Four Montreal hotels nab select “One Key” rating from Michelin Guide

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Michelin stars for restaurants is very much a known thing and when the Europe-based Michelin Guide finally made it to Canada two years ago and gave stars to restos in Vancouver and Toronto, folks in the restaurant milieu here wondered if Montreal was being snubbed. Well it turns out the notorious Michelin inspectors are now in Montreal checking out eateries — under cover, of course, so restaurant managers don’t realize their food and service is being rated.

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In the meantime, the Michelin Guide has just published its first rating of hotels across Canada — and Montreal fared pretty well. For hotels, Michelin uses what it calls a “Key” rating. The best is Three Keys, second best is Two Keys and third-best is One Key. Four Montreal hotels made the short list of 23 hotels across Canada that garnered One Key and the notable thing is all four are smaller boutique hotels. None of the four are big hotels and they’re not necessarily the city’s most famous hotels either. That’s right, the list does not include the Ritz-Carlton or the Marriott Château Champlain or the Fairmont the Queen Elizabeth.

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This is not a knock on those higher-profile hotels but rather a sign that the hot trend in the hotel biz is the smaller boutique places. The four local hotels that nabbed One Key are: Le Germain Montreal and Le Mount Stephen, both downtown, and Le Petit Hotel and Le Place d’Armes Hotel & Suites, both in Old Montreal.

Two Quebec hotels made the even more select Two Key category. They are: Manoir Hovey on the banks of Lake Massiwippi in North Hatley and the Auberge Saint-Antoine in Quebec City.

But la question qui tue is: Does a Michelin key really make a difference for a hotel the way a Michelin star does for a restaurant?

“Michelin is incredibly important on the international stage. First of all, the Michelin stars that are accorded to restaurants, it’s been a standard in Europe and increasingly around the world,” said Jason Stafford, managing director and part of the family that owns Manoir Hovey. “On the culinary front, it’s been long established as a prestigious international rating to which all chefs aspire to and now increasingly on the hospitality front. We welcome all forms of recognition. For us, it’s a positive development and it’s not only good for us as a hotel, it’s good for the tourism industry as a whole.”

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The opulent Manoir Hovey is one of the province’s most iconic hotels, attracting guests like Bill and Hillary Clinton in recent years, so it’s not surprising it’s made the Michelin grade. But Le Petit Hotel’s inclusion might raise a few eyebrows. In fact, chances are not even everyone in Montreal is aware of the existence of this ultra-charming but super tiny hotel tucked away on St. Paul St. W. just a 17th-century stone’s throw away from the Pointe-à-Callière Museum.

As the name suggests, Le Petit Hotel is, well, small. It has only 28 rooms and in a cute marketing move, their rooms are labelled small, medium, large and extra large, just like shirts. But even “extra large” isn’t very big. It’s between 475 square feet and 520 square feet. Small is tiny — 220 square feet! But the cool aspect is the rooms mix the original stone walls with modern elements.

Alexandre Cossette, marketing director for Le Petit Hotel, said the One Key award is particularly important for them given how small they are.

“We’re competing against Fairmount and very big hotel chains like that,” Cossette said. “So when we’re able to come out on top for a major guide like Michelin, we’re very pleased. Sure the Michelin Guide is less well known for hotels than it is for restaurants, but I’m sure people will eventually begin to realize the importance of this guide. It is quite an achievement for our small team.”

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A few mornings back, things were positively hopping in the stunning lobby of Le Mount Stephen on Drummond St. General manager Massimo Urzillo was trying to give a quick history of the hotel but he kept interrupting himself to give tourists directions to the nearby Leonard Cohen mural and even help guests with their luggage.

The Tidan hospitality and real estate company, owned by Mike Yuval and Jack Sofer, had bought the famed Mount Stephen Club, but when the private club fell upon hard times, the owners transformed it into a hotel. The original mansion is still there, but now there’s an 11-floor hotel behind it, which you can barely see from the street. There are 90 rooms, including a 5,000-square-foot penthouse suite that takes up the entire 11th floor. On Grand Prix weekend, the penthouse will set you back a cool $15,000 a night.

Tidan owns very big hotels, like the Château Champlain, and smaller more boutique-like hotels, notably Le Mount Stephen and the Château Versailles. Yuval said more and more people like the smaller hotels because “it’s more romantic; you get more one-on-one service. The public today, you can’t fool them. You have to give them service and quality.”

Paul de La Durantaye, general manager of Le Germain, said Michelin’s inclusion of Montreal hotels is a recognition that the city has arrived.

“The Europeans are recognizing that Montreal is a great place to come just as are London, New York and Paris,” de La Durantaye said.

bkelly@postmedia.com

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