By Jasmine Soucy
What’s big and orange and has been serving up the tastiest creamy pep around since 1932? No, no, it’s not Carrot Top. It’s Gibeau’s Orange Julep! Located a block or two away from Namur Metro at 7700 Boulevard Décarie, this roadside restaurant is best known for being hard to miss. Shaped unassumingly like a ginormous orange (a Sunkist, perhaps?) the Orange Julep towers three stories high and spans forty feet in diameter. Possibly seeming a little foreboding in its place along the horizon (especially to incoming motorists not ‘in the know’) this other-worldly orb is anything but.

The Big Orange’s history begins in the 30’s when Hermas Gibeau built a two-story high orange concrete sphere to house his delicious and vitamin-aplenty julep brew. Due to the widening of the Décarie Expressway, the Orange Julep was rebuilt in 1966 a full story higher and with a newly-conceived outer shell consisting of plastic segments procured from a local pool manufacturer. A bit of an enigma himself, not much is commonly known about Gibeau. Urban legend has it, however, that his intent was to live in this large orange structure with his family whilst running the restaurant below (oh, the reality TV potential!). Today, Gibeau is referred to as a gastronomic visionary, and, considering his beverage celebrated a 75th anniversary in 2007, it’s no surprise why.

The restaurant itself is a charming blend of retro and timeless diner-style class. Positioned at the back of a fairly large lot, it accommodates both plenty of outdoor seating as well as ample parking space (used occasionally for classic car and motorbike events). The menu is quite diverse, featuring everything from spaghetti plates to salmon burgers. Not one to shy away from paralyzing the customer with choice, the Orange Julep also boasts a variety of more than 15 meal combos, each one including a choice of sandwich, fry and, of course, a medium-size Orange Julep.

And let me tell you, the drink itself is quite the force to be reckoned with. Its refreshing pulp-infused citrus taste with a hint of ice creamy flavour makes an Orange Julius seem like a Sunny D. Otherwise surprisingly well-maintained for its age, the only catch about eating at the Orange Julep is its primordial menu-board. With only a substantially-faded food-like image to go by, you sometimes find yourself having difficulty discerning the nature of the sandwich belonging to a given meal… which in my case explains why I ended up with a steak sub rather than the expected cheeseburger. Conveniently though, this is only a minor dilemma as every item is equally delicious (also… I love my steak). Averaging in the range of $5-10, the food is affordable, and, at a five minute interval between the minute you step in line and the time you receive your order, it’s fast too.

Creating a rare ambience of comfortable novelty, The Orange Julep is the ideal place to eat (or just drink, for that matter) whether you’re coming into or heading out of Montreal. Even for those city-dwellers among us who may not venture out to Namur regularly, might I suggest an impromptu Value Village/Orange Julep date night? I like to call this the VVOJ for short…then again, that’s another story (article).