Tastes from the Land of Wonder
Shediac Wonderland's Many Kitchens
At Shediac Wonderland, food tells a story. Ours involves Acadian terroir, wood smoke, organic cacao, and the occasional impossible dessert. We source locally where the season allows, craft by hand where the recipe demands, and take the kind of time most kitchens can’t afford.
What follows is not a restaurant group in the conventional sense. It is a collection of kitchens, each with its own personality, each obsessed with a different corner of the culinary world. A French-trained chocolatier tempering cacao to a single crystal. A pit master nursing a brisket through sixteen hours of oak smoke. A bistro chef plating local lobster beside house-made pasta. They share a campus, a philosophy, and a refusal to cut corners.
Whether you’re stopping in for a croissant and a coffee, settling into a five-course evening, or watching a double feature with smoked ribs in your lap, there is something here worth savouring.
Le Moque-Tortue
Bistro · Cocktails · Games
402 Main Street, Shediac, NB
The Concept
Le Moque-Tortue is a Wonderland-inspired bistro where craft cocktails meet local seafood, house-made desserts share the table with board games, and the evening might end in an escape room. The name is a nod to Lewis Carroll’s Mock Turtle, and the spirit is the same: part whimsy, part sophistication, entirely its own thing.
The dining room runs on a French brigade system. Front-of-house and back-of-house operate as a single unit, with the precision of a well-rehearsed ensemble. The result is service that feels effortless, because the effort happened before you arrived.
The Food
Chef de Cuisine Justin Gillis brings over two decades of experience in fine dining and kitchen management to a menu rooted in the Maritime coast. Expect local lobster, fresh shellfish, seasonal produce from the Acadian Terroir, and house-made desserts that take their cues from French patisserie. The menu shifts with the season, because the coast does too.
Craft cocktails are built with the same attention. The bar is not an afterthought; it is a destination in its own right, with drinks conceived to complement the food and the mood of the room.
The Games
Le Moque-Tortue houses one of the largest board game collections in Canada. The library is organized by type: family games, Euro games, classic card games, children’s titles, and rare finds. Each game is catalogued and shelved in its own cubicle. A dedicated host oversees the library, recommends titles, and ensures every box returns to its proper place. Guests are welcome to play one game at a time with their meal, their drinks, or both.
For those who prefer their puzzles with a locked door and a ticking clock, the bistro also operates immersive escape rooms. The Game Master handles introductions, resets, and post-game debriefs.
The Atmosphere
Inside, the décor nods to Victorian elegance: ornate table settings, vintage timepieces, blue accent walls, gold-leaf details, and the occasional top hat. The Wonderland thread is woven in, never plastered on. Outside, a summer patio opens onto Main Street, with live music on select evenings.
Adorable Chocolat
Chocolaterie · Café · Patisserie
395 Main Street, Shediac, NB
The Craft
Adorable Chocolat is an artisanal chocolaterie and European-style café co-founded in 2010 by Maître Chocolatier Frédéric Desclos, who brings four decades of classic French training to every batch. Today, the production kitchen is led by Maître Chocolatier Lucas Michel, trained in the culinary heart of France in the fine arts of viennoiseries, chocolates, and pâtisserie.
The chocolate is made from organic cacao, sourced from farms in the tropical belt where the Theobroma cacao tree thrives. The beans are fermented, dried, and roasted before arriving at our workshop, where they are winnowed into nibs, ground into cocoa mass, and conched to develop flavour and texture. A short conch produces brighter, fruitier notes. A longer conch yields earthier, fudgier depth. Our signature Scorpion bar blends three different chocolates to marry both profiles in a single bite.
Every finished chocolate is tempered to the single crystal formation that produces the snap, the shine, and the clean break you expect from properly made chocolate. Moulded bonbons have sharp edges and smooth surfaces. Enrobed bonbons, where liquid chocolate is poured over hand-shaped ganache centres, have more organic shapes and visible texture. Both are worth trying. Both are made here.
The Café
Beyond the chocolates, Adorable serves what a European café should: proper breakfasts, from-scratch croissants and chocolatines, classic French cakes, crêpes, and a rotating selection of soups and Croissan’wiches. The dessert case is the kind that stops people mid-sentence.
In warmer months, the sorbetiers take over. House-made sorbets and ice creams are scooped into waffle cones made on-site. The flavours change, because the fruit does.
The coffee is built with the same care as the chocolate. This is not an afterthought counter; it is a café in the European tradition, where a well-pulled espresso and a croissant are reason enough to sit for an hour.
The Shop
The retail chocolaterie offers handcrafted chocolates, caramels, seasonal collections, and curated gift boxes. For those who can’t visit in person, the online shop ships a selection of our favourites across Canada.
Morse et Marteaux BBQ Smokehouses & Lobster Shacks
Per Fumum Ad Fabulam
(“Through the Smoke is the Story”)
Four locations throughout Shediac
The Smokehouse
Morse et Marteaux is traditional wood-fired barbecue, slow-smoked in custom 1000-gallon offset smokers. The name translates loosely from the French as “Walrus and Hammers,” a nod to Carroll’s Walrus and Carpenter. The philosophy is simpler: low and slow is not a technique. It is a religion.
Our pit master transforms quality cuts into tender, flavour-packed results through patience and an obsessive attention to the nuances of smoke, temperature, and time. Brisket. Burnt ends. Ribs. Each one earns its place on the tray through hours of oak-fired discipline. This is not fast food dressed in a smoky costume. It is the real thing.
The style is Texas by tradition, Acadian by geography. The techniques are classic American offset smoking; the sensibility is Maritime. When the lobster shack is open, you can have your crustacean alongside your brisket. That particular combination exists in very few places on earth. Shediac is one of them.
The Locations
Parlee Beach East Canteen: Steps from one of the warmest saltwater beaches north of Virginia. Smoked meats and cold drinks for the sand-and-sun crowd.
Neptune Drive-In: The on-site canteen at our drive-in theatre. Order from the pit, eat in your car, watch a double feature under the stars. This is the combination we were put on earth to create.
Shediac Festival Arena: Serving festival-goers and event attendees with the same quality you’d find at the smokehouse.
Corner of Smith & Main: The flagship. Home base for the pit master and the 1000-gallon offset smoker that started it all.
Catering
The 1000-gallon smoker is mobile. Morse et Marteaux offers on-site catering for corporate events, weddings, festivals, and private gatherings. We bring the pit, the pit master, and enough smoked meat to feed a crowd that deserves better than a buffet tray.
Food at the Neptune Drive-In Theatre
693 Route 133, Pointe-du-Chêne, NB
The Neptune is not, strictly speaking, a restaurant. It is a drive-in theatre with a 72-foot screen, 4K projection, and 350 parking spots. But at its centre sits a Morse et Marteaux BBQ canteen, and that changes the equation.
Gates open in the early evening. The canteen fires up before the first feature rolls. Smoked brisket, ribs, sides, cold drinks, popcorn and slushies are served from the pit to your car window. By the time the opening credits appear on a screen the size of a small building, you are settled in with food that has no business being this good at a movie theatre.
Double features broadcast on 92.7 FM. Tune your radio, recline your seat, and let the evening unspool. If your battery dies, our Booster Buddies will get you started again. That is genuinely the name. That is genuinely the service.
How We Source
Across our kitchens, the sourcing principles are consistent. We favour local producers when the season cooperates. Our cacao comes from organic farms in the tropical belt. Our smoker runs on hardwood. Our seafood arrives from the waters we can see from our patios.
We are not dogmatic about it. We are simply unwilling to serve anything we wouldn’t eat ourselves, prepared any way we wouldn’t accept. The Acadian Terroir is generous. We try to be worthy of it.
Allergy-Friendly Dining
We take allergies and dietary restrictions seriously across all of our kitchens. Our staff are trained to discuss ingredients, identify potential allergens, and accommodate requests wherever possible. If you have specific needs, let us know when you book or when you arrive. We would rather ask twice than guess once.
Read more about allergy-friendly dining at Shediac Wonderland
Private Dining & Events
Several of our spaces are available for private dining, corporate gatherings, team meals, and celebrations. Le Moque-Tortue offers themed private rooms. Morse et Marteaux brings the smoker to you. Adorable Chocolat caters dessert tables that stop conversations.
If you are planning something and food is part of the story, we should talk.
“I’m sure I’ll take you with pleasure!” the Queen said. “Twopence a week, and jam every other day.”
Shediac Wonderland is a family of story-driven businesses created by Sébastien Després and Heather Wright. Le Moque-Tortue (a board game bistro), Morse et Marteaux BBQ Smokehouses & Lobster Shacks (four locations throughout Shediac), Le Griffon (bed & breakfast), The Neptune (a Drive-In Theatre), Adorable Chocolat (an artisanal chocolaterie), Bazar Neptune (a Saturday market), and Witzend Tours & Adventures (tours, escape rooms, and concierge), and the Shediac Renaissance Faire: each one a chapter of a larger story about what happens when a community decides to take play seriously.
Morse et Marteaux BBQ Smokehouses & Lobster Shacks
Texas BBQ, Acadian Style
Wood-fired
1000-gallon offset
