Menus
There's no fixed menu to download here. Instead, here's how we think about food and what a Rivertnova menu typically looks like across the year.
Four factors go into every menu we design — here's what they are and how they interact.
A Rivertnova menu is the output of four conversations: your occasion's format and tone, your guests' dietary landscape, your personal flavour references, and what Quebec farms and producers are offering at the time of your event. These aren't sequential steps — they happen in parallel, because a great menu is an argument made across all four at once. We'll tell you honestly when a particular direction won't work well in a given season, or when an ingredient you love is going to be out of condition on your event date. That kind of transparency is part of the service. From there, our kitchen develops dishes, conducts internal tastings, and comes to you with a written proposal that includes every course, its components, and the sourcing story behind each primary ingredient.
These aren't fixed dishes — they're the kinds of flavours and ingredients that appear in our menus by season.
Root vegetables, fermented and pickled reserves, aged Quebec cheeses, slow-braised game meats, ice cider and dark spirit reductions. Winter menus from Rivertnova lean into warmth, umami depth, and the forest-cream tones of preserved and cured ingredients.
Fiddleheads, ramps, early radishes, spring lamb from Ile-d'Orléans producers, Quebec maple in savoury applications. Spring menus are lighter in texture, brighter in acidity, and built to signal the shift in air that guests arriving from a cold parking lot are hoping to find.
Local corn, heritage tomatoes, fresh-catch freshwater fish, summer berries from Charlevoix, outdoor herb gardens. Summer menus from Rivertnova are built for warmth and ease — food that celebrates the few months when Quebec's outdoors are at full tilt.
Heirloom squash, wild mushrooms from the Laurentians, Quebec duck, late-season apples and pears, cider vinegar and aged balsamic for balance. The richest ingredient season we work with — autumn menus carry the most layered flavour architecture of the year.
Seasonal sourcing has honest limits. Here's what to expect.
Bespoke menus built on seasonal sourcing carry a real caveat: we cannot guarantee that a specific ingredient will be available at the exact quality level we require on your event date. Quebec's growing seasons respond to weather, and our supplier relationships, while strong, don't override a bad frost or a short harvest. What we can guarantee is that if a primary ingredient needs to be substituted, we'll tell you early, we'll propose alternatives at the same quality tier, and the final dish will still hold together as designed. We'll never swap a planned ingredient for something inferior without a conversation. This is the cost and the benefit of sourcing honestly rather than buying from a distribution catalogue regardless of condition.
Give us your event date and a few preferences and we'll put together a preliminary concept — no commitment required.