On a Monday at 12:45, Lola Rosa is packed. This vegetarian eatery is located close to McGill University. Many young people are eating there, and a few older ones.

The menu, as Chef Scott Wong tells me, is based on “things that people’s mothers would make for them, all over the world.” This includes salads, samosas, burritos, mac and cheese, tacos and two types of veggie burger. Some feature innovative ingredients, such as daikon radish in the tacos and house-made seitan. Many of the dishes can be made vegan. Desserts for vegans include apple crisp, banana chocolate pie and matcha cake, which the menu describes as “moist green organic tea cake topped with passion fruits and chia seeds, whipped coconut cream and raspberry coulis.

Lunchtime crowd at Lola Rosa in Montreal

While I waited for my hempburger, I opened the drawer of the little wooden desk that serves as a dining table. It was crammed full of handwritten notes. Most seemed to be written by students. I gleaned the following pieces of wisdom: “Don’t make decisions when you need to pee,” “Be glam and don’t give a damn” and “You’re the real MVP. Make good choices.”

Wong, a native Nova Scotian, has been in Montreal for about six years. Before coming to Lola Rosa early this year, he worked at a fine dining restaurant. He’s been most vegetarian for about four years, but had to taste food at his old place of employment to keep up quality control. He prefers sampling food at Lola Rosa. “I find it a lot nicer than working with animal products.”

Recipe Development

The recipes can be complex for such a casual student hangout. My hempburger had three sauces: a barbecue sauce with a hint of maple, an intense balsamic reduction and a touch of ketchup. Wong is refining old favorites and developing new specials. He’s especially interested in figuring out how to veganize French food. He’s been working on soups and quiche, and trying to figure out how to make a tourtiere — the traditional Quebecois meat pie – vegan.

But after being around for about a decade, Lola Rosa patrons demand that their favorite dishes remain on the menu, too. “We sell a lot of burritos,” Wong says. Burgers are popular in summer, while he cooks a lot of lasagna and mac and cheese on drearier days.

The Making of a Chef

Wong has had ten years of on-the-job learning, having worked his way up from a dishwashing position. But even before then, he was interested in food. “My parents tricked me into cooking when I was very young because they both worked,” he says. He often made dinner for them.

As he points out, a successful restaurant requires way more than an excellent chef. “It’s a really good team right now, very positive. It’s one of the most positive environments I’ve worked in for a long time.”

The Chef’s Suggestions

Wong is enthusiastic about Montreal’s veg scene. “I think it’s still growing. There’s good opportunity for development right now.”

His current favorites:

Le Pick-Up for its faux pork sandwich

Dim sum and sushi at Yuan (“I like their chef,” he says)

Yokato Yokabai for their veg ramen