Class: First
Style: Minimalist
Rooms: 238
Saint Roch
Pur is a super-sleek hotel in the newly happening Saint Roch neighbourhood of Quebec City. The owners have ripped out all the small windows of this 18-floor concrete tower, once occupied by a Holiday Inn, and replaced them with floor-to-ceiling panes that flood the grey-and-white bedrooms with light. The starkly understated lobby, a bit like a well-designed airport lounge, is furnished with MDF Italia and Lucite pieces. A white, grey and orange colour scheme runs throughout the hotel, from dark-grey pinstripe carpets to orange room numbers on white doors. In the bedrooms, towels, cushions and flowers provide the orange accents, TVs are wall-hung in lieu of art, and bathrooms have Japanese deep-soak tubs. There are celestial views of the neo-Gothic Saint Roh church, particularly from floors 15 to 18. Pur's young chef, François Privé, prepares fusion dishes such as carpaccio of beer-fed Eumatimi beef. His focus is on ultra-fresh ingredients - no small coup in a city that is snowbound much of the year.