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Fuchsia Epicerie Fleurs

Fuchsia makes flowers taste as good as they look—from the lavender coffee or orange blossom tea to the rosewater biscuits. This vegetarian restaurant is a must-taste place to visit in Montreal.

Walking into Fuchsia café always makes me feel like I’m getting a big, comforting hug.

It starts as soon as I push open the heavy wooden door and hear the cheery bell (fashioned from an upturned tea cup). Inside, light streams through the giant windows, the wooden floor creaks and the crockery is charmingly mismatched. On the pink counter, cookies and cupcakes are piled high on tiered desert trays. It’s like something out of a Maeve Binchy novel.

The energetic owner, Binky, seems to know absolutely everyone (including you, if you visit more than once) and always appears to be having a fantastic time. How this is possible, I do not know. She is a testament to loving your job.

Everything's Made with Flowers

Fuchsia’s raison d’être is flowers, which are found in everyone one of the drinks, dishes and desserts they serve. Some of my top picks are the chocolate violet cookies, the lavender coffee and, on a hot day, the hibiscus lemonade.

There are also flowers in their homemade jams, jellies and preserves, like the orange coriander blossom jam, the raspberry basil rose jam, and the organic rose sugar.

Full Home-cooked Vegetarian Meals for $10

My favourite reason to visit Fuchsia is for Binky’s well-priced, home-cooked meals. Every day, a measly $10 (or $15 on Sunday) buys you a flower-based drink, a wholesome vegetarian main course, and a gourmet desert (if you’re really lucky it’ll be the chocolate mousse). There’s only one meal per day so in order to decide whether to go or not, I visit the website where the menu is posted.

Binky does catering, too, which is how I celebrated my birthday last year. On a Wednesday night in January, twenty of my friends and I had the entire cosy cafe to ourselves and were treated to a beautiful three-course dinner ending with a massive chocolate-lavender cake.

Take Fuchsia With You

Every season, Binky introduces a new line of products for her clientele. When I visited, she had just rolled out her “Clean Sweep” line of natural cleaning products (containing only baking soda, sea salt, borax and essential oils).

Plus, her $10 “garden in a can”, a ready-to-grow can full of seeds and soil which requires only water and sunlight and grows microgreens that can be added to salads or pasta. Mine is sitting on my windowsill, waiting to bloom.