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FOR ALMOST 125 YEARS, LE CHÂTEAU Frontenac has defined the skyline of Québec City and served as a global icon of gracious hospitality. Canadian Pacific Railways president William Van Horne imported bricks from Scotland to build a castle to serve as a stopover for travelers. In 1893, the Riverview Wing boasted 170 rooms, 93 of which had bathrooms and fireplaces, remarkable luxuries at the time. Today, Fairmont Le Château Frontenac has more than 7.5 miles of corridors connecting 611 elegant rooms outfitted with all of the latest creature comforts. Nearly 2,000 windows provide extraordinary views of the St. Lawrence River, Old Québec, or the hotel’s interior gardens.
More than 300,000 guests a year stay in this timeless urban resort, enjoying the amenities within its walls as well as its location in easy walking distance of the celebrated sites of Old Québec. In fact, the historic building is a destination in its own right, with guided tours of the grounds or self-guided tour apps for iPhone or Android devices. The hotel boasts a salon, Coiffure du Château, as well as restaurants that serve up to 3,000 fresh and innovative meals per day.
Chef Stéphane Modat, originally from southern France, oversees the kitchens of Champlain Restaurant and Bistro Le Sam, though his sophisticated Continental taste is also evident in the Place Dufferin breakfast buffet selection and the offerings at the 1608 wine and cheese bar. Sample the sous vide Arctic char with dill pickled onions and goat cheese or the Québec red deer with dried beans and smoked tomato cream over winter vegetables confit. However, the Champlain carte blanche experience — an inspired surprise menu consisting of the chef’s favorite dishes based on that day’s fresh deliveries — is truly singular.
As well as pleasing the palate, the sophisticated cuisine is created with local, organic, Fair Trade, and sustainable ingredients in- cluding organic or biodynamic wines and delicacies created by local purveyors. Le Château Frontenac is one such purveyor itself: The “17,000 trips” cocktail served at Bistro Le Sam is made with honey extracted from the hotel’s four rooftop beehives.
The Frontenac also offers an ultra-local, environmentally conscious “boreal coffee break,” which gives back to the land by planting a tree per person. The low-ecological-footprint menu includes a Montmorency forest herbal tea made with willow flower petals, Labrador tea, birch bark, fir buds, and two kinds of cookies — one baked from cattail flour and honey, and one flavored with fir.
This is Québec at its most sophisticated.