The Mano Cornuto team spent six years trying to find a home for the late-night bar they actually wanted to run, and the old AYLA room on Richmond is it. Small plates across Italy, Portugal, Spain and France, pasta portioned so you order two or three, pizza finally coming out of the oven AYLA never used. The bar is forty per cent longer than the one it replaced and built for talking to strangers, nearly half the room is held for walk-ins, and the kitchen runs until two.

Charles Dumais spent six years in the Toqué! group before concluding that what he wanted to cook was a burger. Croquette is the result, a modern diner in the merged rooms of Bonheur d'occasion and its old deli: charcoal-grilled patty, pepper onion compote, Charlevoix emmental, horseradish mayo, house bun. Around it, a baloney club sandwich, guinea fowl in gravy, triple-cooked fries, beef tartare with bone marrow. A poultry dry-aging room sits in view of the tables and you can pick your own bird. Cocktails stay cheap, including an eleven-dollar martini.

Fifteen seats, two owners, one blackboard. Maxime Latapie and Baptiste Boyer met in the kitchen and dining room of Portus 360 and built the smallest version of a restaurant they could run alone: he cooks whatever Jean-Talon Market has that morning, a few starters and a couple of mains deep, while Boyer pours the wine, by the glass or in quarter and half-litres. The room is second-hand French bistro, assembled by Boyer himself. Book online for four or fewer, call for more, or take a bar seat and skip the question entirely.

Pizzeria Nonnina is the second act from Massimo Cappellano, whose sandwich and pastry shop has anchored the other end of the same Lachine building since 2023. Different format here: a counter with no seats, 20-inch New York pies sold whole or by the slice, and slices that hang off the plate. Eight options, from a margherita finished with basil pesto straight out of the oven to a vodka-sauce NYC with bacon and caramelized onion. Bomba, ranch and hot honey for customizing. Thursday to Saturday only, with the waterfront a short walk away.

The bao are the point: pork-filled, crisp-bottomed, thick-skinned where the steamed version is delicate, and loaded with enough broth that the first bite is a hazard. John Xue built the Toronto original in 2018 around a 400-square-foot kitchen, and that discipline shows in a menu that stays short. Order the scallion oil noodles and the wonton soup alongside. It's the chain's first address outside Ontario, it's on Bishop, it takes no reservations, and the line has already found it.

Rémi Lemieux cooked at Osteria Francescana and Le Bernardin before setting up on rue Bishop, and it shows in the details: a soufflé built on Miel d'Anicet honey, morue with soufflé stuffing and saffron, an île flottante that tastes like the Orange Julep. The Michelin guide noticed in its first Montreal year. But this is a bistro at heart, with croques, steak frites, a burger that sells out nightly, and Quebec farms all over the menu. The wine list splits the difference between natural juice and serious appellations, minus the attitude.

The Knuckles team's Park-Ex pizzeria honours co-owner Matthew Shefler's grandfather, a Bari-born pilot who slung pies in the Congo, and the room channels that memory with his paintings on the walls and pews from a dwindling Sainte-Claire congregation. Chef Vincent Lévesque-Lepage works his dough Neapolitan-style, bakes it New York: a three-day cold ferment, then a seven-minute ride to a shattering bottom and chewy crumb. Skip the mortadella playbook for the loaded-potato white pie or the underdog marinara, and note the house rule: whole pies stay under $40.

Elliot Latendresse cooks Chinese food that doesn't answer to a region: cumin lamb skewers off the charcoal, marinated cucumbers, you tiao with soy cream, and dough worked by hand into noodles, wontons, pancakes and fritters. Quebec produce turns up wherever the season allows. The room on Marie-Anne belongs to Thé Jinjin during the day, the tea counter run by his partner Wenhui Zhang, and to him at night, with a playful wine list and Chinese spirits alongside. Small, and walk-in only unless you're six or more.

Crosta has been selling out of pizza since its June 2026 debut on Saint-Viateur, and the crust explains the lineups: a long-fermented sourdough that chef Josh Michael describes as a Montreal-New York hybrid, airy and nearly hollow inside, crisp underneath. Michael runs the open kitchen for longtime friends Shawn Giannone and Andrew Hanna, who dreamed the place up after a New York pizzeria crawl, and nothing comes from a can: the hot honey hides ten spices, the house ranch starts with crème fraîche made on site. Order the potato pizza with bacon jam.

Eight seats, one counter, and a sixteen-course evening menu: Maison An Omakase, opened on Avenue du Parc in 2026, is as intimate as dining gets in Montreal. Chef An Doan, among the first women to helm an omakase in the city, spent two years training in Japan before folding her Vietnamese heritage into the form, most memorably in a pho chawanmushi that steeps the Japanese egg custard in the broth's signature aromatics. Every course comes with a story from the chef herself, which is precisely the point of sitting this close.

Beyt means house in Arabic, and the cave à manger that Anthony Gebrayel and Angélique Custeau opened on Saint-Laurent in 2026 lives up to the name: a 34-seat room of exposed stone, glass block and Lebanese-inspired arches where you can drop in for a coffee, a glass of wine or a long apéro. Custeau's list leans on private imports and small-batch artisan wines, while the kitchen nods to Gebrayel's Lebanese roots with lamb skewers with za'atar yogurt and stuffed eggplant on labneh. Bottles to go seal the neighbourhood-fixture status.

Phong Thach (born in Vietnam to Cambodian parents, raised in Quebec) and Carlos Ortiz (Montreal, Salvadoran roots) run Villeray's Bistrot Fortune, where Southeast Asian technique flirts openly with Latin American flavour. A hamachi crudo in aji verde that reads like Thai green curry, a crispy pork salad built on Cambodian bones, a bò kho reframed as a bistro plate. Twenty-five seats, mains under thirty dollars, a short menu that shifts when the right ingredient walks in.

Camilo Lapointe-Nascimento won Les Chefs! in 2020 at 23, the competition's youngest-ever winner, and spent the years since running Menu Extra, a pop-up dining experience he co-founded. Cam's Déjeuner on the Plateau is his first permanent address, and the format is deliberately tight: four breakfast sandwiches on fresh spelt and poppy seed bread, each built around egg, smoked cheese, and pickled jalapeños, with bacon, smash sausage, or vegetable variations. Tater tots, filter coffee, espresso standards through chai. A focused debut from someone who clearly knows what he's doing.

The second outpost of Yann Levy's retro-futuristic Japanese universe lands on Saint-Viateur East as a looser, more convivial proposition than the downtown ramen bar that started it all. Named for Kisho Kurokawa's 1972 Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, the room channels that same Metabolism-meets-cyberpunk spirit into something built for lingering: shareable izakaya plates, serious sashimi, sake, and wine. Levy, who has traveled to Japan annually since 2012, designed the concrete-and-green-leather space himself. Seasonal specials and a konbini-inspired lunch card round it out.

Twelve years as executive chef at Maison Boulud, then eight more in planning: Riccardo Bertolino and sommelier Isabel Bordeleau took their time with Osteria Berto, and it shows. The 70-seat room on Henri-Julien, designed by Mise à jour studio, moves through finger food, starters, pasta, and mains: vitello tonnato, stracci alla finanziera with white ragù and guinea fowl liver, tortelli verdi with ricotta di bufala. Bordeleau's wine list leads with Italian producers. The house also holds the only aceto balsamico tradizionale aging batteria in Canada.

The team behind Myers has returned with something more ambitious: a gastronomic address on Van Horne built around chef Grégoire Routy, who trained in Michelin-starred kitchens in France and England before spending time at Raele in Copenhagen. The menu is short and precise, four mains anchored in local, seasonal product with Mediterranean and Provençal inflections: snow crab, asparagus, sea bream, duck, rhubarb, herbes de Provence. Designer Kyle Adams Goforth has given the former Boxermans space a warm, considered makeover, and the wine list holds its own alongside the kitchen. The kind of room you book when it matters.

Bous brings Persian cuisine to a contemporary downtown room where geometric elements, muted tones, and references to Iranian architecture and ceramics do as much work as the kitchen. Chef Hamed Masoumi drew on travels through Iran to build a menu spanning regions and techniques: Golden Tahchin (layered saffron rice cake), Kashk-o-Bademjoon (smoked eggplant with cured yogurt), and a pomegranate and walnut Fesenjoon with duck leg confit. Fragrant, meant for sharing, and more considered than most.

Opened in 2026 for Hôtel William Gray's tenth anniversary, Freddi takes the classic hotel bar as its starting point, running from breakfast through late night beneath a glass roof. Chef Konstantin Chakhnov, who also helms Maggie Oakes next door, built the menu around Japanese inflections: wagyu tartare with bone marrow, miso-glazed black cod, yakitori duck, signature temaki. Cocktails lean on sake, shōchū, and Japanese whisky, with Quebec spirits alongside.

Tongue Bui has spent the better part of a decade running some of the city's better nightlife addresses. Minnibar, which opened April 30 near the Bell Centre in the Finale Residences, is his first move toward something that works at noon. The space, designed by Ivy Studio with 35 seats and a ten-seat bar wrapped around a wood-burning pizza oven, is tight and considered without being precious. A custom DJ booth sits in the corner, more nod than statement.

Chef Keanan Ramasamy leads a kitchen shaped partly by Luca Marone, grandson of Da Emma's Emma Risa, and the influence shows: focaccia sandwiches, carbonara with guanciale and cured egg, an osso buco lasagna finished with gremolata. Dinner goes further with a lobster and caviar roll and a foie gras-sauced burger with 24-month comté. The weekly pizza omakase, ten bar seats, one slice at a time, is the move worth planning around. Coffee is handled by David Mariani of Café Olimpico.

Ramen Youki has been feeding Hiroshima since 1958, and its first location outside Japan just happens to be on the Plateau. Shinichi-san, a direct descendant of the founding family, has brought the house specialty with him: Hiroshima-style shoyu tonkotsu, a pork bone and chicken broth that lands light on the palate but keeps unfolding in layers. The room is spare and warm, more neighbourhood fixture than destination restaurant, and the compact menu keeps focus with karaage, onigiri and a spicy mabo ramen. Six locations in Japan; the seventh is ours.

Westmount got a proper Japanese bistro in 2026, and Moku wastes no time showing its range: torched oshizushi with yuzu mayo and tobiko, chef's-choice sashimi, izakaya snacks like tako wasabi and corn ribs. The kitchen's fusion instincts are the draw, though, whether it's burrata with pistachio paste on a nori baguette or the miso butter spaghetti that reviewers can't stop ordering. Dim lighting and a warm, compact room make it an easy date spot, and the hojicha crème brûlée closes things out convincingly.

Raphaël Leclerc-Gileau and Brigitte Emond Serret met at Bouillon Bilk ten years ago and spent the better part of the decade since working their way through some of the city's more serious kitchens before landing here, on Fairmount Ouest, in a 1967 bakery they've converted into a 45-seat room. The menu reads with quiet confidence: oysters, beef tartare on lavash, maquereau with aubergine and shishito, agnolotti stuffed with ricotta and crab, halibut with fennel and lentil. Raphaël's pastry background surfaces at the end of the meal, where a Paris-Brest with black sesame and a panna cotta with rhubarb earn their place alongside the savoury courses. Brigitte runs the floor and the wine list, which stays close to small producers and moves with the menu. Two formats on offer: à la carte for a lighter visit, five courses when the evening calls for it.

Joe Franchini and Jamie Sunny have been chasing this one since their teenage years. Nine years after launching Flyjin together, the duo finally opened the café-trattoria they always had in mind, just a short walk from their original address on Notre-Dame Ouest. The room alone is worth the visit: Old Montreal stone walls sandblasted back into view, tile floors, velvet banquettes, alcoves that mirror the bar's window shapes. Chef Nick handles the kitchen with a traditional Italian hand and a light personal touch. Early standouts include the cavatelli with sausage and rapini, a very good chicken parmigiana, and a crudo that doesn't overstay its welcome. Sommelier Felix (formerly of Jatoba) curates a wine list that stays Italian and honest, right down to the price points. Dinner service runs Tuesday through Saturday for now, with lunch on the way.

The Old Port's newest Italian table calls itself a cucina sociale, and Gioia De, opened in 2026, plays the part: shared plates, an easy-flowing room, and head chef Jamie Lee Gerosa (roots in Campobasso and Morbegno, years in Montreal kitchens) cooking with generosity as the organizing principle. Puglian burrata comes classic, salty or sweet, the mafaldine carries a white boar ragù, and the pepperoni pizza gets crisped edges and hot honey. Oysters with negroni mignonette set the tone: familiar Italian pleasures, served with a wink.