Who we are ?

The name of this restaurant, borrowed from the Japanese, refers to one of the five fundamental flavours discovered by a Japanese sage “while tasting a seaweed broth”… They are all there, the flavours, in the recipes cooked by Fabrice. This chef puts all his inspiration into his regularly changing menu.

From the age of 8 or 9 and even before, I loved hanging out in the kitchen and having fun “entertaining my parents and brother” for dinner. I’d set the table in a very neat, even kitsch, way and I’d prepare the meal… I quickly got a taste for it…
I ended up getting a summer job as a kitchen assistant when I was 16… I loved it. I kept this job to pay for my unfinished studies in glassblowing… I then preferred to continue my studies by enrolling at the Institut du tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec…

It was at this time that I met my Frenchman, Fabrice. Following a visit to France in 2008, we decided to move here to complete our restaurant project. So here we are, together in this wonderful place from 2009.Umami comes to life in these premises that were home to his own grandparents years before.

Thank you to them for making it easy for us to buy and for paving the way.

It was at the age of 27 that I returned to the region where I was born, to the very restaurant where my baby crib had dragged me from the kitchen to the dining room under the protective eye of my grandmother. My destiny was certainly already mapped out, as the smells, the crackling of the pans and the incessant noise of delighted customers sealed my fate. Just before I was 3, my parents left the Vaucluse to settle in the Bordeaux region, where I finished my studies.
As a young graduate of the Bordeaux-Talence hotel school, my desire to discover other countries, each more beautiful than the last, led me to choose to work as a seasonal worker for a few wonderful years.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with some exceptional chefs in some equally exceptional places (Megève, Val Thorens, Martigues, Calvi, Ile Rousse and so on) but it was really meeting Marilyne a week before the planned end-of-season departure from Château Montebello that changed my life.

At last I had found someone to share my passion with, so I stayed in Montreal for a year and a half.As luck would have it, the owner of the restaurant where my grandparents had worked for 30 years contacted us to sell his business and we saw the opportunity of a lifetime. Unfortunately, the restaurant was in decline and offered only oriental specialities, so everything had to be done.
The UMAMI story began in June 2009 and we hope it will continue for a very long time.