Two Sud-Ouest Restaurants Were Burned Out Over the Weekend

This weekend gave double-whammy of sad restaurant news to Montreal’s Sud-Ouest: Pointe-St-Charles bistro Les Sottises and longstanding Saint-Henri pizzeria Miracle were burned out in separate, apparently unconnected fires.

According to Global News, the first fire broke out around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning in Les Sottises. The restaurant owner happened to be leaving the Centre Street premises around that time, and heard breaking glass — police confirmed that an “incendiary device” had been thrown into the restaurant. While nobody was hurt, the restaurant now appears to be definitively closed due to the damage.

Given the apparent firebombing, police are investigating it as arson but had no suspects.

Sunday night brought another blaze not far away — fire broke out in decades-old Notre-Dame West pizzeria Miracle mid Sunday evening. As of Monday, the restaurant’s storefront is boarded up, putting it out of business until further notice.

A community Facebook group for St-Henri lamented the loss, with a city councillor who was in the area reporting that Miracle’s staff are looking for jobs, and that the old school diner had changed ownership just six months ago.

Whether or not the Miracle fire was accidental or deliberate is still unclear; as demonstrated by the anonymously-kept map of firebombings in Montreal, molotov cocktail attacks and the like are less common in the Sud-Ouest and areas such as NDG (they are more concentrated on the north and east of the city), although incidents like the Les Sotisses fire and the burning of NDG’s new Boustan restaurant earlier this year prove that the city’s western neighbourhoods certainly aren’t immune from that scourge.

Philipp Beaudoin (supplied)

• Montreal police investigating arson at Pointe-Saint-Charles restaurant [Global News]
• A Boustan Location Was Firebombed Overnight [EMTL]