L'Escogriffe Café Bar

Located on St. Denis Street in the Plateau, Esco is a bar and music venue with a vibe and reputation all its own. Otherwise known as Café Bar L’Escogriffe, the bar’s open every night of the week until 3 a.m., serving up good value drinks and providing live music that ranges from blue-grass to punk. Its dark, hip atmosphere always feels relaxed and ready to rock.

The bar has gone through several different incarnations over the years, but has now wound up back in the hands of the family who founded it. Owner Sebastian Madani explains: “My father started the bar in 1983. He was an immigrant fresh from Iran and had to borrow from the bank to open it,” he says. “He first called it “au plaisir” and it was a literature bar for poets and writers. A couple of years later he sold it to his manager, who then sold it to a girl who had worked under my dad. She’s the one who transformed it into ’Le Petite Escogriffe.’” This name was an intentional oxymoron, since an escogriffe is a caricature of a tall skinny guy.

“She made it a very solid jazz place,” Sebastian continues. “Then around 2000, she sold it to three guys she knew who turned it into a rock venue.” Sebastian started working at the bar around 2006/2007. “I remembered growing up here,” he says. “My dad always knew the crowd. It’s the same crowd now, the same vibe, the same alternative scene as it was with writers and poets. It’s the same guys, they’re just doing their art a little differently,”