A Local Landmark

In 1926, in far-off California, some dude by the name of Julius Freed opened up an orange juice stand. According to Wikipedia, in ’29, an associate named Bill Hamlin came up with a recipe that added ice, sweetener, milk, vanilla flavoring, and egg white to make the beverage tastier and less acidic. Thus was born Orange Julius.

On a totally unrelated note, six years later an enterprising fellow by the name of Hermas Gibeau opened a restaurant in Montreal to serve a beverage called the Gibeau Orange Julep, a mix of orange juice, milk, ice, sweetener, and vanilla flavoring. This was very successful, and in 1945 he built an orange-shaped restaurant to sell the drink.

At one time, there were numerous orange-shaped restaurants in the area. Only one remains. Gibeau’s Orange Julep is a local landmark, and we had not ventured out to see it. It was time to remedy this oversight.

Manon and I took the metro Orange Line (coincidence? I think not!) to the Namur station, and emerged the busy traffic corridor of Décarie Boulevard, which in that area is lined with fast-food restaurants.

A short walk, and we were there. The restaurant is typical for 1950s-era drive-in restaurants, with parking spaces radiating out from the center. They had roller-skating car-hops at one point, but in 2024 it’s order at the window (or online) and pick it up yourself.

We waited in the slightly chaotic line, among locals, travel vloggers, and tourists. Through the window, you can see the system of dispensing the famed beverage via a network of gravity-fed tubes, and the beverage part of your order is fulfilled immediately.

We ordered beverages and — another Montreal specialty — steamies. The all-dressed steamé is a hot dog smothered in mustard, chopped onions, and fresh coleslaw. The menu offered vegetarian hot dogs, so that’s what we chose, which meant that our order took a whole lot longer than everyone else’s.

Finally, our order was up!

The beverage itself is reminiscent of children’s chewable aspirin mixed with lots of sugar and ice. The steamies were actually pretty good!

In addition to the tourists, there was a crowd of another sort of local in attendance too. They were watchful and hungry.

And, if we found the drink kind of weird, it definitely has its fans.

So, even if the food was nothing to write home about, the facility itself was fun in that old Route 66 sort of way.

It also enabled Manon to ask a groan-inducing riddle: What rhymes with Orange?

I can’t say we’ll be in a rush to go back, but it was certainly worth going once.

(half of these pictures were taken by Manon, half by me)