Credit: Ask anyone—and we mean anyone—about what to do when you’re spending time and living life in this city, and they’ll tell you that eating at the best restaurants in Montreal is how to enjoy the best of what we have to offer.
Why? They embody our love of life, our famed hospitality, our joy of inviting one another into our homes for good times, and they offer a taste of the province so fresh you’ll have practically taken a bite out of the land.
All that and more is on offer at the following feast of 34 addresses.
Montréal Plaza
Known for their level of creativity that hinges on the unhinged, this French restaurant’s stupefying theatrics are well-known both in the dining room and on its plates.
Vin Papillon
While known as the vegetable-forward offering of the Joe Beef empire, its ingredients receive all the love and expertise of its meatier counterparts, plus a wine list of precision and innovation.
Mon Lapin
The menus of this Little Italy restaurant cooking New Canadian and Quebecois cuisine with fine dining twists and augmentations proves that chefs Marc-Olivier Frappier and Jessica Noël spin culinary gold.
Bar-St-Denis
At this former dive bar-turned-electric dining experience, you’ll find a parade of small plates covering a myriad of cultures in a natural wine-forward setting, all wrapped in a sharply designed interior.
Lawrence
This small tasting menu-focused restaurant from chef Marc Cohen celebrates offal and classics that have been with the restaurant from the very beginning, served with a level of hearty refinement.
Taverne sur le Square
A Westmount Square institution blends together the very best of French bistro fare, Italian trattorias and steakhouses into one solid offering that can upscale any night out on the town.
Monarque
Dining at this Old Montreal jewel of a French brasserie and dining room from chef Jérémie Bastien is both a masterclass in its cuisine’s techniques and classics plus cosmopolitan inclusions from other cuisines.
Kitano Shokudo
A progenitor in the Montreal scene for taking Japanese cooking and treating it to French techniques and presentations, Hiroshi Kitano’s bistro in the Plateau is a must—especially the omakase.
Toqué!
Few restaurants exhibit as much a celebration of Quebec gastronomy as this one from Normand Laprise, where farm-to-table food and market-based menus receive leading-edge treatments by the chef and his team.
Provisions Bar à Vin
Consider this the next-gen steakhouse of Montreal: With its in-house butchery, it’s an address in Outremont that flips the porterhouse-and-martinis formula on its head in the best of ways.
Gia Vin & Grill
From its interior ‘wine island’ to its lunches full of sandwiches ‘n’ salads and dinners of arrosticini, finely spun pasta, and contorni, this Saint-Henri spot is a fine dining gem without comparison.
Candide
John Winter Russell’s classic restaurant for refined seasonal dishes inside a deconsecrated church is an exploration of landscape through food, where the cooking is both intriguing and engaging.
Joe Beef
The restaurant that launched a thousand ships, this is a definitive Montreal dining experience thanks to its one-two punch celebrating classic dining with a banquet-style celebration of good food.
Hélicoptère
This destination in Hochelaga is an exceedingly accessible option for fine dining where tasting menus take you on a tour of its chef David Ollu’s Bouillon Bilk tutelage plus wholly new avenues.
Foxy
Dressed in an interior design of black and gold minimalism, the menus of this Griffintown destination sets a high bar for dining in Montreal thanks to its combination of wood-fired and fresh elements.
Les Street Monkeys
This next-gen Cambodian restaurant in Verdun is a lively cornerstone of the city’s dining scene because of the richly aromatic food they offer, playing on dishes both traditional and wholly new.
L'Express
An institution in Montreal famed for its superb level of service and the absolute reliability of its menu’s French classics, few places in the city get as iconic as this Plateau haunt.
Paloma
Specializing in Niçoise cuisine that combines the best of southern France and Italy, the father-daughter team behind this sweet spot of a restaurant in Villeray easily makes for chic evening any night of the week.
Bistro La Franquette
A hidden gem of Westmount, this French-forward bistro is equal parts traditional dishes done to perfection and a level of experimentation you’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.
Pichai
A local forerunner for Thai food augmented by pure creativity and Canadian products, this is where chef Jesse Mulder has taken his reputation for dizzyingly good eating to new heights.
Salle Climatisée
A new-wave French bistro on the fringes of Little Italy, its chefs Harrison Shewchuk and Brendan Lavery are both about simple market food done well and aspiring to new frontiers through sheer creativity.
Tinc Set
Focused on Spanish cuisine, it’s an Outremont restaurant that sheds pretension and turns its nights of service into parties thanks to a great Catalan wine list and easily shareable menu of tapas.
Beba
Blending the owners’ Argentinian background with explorations of great cuisines from around the world, this tiny Verdun restaurant is cooking some of the most impactful yet deceivingly simple food in town.
Damas
An essential address in Montreal for Syrian cuisine, every spiced and aromatic bite here is impeccably sourced from across the Mediterranean, from shared mezze to sizzling grilled platters.
Le Club Chasse et Pêche
Hubert Marsolais and Claude Pelletier’s Old Montreal restaurant is a discreet and pensive place to spend hours over opulent dishes that, time and again, provide the most memorable of experiences.
Kamúy
Grounded in his home country of Haiti and exploring the islands and South America, eating at chef Paul Toussaint’s restaurant is always a unique celebration of spice and flavour you can’t find elsewhere.
Le Mousso
Taking cues from Scandinavian cuisine and applying it to Quebec’s terroir, each plate here is done with pinpoint accuracy, resulting in plates that resemble small sketches or paintings from chef Antonin Rivard-Mousso.
Tuck Shop
Its rotating menus of upscale, seasonal fare will keep you guessing, but the buzzy ambiance and service at this Saint-Henri eatery will make you feel like you’re immediately at home.
Au Pied de Cochon
This ode to Quebecois cuisine is essential eating in Montreal, served in a completely unpretentious fashion that takes diners to the very heart of what makes this province stand out.
Moccione
One meal here and you’ll no longer be surprised why its tables are in such high demand: This restaurant has single-handedly stolen the show when it comes to eating a fantastically delicious Italian meal.
Garde Manger
The vibes are high when eating at this restaurant from Chuck Hughes. It’s an absolute parade of surf and turf served up with a service staff that knows how to have a good time.
Île Flottante
This Mile End restaurant focused on vegetable-forward tasting menus is considered among the very best in the city for its high calibre of cooking and service, along with its energetic atmosphere.
Satay Brothers
Casual, fun, and incomparably flavorful, this Singaporean restaurant’s menu walks the line between addictive comfort food and inventive visits to Malaysia, Indonesia, and beyond.
Hoogan et Beaufort
The wood fire-informed and deeply seasonal menus of this fine dining titan from chef Marc-André Jetté is as comforting as it is exciting, and its wine lists will immediately astound you.
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