Eating At The Montreal Restaurant ‘Famous for Its Little Pig’ – 1938-1972

 

For nearly four decades from 1938, Jean-Paul Cuerrier (1918-1997) took pictures of diners feeding a pig at the table at Au Lutin Qui Bouffe restaurant in Montreal, Canada. Patrons would take home the photo as a souvenir. The typical posse was for one diner to feed the piglet milk from a bottle while another lifted and straightened its tail.

“Guests would pick the photographs up personally at the door when leaving after their meal,” says Erik Kessels who along with , Michel Campeauhas compiled the pictures into a book. “So every single image ended up in someone’s private family album.”

Cuerrier took hundreds of pictures, as many as 250 photos in a single night.

 

 

In business from 1938 til a fire gutted the place in 1972, Au Lutin Qui Bouffe at 753 Rue Saint-Gregoire was owned by BJ McAbbie (aka Burt McAbbie), who was murdered at the restaurant in 1953 in robbery gone wrong.

On that fatal night, four men and one woman carried out their crime. The woman went to dinner at the restaurant and intentionally forgot her purse in the bathroom. As the restaurant was closing the purported husband called to say he’d come by to collect it. Four men showed up, one of them dressed as a woman. McAbbier was shot. He died two days later but only after telling his story to cops. All four members of the gang were caught.

 

 

Flyers told of the restaurant ‘famous for its little pig’, who remained stubbornly unnamed. It’s unlikely to have been the same pig in every picture and we can only wonder if retirees were served in the cold ham and potato salad.

You can see the full menu at the end of this post after teh color photo of Colonel and Mrs. G.E. Leprohon feeding the restaurant pig with a baby’s bottle. Owner B.J. McAbbie is shown at right (1949).

 

 

Bonus; The munu at Au Lutin Qui Bouffe