Couleur Café, Mont-Laurier

For as long as I remember, my family and I have always traveled back and forth along the 117 Highway. For people of Abitibi, that Highway is a long vein along which we drive, bloodcell going back and forth from the heart to the rest of the body. Between Abitibi and Montreal, the big city where people go to from time to time, there is a BIG natural park. We call it THE Park.

The park is over 200 kilometers (125 miles?) long, an area of green disturbed only by the irregular flow of car floating up the street. It's a nomansland where even internet is cut off. It's over 200 kilometers where you are cut off from the world, a 2 hour drive where you see green, blue and black.

Exiting the Park, cars go through a few small villages, and that is where they fuel up. Mont-Laurier is one of such places. It used to have nothing much, but with the traffic from Abitibiens going back and forth, there sprouted a few nice businesses.

Couleur Café is one such place.

It must be one of the few chains I know that I fell in love with so fast and hard. It has the feel of a nice one-of-a-kind coffee shop, with their freshly roasted beans and flavory coffee. After trying not to die poisonned by the convenience store coffee we had gotten in Louvicour, Couleur Cafe's cappuccino revived my taste buds.

The coffee in Louvicour was horrible, but the view was worth it.

Inside the coffee shop, they have a ceramic studio where people can paint stuff, and pick it up after it had a trip in the potter oven. I asked, and they have the oven only in the main branch, but one can ask to get the final product at either of their chain stores. I figured I could do it one day, on my way somewhere, and pick it up on the way back :)

Not only the coffee is good, but their food is amazing. Everything there is a perfect mix of the freshest and yumiest ingredients. Even the black chips tastes amazingly good. They cracked without any chewing effort and somehow melted in the mouth, while still being crispy - weird eh?

In my hurry to finish up everyting, I didn't take pictures of the coffee ha ha. But I guess that'll do.