Initially, there were four. They loved beer, and also loved to stir it. They wanted to associate it with pizza. Now, in English, hop, means hops. By linking beer to a classic Italian cuisine, this gave in 2014 HopEra, a typically ... saguenéen resto-brewery!
Karyne Samson, Patrick Voyer and Mathieu Roy set out with Vladimir Antonoff, the manager of the place, in this crazy adventure of a microbrewery in the Jonquière sector in the great city of Saguenay. They brew a dozen beers.
Six regularly return as a WIT, a Bitter or a Brown American ale. The others are periodical or eclectic and include beers aged in oak barrels (white wine, red wine, bourbon, cognac ...), or collaborations with various microbreweries in Quebec such as La Barberie in Quebec City.
They have even more audacious beers like lobster or crab! But all these beers have no name. No maudadite, snoroune or chipie. "In fact," explains Vladimir Antonoff, "we keep style names. When we are asked if we have a black beer, we answer rather that we have a dry stout. We want to educate people by presenting beers by their style. This is our little fight to us! "
An essentially wood-burning kitchen
We do not go to HopEra only for beer. We also go there for his kitchen ... and his wood oven.
No doubt inspired by the great Provençal author Jean Pagnol and his play "La femme du boulanger", the French company Panyol specializes in ovens for bakeries and pizzerias. It is one of its ovens, copper-colored, which throne in the open kitchen of the restaurant of Jonquière. The effect is remarkable. It looks like a golden igloo. Such an oven allows the chef to seize, grill, braiser, gild, simmer and confite his dishes if the heart says so!
At HopEra there is no fryer. All or almost all must pass through the Panyol furnace. Be it the almost twenty pizzas on the menu, poutine whose fries are cooked with duck fat in the oven, Mac and cheese, BBQ salmon filet or pork frayed in spice crust. Even desserts such as grandfathers with maple caramel and chocolate fondant cake are browned by the Panyol.
On the other hand, the management of HopEra is reviewing its lunch menu with a lighter market cuisine leaving room for salads, seafood and fresh pasta made on site.
As for the specialty, the pizzas and dough are made the day before, which gives them time to "undergo" a daily first and second fermentation. This is accompanied by cheeses from the Boivin house in La Baie, Saguenay. Local products are obviously in the spotlight. "We could not do mediocre cooking with our work of art" that thrills in the kitchens to conclude Vladimir Antonoff.
