Lorette Brasserie

Order the beef cheek bourguignon and the Pemberton carrots tell you where you are. Lorette Brasserie runs classic French technique through British Columbia produce and Québécois family memory, treating the three as one idea rather than three flourishes set side by side. It sits on Main Street in the middle of Whistler Village, where the Elements restaurant used to be, and it takes its name from the mothers at the centre of the family behind it — an inheritance that shows up on the plate well before it shows up on the walls.

The menu opens with two tartares, and they set the register. Beef Tartare and Bone Marrow is the sharper of the pair — black garlic, lavash, cured egg yolk, and marrow that pushes it from a polite starter toward a statement of intent. The Ahi Tuna Tartare answers with smoked tuna mayo and a duck-fat tater tot, a piece of comfort-food mischief tucked inside a raw-fish plate. The other starters keep that mix of discipline and ease: a Laitue of Bibb lettuce with lardons, gribiche, and a sourdough crumble; smoked steelhead over cucumber gazpacho with lemon crème fraîche. From there the dinner list holds brasserie form without going stiff — Beef Cheek Bourguignon over pomme purée with champignons and Pemberton carrots, Steak Frites built on a ten-ounce striploin under peppercorn sauce, Grilled Ora King Salmon with cucumber and smoked buttermilk, a chicken supreme finished in morel brandy sauce. A pair of sides holds up the classics: Petits Pois à la Française with lardons, baby gem, and lemon cream, and a Small Victory demi baguette with beurre du jour.

What runs under all of it is British Columbia. The carrots and the beets come from Pemberton, up the valley, and the regional sourcing stays quiet — no slogan, no lecture, just local produce standing next to intact French vocabulary. That is the Québécois-brasserie idea working in the background: a kitchen fluent in the classics that keeps reaching for what grows nearby. Even the small plates carry it, from Pickled Pemberton Beets under whipped goat cheese and pink-peppercorn granola to Endive and Fuji Apples dressed with walnut vinaigrette and Bleu d'Élizabeth, a Québec blue that quietly ties the plate back to where the name comes from.

The restaurant comes from a Whistler group with deep local roots — the same operators behind Caramba and Quattro, two long-running village restaurants. Local reporting credits the ownership to James and Jay Paré and the executive kitchen to Shane Sluchinski, and traces the name Lorette to the family's mothers. Lorette opened in the spring of 2025, and the pedigree reads less like a résumé than like a reason the place arrived already knowing how a village dining room actually runs — how a table turns, when the walk-ins land, what a resort town wants out of dinner on a Tuesday in shoulder season, and how to make a first-year dining room feel settled rather than new.

Dinner is only one way in. Breakfast and brunch run daily — a Croque Madame under dijon béchamel and a fried free-range egg, the Lorette French Toast on brioche with caramelized pineapple, lemon curd, and candied nuts — and a daily happy hour from five to six pulls oysters, selected wines, and a few hors d'oeuvres to the front of the evening. The Ahi Tuna Tartare crosses into that early window, which is the easiest way to catch the kitchen's sense of humour before committing to a full table. Reservations run through online booking, and the table rewards a plan: one tartare, one classic main, one plate off the seafood lane if the group wants range. Read it end to end and the appeal is continuity — the same hand behind the tartare at dinner is behind the French toast at brunch.