Why Derek Dammann and David McMillan Left Downtown Montreal to Cook Up Excellence at Grille-Nature on the West Island

Love it or hate it, there is something nostalgic about the anonymity of the suburbs. Minivans, cargo shorts, well-kept lawns, street hockey games—their similarity across Canada speaks to a shared desire for space, safety, and quiet for those who choose to call them home, and the opposite for those who fled them in search of frenetic city life. Dollard-des-Ormeaux, the Montreal suburb that chefs Derek Dammann and David McMillan have chosen for their new co-venture, Grille-Nature, feels like an island on the West Island—a place more akin to similar outskirts in Edmonton, Winnipeg, or Halifax than it is to the famously distinctive city of which it is a satellite.

But Dammann and McMillan, 49 and 55, are, at first blush, far from your typical suburbanites. The celebrated restaurateurs both bear the hallmarks of a life spent in kitchens—sleeve tattoos, outfits made of workwear clothing, and an almost romantic world-weariness—that set them apart in the sea of khaki pants and side parts. The same intensity that drove them to mark their skin and caused their world-weariness is also what forced them from their acclaimed restaurants in Montreal—where, ironically, both served as inspiration to many Canadian chefs.

McMillan’s 2021 departure from his restaurant group—which includes Joe Beef, Le Vin Papillon, Liverpool House, and more—sent shock waves through the restaurant industry when news of it broke. For decades, he had been on the front lines of Canada’s battle for legitimacy on the international food scene, garnering fans such as the late Anthony Bourdain, who joined McMillan and Joe Beef group co-owner Frédéric Morin on a bacchanalian romp through Montreal and Quebec City for a fan-favourite episode of Parts Unknown. It was a high point for both McMillan as a restaurateur and Montreal as a dining destination, with critics from around the world taking note of the city’s increasingly exciting dining culture. But no matter what he did, McMillan couldn’t shake the feeling that all the work he was doing for the city was taken for granted. “I love this city. I’ve given everything to promoting tourism and bringing untold numbers of people to eat not only in my restaurants, but Derek’s restaurant, or other restaurants,” McMillan says. “The city doesn’t want us.”

Indeed, behind the scenes, the stress of running half a dozen critically acclaimed restaurants in Montreal was proving too much for McMillan. “You’ve got to cook all the meats, you’ve got to sweep, you’ve got to shovel the snow, you’ve got to deal with the road closure, you’ve got to deal with the broken people, you’ve got to deal with the shitty customers that are already pissed off when they come in because they have no parking,” he says. So, after a trip to the hospital to deal with his health, he got out of Dodge, leaving the city to start Hayfield Farm, his farm/winery in the Eastern Townships.

But after a few years of R&R, McMillan returned to the city to help Dammann get out from under Maison Publique, whose popularity was driving him to exhaustion. In 2023, McMillan helped facilitate the sale of Maison Publique to chef Danny Smiles, a friend and colleague who has since achieved similar success at the address with his hit restaurant Le Violon. Dammann discusses it without a hint of jealousy in his voice. “I sold Maison Publique because it was doing great,” he says. He fled to the country—opting for Oka, where he now operates his own farm, Saintweed Acres. Hailing from Campbell River, British Columbia, he yearned to give “my son something that I had when I was a kid, you know, like the lake and the fishing and the outdoors and chopping wood and boats and wild nature,” he says.

McMillan, who matches Dammann’s relaxed West Coast demeanour with his brash brand of Montreal intensity (swear words creating a throughline between his English and French), first presented Dammann with his idea for Grille-Nature when he was consulting for their current partners, the owners of the Jukebox Burgers that previously occupied the space. During a presentation at Royalmount, the buzzy shopping centre in the city’s Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, McMillan noticed a massively affluent area on the West Island that, as far as he could remember, had few high-quality dining options. He had been pushing Dammann, who was seated beside him, to open something, and this was the push he thought he needed—or perhaps, the kick. “I’m sitting there with Derek, and I’m kicking him under the table,” McMillan says. “I go, ‘Name one restaurant out there.’”

In many ways, Grille-Nature is set up to replicate the Platonic ideal of the suburbs. After decades working in high-stress environments, both Dammann and McMillan value calm in their kitchen and dining room. Set in a strip mall on the precipice between low-level industrial yards and suburban infills, Grille-Nature’s space is a far cry from the storied, time-worn buildings that Dammann and McMillan cooked in at Maison Publique and Joe Beef. The 160-seat room is entered via an unassuming door beside a patio that, as of March 6, still had artificial Christmas trees occupying it. Inside, tables covered in red checkered tablecloths accommodate parties of up to six (neither chef feels ready for more), a good portion of whom are seated in high chairs on the night of my visit. Unlike in the city, visiting with a family is a simple task. “There’s all you-can-eat parking,” Dammann says.

There’s nearly all-you-can-eat food as well. As with everything at Grille-Nature, the menu is a collaboration between the chefs. “It’s his favourite things, my favourite things,” McMillan says. “Everything is David and Derek’s greatest hits.” What this means in concrete terms is authentic Canadian cuisine that, while typically rich, doesn’t feel quite so Rabelaisian as the dishes at Joe Beef and Maison Publique. The delicate foie gras parfait on toast, for example, plays with the classic French version by swapping out the typical fruit-based jelly with a maple syrup one. Mains range from rosé sauce pasta and seared scallops to honey butter rotisserie chicken with all the fixings, but it is with classic dishes composed of hulking cuts of meat and simple sauces—such as a one-off ibérico pork brochette served over white beans and with a poppy adobo sauce—that Dammann and McMillan’s cookery shines.

While they share duties, a typical evening at Grille-Nature will involve Dammann leading his “Seal Team 6” of chefs in the kitchen while McMillan, with his effusive charm, works the rounds, greeting guests new and old. Dammann and McMillan see Grille-Nature as a restaurant that fosters a healthy atmosphere (for their staff and their clientele) alongside the great food typically reserved for hot spots in city centres. Part of the charm of the restaurant’s suburban address is seeing regulars from Maison Publique and Joe Beef, some of whom they hadn’t seen in over decade since they left Montreal’s downtown, come in with their children in search of the same elating culinary experience that they had years ago. While they’ve long been father figures to Canadian chefs, at Grille-Nature Dammann and McMillan are also just being fathers. “I want my children to work here, and his son to work here, and I don’t want them to ever see any of the things that I’ve seen,” McMillan says.

While it might look like something of a retirement project, something to entertain them between stints tending their gardens and picking their grapes, both chefs insist that their commitment to Grille-Nature is as strong and, hopefully, lasting as it was to their former restaurants. “What will make this restaurant great?” McMillan asks. “When that meat fridge has three sides of [Derek’s] pig hanging in it, and that wine cellar is full of my wines, and that shelf is full of [Derek’s] honey, and that harvest table is covered in our vegetables and my fruit and nuts, and that fridge is full of everything that my neighbours grow that day.”

Although they claim they’re far from retirement yet, both Dammann and McMillan are starting to think like snowbirds, another Canadian constant. “I think that we could do a Grille-Nature Miami pretty easily,” McMillan says as Dammann nods before chiming in, “I grew up with no winter, before moving here 20 years ago.” Even in the most idyllic of suburbs, Canadians of all sorts yearn to fly south for the winter, it seems.

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