We are in the area celebrating not only my mom's birthday, but also following the route of the…read moreInspecteur Gamache series of novels by Louise Penny, famous local author. This was my mom's request and any chance to spend time in Quebec is something we all love.
North Harley is a charming little town with some unique shops and of course, this delightful Inn, L'Auberge de la Chocolatière, or The Chocolate Makers Inn.
The café has a nice array of breakfast, lunch and dinner items, as well as desserts.
We were promptly seated. Staff is perfectly bilingual (which is pretty common for this area).
I ordered the Grilled Cheese Panini with comes with side salad or soup of the day. I chose the latter, a celery and mushroom (non dairy) veloûté. My mom ordered the sane whereas my dad got the pepper and eggs Panini with chèvre and the soup.
We each ordered the thé froid, iced tea, a slightly sweetened iced herbal tea.
The Panini was delicious. It was a perfect combination of sweet and savory. The soup was creamy, properly seasoned and piping hot. As there
was a chill in the air, it hit the spot.
The service was excellent.
We opted to forgo dessert, but we did get an array of 12 artisanal chocolates to go. We had mom choose the flavors from over almost 40 offerings in dark, milk and white chocolate. Each chocolate has a fine-thick sliver of topping or sprinkling of herbs or spices, such as dried cranberries, apricot, elderflower, cassis, cayenne pepper, sea salt, lavender, coconut, cardamom. In essence, a chocolate lovers paradise.
In the car, we sampled the pralined and the apricot. The chocolate is extremely high quality and not too sweet. There's a lot of love out into those concoctions.
The store also sells maple syrup candies and syrup, small and large bars of the chocolates, etc.
It was a lovely first meal in the region. I would cone back here to enjoy the area's outdoor offerings and perhaps stay here.