When ceramic artists Marie-Joël Turgeon and Jordan Lentink moved from the Laurentians to Bedford, Québec, 12 years ago, “nobody among our family and friends understood,” Turgeon said. The former mill town was not even among the higher-profile country villages of the Eastern Townships.
Turgeon, 44, acknowledged that Bedford is not a top tourist destination but said she and Lentink, 43, “fell in love” at first sight with the historic industrial buildings and community of about 2,500.
Bedford lies four miles east of Route 133 and is just an hour’s drive from Burlington. The final new stretch of Autoroute 35 — which opened the first week of September — pulls drivers west a few miles before the turnoff, but for travelers from Vermont headed to Montréal or points north, it can still be a rewarding pit stop for coffee or a meal.
During my first visit a year ago, we crossed a flower-bedecked bridge and navigated past tidy stone and brick houses to Atelier Tréma, the couple’s ceramic studio, store and café a few blocks away from the town’s main street. It sits across from a converted factory on the Pike River, where we sipped beers at microbrewery L’Autre Brasserie’s outdoor deck over the water. In a grassy area between the factory and the ceramics studio, local artisans and food and drink producers displayed their wares during an annual Craft Garden festival. The energy was palpable.
Turgeon and Lentink are among a group of newer arrivals to Bedford who have helped infuse it with creative, entrepreneurial spirit: artists and craftspeople, chocolatiers and chefs, brewers and distillers. “We are all original people who had a bit of a crazy idea,” Turgeon said.
The pair have also become major Bedford boosters. Striking up a conversation with them during my 2024 visit unleashed a torrent of local recommendations, which inspired the itinerary of my return trip this year. The couple even designed clothing and bags boasting Bedford’s signature water tower landmark.
Mona Beaulac, 64, is thrilled about the newcomers to her lifelong home. The town council member and executive director of the Missisquoi Museum, in neighboring Stanbridge East, appreciates what she called “all the young ones,” who have brought new ideas to Bedford, especially over the past decade or so.
What hasn’t changed, she said, is the warm welcome Bedford has always provided to travelers on the way from here to there.
“We are proud of our hospitality,” Beaulac said. “We like to have people drop in.”
All prices are in Canadian dollars.
Breakfast: Coffee and a Mug, Too
Atelier Tréma, 133 rue de la Rivière, Bedford, 450-590-0172
For excellent espresso drinks and locally baked pastries, the café at Atelier Tréma makes a perfect morning stop — and shop. It was close to 11 a.m. when we arrived on a rainy Saturday and settled into the cozy dine-in corner of the ceramics studio store over a macchiato ($3.80) and small latte ($4.75) with a tender apricot-and-oat breakfast cookie ($4) and a buttery, savory-sweet cheddar scone ($5). In better weather, the verdant outdoor patio would have called, but then we would have missed the framed 1932 employee photo from the defunct sewing machine needle factory across the street.
The menu also includes sandwiches, such as a baguette with mortadella and ricotta ($11.50); simple salads; and glasses of wine ($10). Since it was effectively brunchtime when we visited, we tried a pesto grilled cheese ($11.50). It came oozing with melted cheese and grill marks so perfect they might have been painted on.
Atelier Tréma’s production team of seven can be spied Monday to Thursday through a wall of windows crafting custom ceramic orders for restaurant chefs and corporations, along with a signature line of sturdily elegant, neutral-glazed platters, plates, bowls and mugs.
Turgeon said they decided to source their coffee beans from Faro, a Sherbrooke roastery, after Faro’s owner commissioned mugs for the company’s own cafés. I have not yet bought a mug, but, on two visits a year apart, I could not resist a platter and a cake stand.
Lunch: Dueling Poutines
La Pataterie, 66 rue Cyr, Bedford, 450-248-3263. Note: Cash and debit only.
Restaurant Barry, 92 rue Principale, Bedford, 450-248-7019
Atelier Tréma’s recommended lunch was poutine “at one of Bedford’s true institutions.” The problem was that they suggested two such institutions, aka poutine spots. How to choose?
Everywhere we went until our late lunch, I inquired about people’s preferences, hoping for a conclusive favorite. My hopes were dashed by a decisively indecisive even split — leaving us no choice but to try them both.
At Restaurant Barry, we paid $6.30 for a small poutine, which was heavy on super-squeaky fresh curds blanketing appealingly dark fries drenched in a highly seasoned mahogany gravy. The gravy verged on too salty (and I love salt), but the whole mess of mild squeaky cheese, salt and earthy fried potato felt like what poutine is meant to be.
After a brief, damp hike up the new Parc Héritage hill (see sidebar), we headed to La Pataterie, where a serving roughly equivalent to what we ordered at Barry (and the second smallest on offer) cost $6.75. The curds were equally squeaky and the fries as dark, though a bit more submerged in similar gravy.
All told, I loved the fresh curds and the well-cooked fries at both spots, though I’m not a huge fan of the strong beef bouillon-cube flavor in the gravies.
During a phone call after our visit, Turgeon admitted that she’s team La Pataterie: “The potatoes are perfect — soft without being squidgy at the end of your poutine — with good color for the sauce. The cheese is fresh.” But if her husband wants a hot dog, too, she said, they head to Barry.
Sometimes, the Tréma workshop crew will decide to get poutine for lunch, Turgeon said, “and it’s always, ‘Where do we go?’ It’s not easy.”
Dinner: Counter Service
Comptoir Moutarde, 46 rue Principale, Bedford, 438-519-2243, comptoirmoutarde.com
Our dinner decision, on the other hand, was very easy. I’ve followed Comptoir Moutarde on social media for well over a year, drooling over the restaurant’s housemade pastas and pristine farm-to-table ingredients.
Chef-owner Marc Proulx moved from his native Montréal during the pandemic and opened his sweet, stylish 25-seat spot on Bedford’s main street in March 2022. Comptoir Moutarde is open Friday and Saturday for lunch and dinner and Sunday and Monday for lunch. Laura Mathieu manages the front of the house with warmth and selects the small but interesting wine list.
Proulx, 32, started working in a long string of city restaurants at age 16 and earned a culinary degree in his early twenties. When the young chef resolved to open his own restaurant closer to the Eastern Townships sources of his ingredients, he settled on Bedford because it was affordable — with less competition than in established tourist towns such as Frelighsburg or Sutton.
The restaurant’s name features the French word for counter, because that intimate, comfortable spirit of eating is “the vibe I wanted to create,” Proulx said, even if guests choose table seating. The restaurant has a casual though polished feel, but the dishes coming out of the kitchen could easily grace a fancier big-city venue.
The lunch menu offers a seasonal salad, sandwich, soup, and a pair of fresh pasta specials, such as spaghetti with pesto and whipped ricotta with a glass of wine for $20. (Yes, that’s Canadian dollars — and reason enough to get me back there.)
At dinner, our appetizers included a memorable vegetable tart ($16) of caramelized wild and farmed mushrooms, sweet beets, and charred onion in a crisp butter crust dressed with pickled mustard seeds, tarragon and a luminously golden emulsified scallion sauce.
Our mains were as gorgeous in appearance as they were in taste. House ravioli filled with braised eggplant ($26) came in a rich sauce of cherry tomatoes that channeled roasted sunshine in every bite, with toasty breadcrumbs for textural contrast. Perfectly cooked British Columbian black cod ($34) swam in a silky sweet corn elixir with basil, tiny peeled potato spheres and crunchy yellow string beans. It was so good that the tiny batons of bacon, while delicious, seemed almost superfluous.
For dessert, we shared a pair of nutty buckwheat cannoli ($8) filled with lightly honeyed whipped ricotta and scattered with toasted buckwheat kernels.
When Proulx picked Bedford for his first solo venture, he said he knew it was not a tourist hot spot or home to a phalanx of gastronomes and so “a little bit of a gamble.”
So far, the chef said, that gamble seems to have paid off.
More to Eat and Do
Atelier Maison Martine Langlois, 49 rue Du Point, Bedford, 514-946-3582. Find eclectic small antiques and collectibles including porcelain covered cheese plates. Open weekends only or by appointment.
L’Autre Brasserie, 110 rue de la Rivière, Bedford, lautrebrasserie.ca. The riverside brewery taproom in the former sewing machine needle factory serves its own beer, local ciders and spirits, and a small food menu.
Capeline & Chocolat, 48 rue Principale, Bedford, 450-248-0881, on Facebook. Filled truffles and other chocolate confections, sorbet and gelato — are all made on-site.
Distillerie Comont, 110 rue de la Rivière, Bedford, 579-537-8484, comont.ca. The small distillery offers tours and cocktail workshops by appointment.
Fromagerie Missiska, 100 rue Wheeler, Bedford, 579-433-8585, missiska.com. Take home fresh cheese curds and excellent maple yogurt made from the milk of the farmstead cheesemaker’s grass-fed Jersey cows.
Missisquoi Museum, 2 rue River, Stanbridge East, 450-248-3153, missisquoimuseum.ca; open through October 19. Admission to this small museum ($10; $3 for kids under 12) includes entrance to the well-preserved Hodge’s General Store that operated for more than a century and the impressive, restored 12-sided Walbridge barn in nearby Mystic that dates back to 1882.
Parc Héritage 100 rue Alcée-Rocheleau, Bedford. The new park built on shale slate left from limestone mining boasts a large playground and small climb to 360-degree views, including of Vermont’s Green Mountains.
La Point Visible, 12E rue River, Stanbridge East, 514-303-5310, lepointvisible.com. In the neighboring town, this quilt studio and shop carries creations of several Bedford artisans, such as glassware made by David Frigon-Lavoie of DFL Verre.
This article is part of a travel series on Québec. The province’s destination marketing organization, Alliance de l’industrie touristique du Québec, under the Bonjour Québec brand, is a financial underwriter of the project but has no influence over story selection or content. Find the complete series plus travel tips at sevendaysvt.com/quebec.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Biting Into Bedford | What to eat and do in this Québec mill town just off the highway to Montréal”
This article appears in Sept 24-30 2025.
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