Filet de bœuf en croûte at Maker Feed Co.
Address: 2607 Old Montreal Road, Cumberland, ON, K4C 1A2
Website: https://makerfeedco.ca
Contact: (613) 833-8380
A self-described “military brat,” Michel Gaumond says he “found food” as a kid going to school in Germany, recounting a single instant where that appreciation was forged.
“During a school field trip, I had some bread with Westphalian ham and Gruyere baked right into it,” he says.
“I bought a loaf with money my parents had given me for the trip and finished the whole thing on the bus home. How could something be so delicious?”
The chef and owner of Maker Feed Co. (MFCo.) located in Cumberland, would also tell his sister that one day he wanted a house that had a room full of pickles and cured meats.
“And now I have a restaurant that does that.”
After a year of culinary school, Gaumond left the formal learning environment and returned to the hurly-burly of professional cooking.
“I was learning way more on the line at restaurants,” he says. “The cooks may have been characters, but they took their craft seriously. And I love the camaraderie.”
In parsing his restaurant’s name – Maker Feed Co. – Gaumond describes a straightforward connection between the cooks, the producers and farmers, butchers and fishmongers (the “makers”) and the people they feed (his customers).
His business partner has a network of farmers that the kitchen draws on and keeps the menu as local and as responsibly produced as possible; “farm-to-table” restaurants are no longer de rigeur: they are today commonplace at a certain echelon of dining and that’s the approach here.
With its eclectic décor inside, the old building was originally an apothecary’s store and personal residence – “there are lots of stories about the property,” says Gaumond – and has been a couple of restaurants before he opened MFCo. during the business roller coaster of the pandemic in 2020.
There are 65 seats over three floors with capacity doubling with summertime patios. Gaumond calls MFCo. a destination dining spot with 30 per cent of his customers travelling from Ottawa and Montreal.
The kitchen cooks what you’ll find at a French bistro. According to Gaumond, he likes the relative simplicity of the cuisine that then might branch off into something Vietnamese or Moroccan, but there are French connections there too.
The current spring menu is a half-dozen appetizers and soups and a main-course lineup of bistro classics: confit, moules-frites, beurre blanc, sauce Béarnaise – the offspring of “Mother Sauce” Hollandaise with butter, egg yolk, vinegar and herbs.
Salade Niçoise has a surf-tweak of tuna and roast sardine, plus there’s flat iron steak-frites with Bordelaise.
Citing that there are not a lot of similar menus in the area, it’s a niche Gaumond says they strive to fill.
“At the restaurants I’ve been to recently, it’s like everyone is being too clever. I want people to read the menu here and know what will be on their plate. We make that in our style to taste really good.”
Consider the filet de bœuf en croûte – Beef Wellington, “one of the most classic dishes,” Gaumond says, that many of those travelling diners are seeking …
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[Photos/Michel Gaumond]
