The Italian family that turned a Quebec sugar shack into a restaurant empire

Rosa Fuoco still remembers the moment her husband came home in 2002 after he'd gone to scope a venue for a family party, and came back with something else entirely: a sugar shack for sale.

"I said, 'No, you're crazy,'" Rosa recalls, laughing at the memory. "I told him, 'That's a Québec thing. I don't know anything about Québec cooking.'"

But Egidio Fuoco, a history teacher with an entrepreneurial streak, kept pushing. Eventually, Rosa would agree.on two conditions. First, the previous owners had to stay for three years to teach them the ropes of making maple syrup and serving traditional cabane à sucre fare. Second, all four of their sons had to work alongside them. "I didn't want them to stay on the side," she says. "It was going to be a full-time job. I wanted the kids, all of them, to work with us."