giving the café a fresh start while staying true to its roots.
Louis-Charles brought a mix of skills to the table, real estate experience, business know-how, and an engineering background, plus a degree in civil engineering. In 2023, he also bought the Auberge de la Paix next door, a youth hostel that’s been a Vieux-Québec staple since 1972.
Louis-Charles Tremblay (right) with the district’s city councillor and Jean Boissonnault, who co-founded Temporel, at the café’s 50th-anniversary party in 2024.
Since 1974, Chez Temporel has sat on rue Couillard in the heart of Vieux-Québec, right inside the old city walls. It’s the kind of place where students, locals, artists, and visitors from Europe and beyond still come to hang out, create, and connect.
For a whole generation of writers and artists, Temporel was more than just a café. “Vieux-Québec was where you felt the French side of Québec,” says author Martin Têtu, who grew up in the neighborhood and wrote the novel *Félix au Café Temporel*. “People discovered café allongés, croissants, and French music here.”
At a 2024 event celebrating the café’s 50th anniversary, speakers talked about how important neighborhood spots like Temporel are for keeping Vieux-Québec’s culture alive. When the café opened, the area was still a working-class neighborhood. Over the years, it became a creative hub for artists like Gaston Miron, Chrystine Brouillet, Lucien Francoeur, and Monique Proulx. Their visits helped shape Québec’s cultural scene in the 1980s and gave Temporel its legendary reputation. For some regulars, it was even where they tried their first allongé or croissant.
These days, Chez Temporel has a bistro vibe. Since taking over in 2021, Mélissa and Louis-Charles have updated the menu but kept the café’s bohemian heart. The classic croque-monsieur is still there, and art is everywhere. You’ll find traditional and modern dishes, all made with local ingredients, served day or night. The drinks menu has something for everyone, cocktails, wine, and ready-to-drink options. The owners are committed to preserving the café’s soul while bringing back some of its old magic.
With its stone walls, open kitchen in the back, big front windows, counter stools, and a staircase leading to a cozy upstairs room, Chez Temporel feels like stepping into another time. It’s the kind of place where people used to sit for hours, talking, dreaming, and reinventing the world over coffee or a drink.
As a restaurateur, Louis-Charles is also passionate about fairness. He’s spoken out about how tips are usually split unevenly between front-of-house and kitchen staff. He’s pushing for the government to let restaurants manage tip distribution themselves, so everyone gets a fair share. It’s a cause he’s taken public to bring more attention to the issue.
Chez Temporel
cheztemporel.com
25, rue Couillard
Québec, QC G1R 3T3
(418) 694-1813
Patrick Nisot moved to Québec with his parents from Belgium in 1986. He started out studying agronomy at Université Laval, thinking it covered everything about food, what people grow, how they grow it, and what ends up on their plates. But baking was always on his mind.
Twenty-five years later, his four La Boîte à Pain bakeries in Québec employ 150 people.
The idea really took shape when he was 26, working on a grain farm in Saskatchewan. That’s when he decided he wanted to run his own business. Back in Québec, he spent the summer figuring out his next move. Baking had always been his dream, ever since he was a kid visiting his grandparents’ bakery in a small French village, where they made an incredible baguette. He could still picture himself sliding loaves into the oven.
With help from employment insurance, he took a bakery course in Montréal-Nord to get the skills he needed. After that, he worked at a bakery on rue Cartier in Québec, soaking up everything he could about the trade.
When Patrick tried to open his own bakery in 1999, banks turned him down. He’d spent six months putting together a solid business plan and even got it approved by the CLD de Québec. But it was the Fonds d’emprunt Québec that finally gave him a chance, lending him $15,000 to get started. The organization helps local entrepreneurs who can’t get traditional financing.
Then, on October 19, 1999, at 3:30 a.m., after two years of planning, training, renovations, and test runs, Patrick turned on the mixer at La Boîte à Pain. The space was on rue Saint-Joseph in Saint-Roch. He started with a white dough made with poolish , 25 kilograms of it, shaped into 20 baguettes, 10 Belgian loaves, 10 white squares, 10 round loaves, and a few ficelles.
The mixer had been running for three days straight, and the oven was already hot. The first test loaves went to curious neighbors who’d gathered outside. The bakery door was still covered in brown paper, waiting for the official opening, but Patrick had to let people in, the place was sweltering without any ventilation. They handed out bread fresh from the oven. It was the best way to see if customers would like it. They did.
When they finally opened for business, they sold 15 baguettes a day in the first week. After that, sales doubled every year. By 2002, they had about 20 employees at just one location.
In the spring of 2007, Patrick came back from Naples, Italy, with a new idea: Neapolitan pizza. At the time, no one in Québec was making it. The problem? You need an oven that gets much hotter than a bread oven. He found one in Lévis, tucked away in a storage building. A year later, on April 1, 2008, La Boîte à Pain/Café Napoli opened in Limoilou, built around that oven.
The same setup opened in Sainte-Foy in 2015 and at the Grand Marché de Québec in 2019. The Grand Marché location only sells products, while the other two are both bakeries and pizzerias. Meanwhile, the original La Boîte à Pain moved to rue du Parvis in Saint-Roch, just a short walk from where it all started.
Since 2014, they’ve also had a production center where they make about 40 kinds of artisanal bread. Back in 1999, they mostly sold white, wheat, and rye bread, baguettes, croissants, chocolatines, and brioches. Now, they distribute around 3,000 croissants and 10,000 viennoiseries to their four locations every week. Over 25 years, Patrick has seen the world of bread and pastries change alongside his team of bakers and artisans.
Patrick Nisot with employees from the production centre
Today, La Boîte à Pain offers 40 types of bread, about 20 Neapolitan-style pizzas, gourmet sandwiches made fresh daily, a dozen kinds of viennoiseries, pastries in all sizes, and market products tailored to what customers want. Everything is made with top-quality flour and fresh ingredients from trusted local suppliers. For Patrick, there’s no room for compromise when it comes to quality.
He’s still the one calling the shots, but in 2024, he brought in a general manager, Jean-François Gagné, to handle day-to-day operations and production. Jean-François is set to become a shareholder, and Patrick hints that new projects are in the works, maybe even with partners. But in the spring of 2026, he’s keeping the details under wraps.
La Boîte à pain
boiteapain.com
Saint-Roch
432 rue du Parvis, Québec
418 647-3666
Sainte-Foy
2836, chemin Sainte-Foy, Québec
418 914-1133
Café Napoli (Limoilou)
396, 3e Avenue, Québec
418 977-7571
Grand Marché de Québec
250, boulevard Wilfrid-Hamel, Québec
418 692-2517 ext. 105
Les Salons d’Edgar started in 1997 in Québec’s Saint-Roch neighbourhood. The space was once a theatre called Les Fourberies, but it didn’t take long for it to become a cultural hub where artists, students, professionals, and locals all mixed together.
If you’ve been coming for years, you might have spotted Robert Lepage here, actor, playwright, director, and entrepreneur, who made the place his regular hangout.
François Boulianne and Annie Brassard ran the show for nearly 25 years. In 2022, after a pandemic transition, new owners took over, with the founders staying on to guide the team. Actor, director, and casting agent Nicolas Létourneau says he and his friend Raphaël Posadas (a director, stage director, and actor) bought the place on a whim, they were already regulars.
Two of the partners: Raphaël and Nicolas.
Two of the original four partners moved on to other projects. Chef Francis Proulx joined later, and longtime employees Lou Miriam Bolduc and Léa Ratycz-Légaré became partners in 2024. Now, each member of the team handles part of the business based on what they do best.
These days, shared management, a fresh approach, and a focus on making guests feel at home keep Les Salons d’Edgar a Saint-Roch staple. Over 25 people work here, covering the kitchen, service, and bar.
Les Salons d’Edgar is a Québec nightlife landmark, comfort food, craft cocktails, and an eclectic, welcoming space. Every evening from 5 PM (closed Mondays), the two rooms offer pool tables, a small stage, dance nights, and two bars, one up front, one in the back, for different moods. It’s warm, a little over-the-top, and always fun, with a cozy vibe that keeps people coming back. In summer, the sunny terrace out front is the perfect spot. Saturday nights are especially lively, much to the delight of longtime regulars.
A few years ago, the team got a restaurant license, so now minors can join adults and enjoy the kitchen and its well-loved menu every evening from 5 PM. When asked about the most popular dishes, Nicolas doesn’t hesitate: the marinated beef flank steak, the shareable nachos platter, and the classic poutine. Brunch is served on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:30 AM to 1 PM.
The team at Les Salons d’Edgar has big plans. They’d love to buy the building and add a second floor to the back for private events, group gatherings, or performances.
Nicolas Létourneau, who had no restaurant experience before taking over Les Salons d’Edgar, recently became co-owner of Chez Victor on boul. Laurier with the same partners. It’s a new adventure for him, with a team of about twenty and updates to the space to make the experience even better.
Les Salons d’Edgar
lessalonsdedgar.com
263, rue Saint-Vallier Est
Québec (Québec), G1K 3P3
418 523-7811
It’s early May 2026, a rainy Tuesday night in Saint-Sauveur. The neighborhood is in the middle of a makeover, especially along Rue Saint-Vallier Ouest. Parking’s a little tight if you’re driving, but the place still pulls you in, two big garage-style doors swing open to the street, promising something cozy inside.
Step through those doors and you’re in a snug, thirty-seat room. Some tables have retro banquettes, others face the kitchen so you can watch the chefs at work. The whole place feels like the neighborhood’s favorite hangout, laid-back, a little rowdy, and totally fun. That’s the vibe before you even look at the menu.
Diner Saint-Sauveur has been serving up its take on comfort food for eight years now. The three partners behind it love the way locals keep coming back, and how word has spread, visitors from across the Capitale-Nationale region, even tourists who’ve heard about the food, stop by to see what the fuss is about.
The team is small, eight people working shifts from 5 PM to 10 PM, Monday to Saturday, and 2 PM to 9 PM on Sundays. When we visited, partners Sylvain Barbeau and Eric Lemay showed us around. You can tell they live for this: years in the business, stories from every corner of it, and a clear idea of what they want the place to be.
The menu is all about reinventing classics with an American diner twist. Burgers, classic and creative, share space with indulgent poutines, mac ’n’ cheese, and chicken ’n’ waffles. We tried their hot chicken sandwich: breaded chicken on grilled cheese, smothered in homemade brown sauce and peas. It’s the kind of dish that makes you want to come back for more.
Other favorites include fish ’n’ chips, pâté chinois, pasta, meatloaf, and seafood. If you’re feeling adventurous and the ingredients are in, you can even build your own plate.
Drinks are just as thoughtfully put together. There’s a solid lineup of Québec microbrews, wine by the glass or bottle, and cocktails that are creative without trying too hard.
Space is tight, so the team opened *Supérette du Dîner* next door. It’s a neighborhood grocery focused on Québec-made food and drinks, craft beers, ciders, artisanal wines, plus non-alcoholic options and ready-to-drink mixes. It keeps the kitchen from getting overwhelmed and makes sure you can still grab something great even if the restaurant’s full.
The *Supérette* also stocks homemade ready-to-eat meals from the diner. It’s a smart way to let more people enjoy what they’re cooking, and the grocery’s open seven days a week with flexible hours.
Le Diner Saint-Sauveur
dinersaintsauveur.ca
450 Rue Saint-Vallier Ouest
Québec, QC G1K 1L1
(581) 741-4090
Supérette, neighborhood grocery
superettedudiner.com
411 Rue Saint-Vallier Ouest
Québec, QC G1K 1K7
581 705-9555
