Uncanny ressemblance: café OUI MAIS NON

OUI MAIS NON café looks like the little sister of another place I reviewed (and there’s a reason for that, I’ll get to it). But the ambiance there is less hectic: it’s the legit Montreal experience.

This spacious, vintage-coded locale is a couple of blocks away from Metro Jarry. It’s surrounded by public services for young families and homeless people, a fruiterie, and my favorite queer-inclusive boxing club in a church basement. During the warm season, there’s a gorgeous green terrasse.

BTW, fruiteries are the pocket-sized version of grocery stores within the more condensed parts of Montreal.

I went there carrying a busy mind, drained out by the scorching heat. Once inside, I was instantly comforted. Everything, from the attention-grabbing name of the place to the mint accent on the furniture, reminded me of La Graîne Brûlée. But where the archi-commercial café near Berri-UQAM metro station is pushing the kitsch to the point of cheesiness, OUI MAIS NON just looks more earnest, homely, like the first apartment I got in Montreal when I moved there. It’s decorated like the owner took many trips to the thrift store or went dumpster diving.

TBH I don’t want to over-romanticize the thrift store aesthetic that is so easy to fake. Especially since there’s a good reason OUI MAIS NON café looks like a tamer version of the more commercial and chaotic La Graîne Brûlée: it’s owned by the same initiative, Oui Manon.

For a coffee place that is just a coffee place (with no restaurant side hustle, room with a scene to rent), the OUI MAIS NON café is pretty big. It doesn’t feel like an empty space though. It’s divided into smaller rooms, all furnished with tables of varying sizes, books, and vintage collectibles. The result feels more cozy than overwhelming.

I took a look at the menu. The “latté à la betterave” (beet latte) caught my attention. I also asked if the pastries were dairy-free, and most of them were. The cashiers were cheerful, and they served me in French. (I don’t mind too much when it’s in English, but you can never guess in Montreal which one it’s going to be).

There are four of those rooms. The first one you enter has the cash register, bar, and stools. I almost stayed there to people-watch.

The second room is close by, with no separation. There’s a huge square table where people work on their laptops and look like they’ve been there for the whole afternoon.

At the end of the corridor, there are the two last spaces, twin rooms separated from the lobby by walls. The bay window that you can roll back like a garage door has a view of the terrasse and the street.

I took a spot at the mint table against it, crouched in the last bit of shadow to enjoy my drink and cupcake. The menu is not unlike the one at La Graîne Brûlée. Out of curiosity, I picked the beet latte. It tasted a bit like caffeinated vegetable broth. Hard pass. I almost got up just to ask the cashier if they were fucking with me. It didn’t taste sweeter, more bitter, or full. It just had an unassuming pink hue and a resemblance to something you’d drink from a plate that’s been used to eat dinner earlier in the day.

The cupcake was delicious, and vegan. I can’t overstate how rarely you have dessert when you’re allergic to milk.

I don’t know if it’s elitist on my part, but I’m a bit confused as to whether I’d recommend OUI MAIS NON café to a friend when I didn’t fully enjoy the management and concept of their sister business La Graîne Brûlée. I guess the overall experience made me a bit more positive about the success of the group.

I stayed there for around 2 hours. The customers were really chill. A group of college girls switching from French to Arabic to talk about the last assigned reading. A dude coding on Visual Studio, the huge screen of his laptop leaving no room for discretion. And here I was, calmed down, nibbling at my cupcake at a slowed down pace to make sure it’d last until the end of my stay.

I grabbed two (decorative) books on the shelves next to me. I was glad to have something to busy my hands with and lay my eyes on. I read “de” de Balzac, which was a bit of a throwback to the other books I read from the same author when studying literature at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the zine culture was thriving. Cafés were a place where you could learn about sex ed, fanfiction, punk music, all thanks to these handmade paper magazines of many colors. Now, zines, when they are present in stores, aren’t free and abundant like they used to be. I’m glad I could at least have a read to waste my time in contentment.

The Balzac book was a satire published in the 1800s about a barrel seller with insatiable greed. As much as his unstoppable ambition extends his domain and improves the quality of life of his community, it also separates him from the masses, creates hierarchies, and renders him odd and unrelatable.

Maybe I could make a link between the themes of the book and my mixed feelings about the commercial success of the Oui Manon group.

If you’re near Metro Jarry, OUI MAIS NON is worth the short walk. It wouldn’t be my top recommendation since it’s a big chain. But I have to admit that just like La Graîne Brûlée: it’s good food, damn practical, and a good time.

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