Born in June 1993 from a closure - that of the Citrus restaurant - and a coffee between two young cooks. Normand Laprise and Christine Lamarche have not left the kitchen since.
In 1993, Citrus—the restaurant where Normand Laprise and Christine Lamarche worked—closed. Normand began thinking about opening a place of his own; one morning, he stopped for coffee at Christine's. “Listen, if you need help, I'm here,” she told him. Eight months pregnant, she took the leap without overthinking it. Neither yet knew they were about to start a small revolution in Québec gastronomy. Toqué! opened on rue Saint-Denis in June 1993, with ten employees and 55 seats.
The guiding idea—working with small producers, insisting on traceability, cooking what the market offered rather than what could be imported—took root during the Citrus years. In France, Laprise had watched a market gardener deliver leeks through the back door and a fisherman arrive with the day's catch. In 2004, the restaurant left rue Saint-Denis for place Jean-Paul-Riopelle in the Quartier international, with a kitchen designed to measure. Thirty years later, in 2023, Toqué! marked the anniversary discreetly: the pandemic had taken its Brasserie T! and Burger T! offshoots, but not the flagship. White tablecloths, rigorous but relaxed service—the formula had not changed.