On the front lines of Mile End’s chicken war

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Why did the chicken restaurant open across the road?

The question is being asked on St-Viateur St., in Mile End, where two new additions will soon bring the total number of chicken eateries to five, along four short blocks. Which begs another question: how much bird can one street eat?

At the heart of the strip is the venerable, family-run Rôtisserie Serrano Bar-B-Q, which has been serving the faithful for over 40 years. Going east, there’s Mile End Grilladerie Portugaise and Cantine Emilia.

Heading west are burgeoning fried chicken chain Jack Le Coq, and the revival of the fabled Laurier BBQ, both due to open in the next two months.

Add Caribbean fast-food spot Lloydie’s, which specializes in Jamaican patties but also serves jerk chicken, and Café Smile around the corner on St-Laurent, which does Portuguese grilled chicken, and the total is up to seven.

“I don’t agree (with all this),” said Serrano co-owner Rosalinda Saavedra, 65, whose mother Fulgencia bought the restaurant in 1977, after arriving from Peru in 1973.

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“We don’t know what to do. At the beginning, people were opening restaurants and it was good; there were a lot of (customers), and variety. But if they start opening all chicken restaurants, that’s bad. You can’t open the same thing everywhere. It’s unfair competition.”

Saavedra and her siblings have all worked in the restaurant over the years. Her sister Elizabeth began peeling potatoes after school when she was 13.

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“The neighbourhood has changed a lot,” said Elizabeth, now 52. Rôtisserie Serrano is one of the holdouts of the Mile End of old. Its most popular menu item? The chicken sandwich, packed with a quarter chicken and a generous serving of veggies, all topped off by their homemade hot sauce.

“It’s salt mixed with spices,” Elizabeth said. “When (our mom) started making it, people would ask for the secret and she would say, ‘I can’t tell you, or you won’t come back.’ ”

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Their mother, 88, is currently ill. Their father died in 2018, at the age of 99 and a half. But the business they built, despite growing competition, is still going strong.

“I don’t think there’s a danger,” Saavedra said. “People have known us a long time. We have a reputation.”

Her sister hopes that’s enough to keep Rôtisserie Serrano afloat in a fast-changing neighbourhood.

“I know everyone is looking to make money,” Elizabeth said, “but this will affect us. Now, with five chicken restaurants, clients will go elsewhere; they won’t come to us every day. It will make sales go down. It’s worrying.”

A lifesaver for the Saavedra family, in an era of real estate speculation and skyrocketing commercial rents, is the fact that their mother owns the building. That means they can’t be forced out of the neighbourhood by a rent hike.

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“If not, we wouldn’t be here,” Elizabeth said.

Laurier BBQ is reopening in a space that has sat empty since Chez de Gaulle pastry shop was forced out by a steep rent increase in 2019. The building is owned by real estate firm Shiller Lavy, which has bought up much of St-Viateur St. over the past decade.

Shiller Lavy owns the Laurier BBQ name, following an ill-fated attempt to revive the legendary family restaurant in 2011 with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

A pamphlet stapled to the boarded-up building recently took the company to task, just days after a public outcry helped save neighbouring bookstore (and Shiller Lavy tenant) S.W. Welch from demise due to its own hefty rent raise.

“Shiller Lavy, So you want to open a chicken take-out counter in the heart of the neighbourhood,” the poster said.

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“Why here? Why still more chicken? Don’t you feel the anchoring force, the resilience and our devotion toward Rotisserie Serrano? Can’t you feel our loyalty to the neighbourhood’s long-time small businesses?”

Contacted by the Montreal Gazette, landlord Danny Lavy denied any wrongdoing.

“We have nothing to do with it,” he said. “(The team behind the new Laurier BBQ) is our tenant. I’m not going to answer anything. The question is ridiculous. I’m not in charge.”

Reopening Laurier BBQ is the latest project by Maxime Tremblay, Emmanuel Goubard and chef Franco Parreira, the trio behind St-Henri bistro 3734, Victoria BBQ in St-Lambert and Mitch Deli. When they began talking to Shiller Lavy about renting the space, Lavy suggested they consider taking over the Laurier BBQ name.

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“It’s a lot of chicken (on St-Viateur),” admitted Tremblay, who has lived in or around Mile End for years, “but it’s not the chicken that is changing the atmosphere of the street. Ubisoft and the advertising and tech companies changed the neighbourhood. I don’t think our business is the fatal blow for anything.”

Yet he acknowledges the lack of diversity has its drawbacks.

“Sure, when I saw Jack Le Coq was opening across the street, I didn’t say, ‘Yay! More chicken!’”

Jack Le Coq owner Jacques Gaspo has opened more than 100 different restaurants. He’s confident he’ll stand out by offering fried chicken, which is already proving popular at Jack Le Coq’s Verdun location.

“Fried chicken is fried chicken,” he said. “It’s a different beast, different taste, different crunch, more juicy.”

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Pedro Medina launched the first Cantine Emilia in Villeray in 2018. There are now a half-dozen in and around Montreal, with others on the way.

He says the chain’s success is about more than grilled chicken.

“We’re creating a brand around Portuguese cuisine,” said Medina, who also co-owns the Pizza Bros and L’Oeufrier chains. “Chicken is not even on the logo.”

Cantine Emilia is located in another building owned by Shiller Lavy.

Grace Oliveira opened Mile End Grilladerie Portugaise with her brother Nelson in 2012.

“Back then, it was a fantastic opportunity,” said Oliveira, whose father-in-law created Portuguese chicken institutions Coco Rico and Restaurant Jano on the Main in the 1970s.

She sees the surge of chicken restaurants in the area as “too much of the same thing. … What they’re doing on St-Viateur, it’s crazy. We’ll see if there’s enough clientele for everyone to survive.”

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Marie Plourde, Projet Montreal councillor for Mile End, is conflicted regarding what’s happening to the street.

“We can rejoice that they’re filling vacant storefronts,” she said. “And I was happy to see the return of Laurier BBQ. At the same time, the diversity of (businesses) is disappearing to make St-Viateur a big cafeteria for the work zone (in the industrial district east of St-Laurent).

“You can’t blame an entrepreneur for wanting to open a business; but were these the right locales to open chicken restaurants, when there’s already such an abundance? To ask the question is to answer it.”

tdunlevy@postmedia.com

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