Quyon’s Clarendon Café reopens this week

New highway location for family restaurant will mean more traffic

CHARLES DICKSON
Quyon August 11, 2023
Thirty-three year-old Mitch Trudeau, born and raised in Quyon, seems determined to make a go of the restaurant business in his home town. It hasn’t been an easy road, but his family has made the difference.
In March of 2021, in the height of the covid pandemic, Trudeau opened the Clarendon Street Café in the middle of town. Just over two years later, in June of 2023, he closed it. Now, less than two months after that, he’s about to try it again, but this time, at a new location on the highway.
“It’s a better location at the intersection of the highway, more traffic, more parking, more patio space – those are the main reasons,” says Trudeau in a conversation with THE EQUITY last week in his new premises.
There is also some family history in the building.
“This was a restaurant my grandmother Shirley Howard Trudeau and my mother Leigh Ann Lance used to run in the early 1990s. They called it Café
S & L,” he said.
Trudeau himself has paid his dues in the food business.
“I worked for a chip wagon down at the river, when Priscilla and Steve McKnight owned it. It was called The Big Potato. I worked there starting at the age of 12, and worked for them six, seven years,” recalled Trudeau.
“Then I peeled potatoes for Mae McCann at her chip wagon. And I used to be a busboy at RVI (Riverview Inn) in Norway Bay, so I’ve been around doing different things.”
“And my mom has many, many years of kitchen experience, so she does a lot of her homemade recipes. She’s a very, very good cook. So, we’ll work together, she’ll be running it with me.
“We’ll be keeping it the same as the one down street – family menus, pizza, all that kind of stuff,” he says.
Trudeau takes the opportunity to thank his family members for their help in relaunching the restaurant.
“It just wouldn’t be possible without my mother Leigh Ann Lance, my uncle Keith Trudeau, and my father Garry. They are the big help with the project. They are the reason we are able to do this,” he said.
Clarendon Café opens this Friday at 7 a.m.