A complete guide to Chợ Đêm MTL, Montreal’s Vietnamese night market

Welcome to Chợ Đêm MTL, the Vietnamese night market that turns Montreal’s Bassin Peel into a four-day explosion of food, culture, and community energy.

Running from July 17 to 20, 2025, this year’s edition is its most ambitious yet. You’ll find everything from chạo tôm and pho to handmade ceramics, lo-fi folk remixes, bamboo dancing, and intergenerational storytelling—all on the waterfront, under string lights, with 25,000 people eating and dancing alongside you.

It’s part block party, part cultural archive, and all heart.

Where food meets heritage: What makes Chợ Đêm MTL different?

Now in its third year, the Vietnamese cultural festival Chợ Đêm MTL has grown from a grassroots project into one of Montreal’s most anticipated summer festivals. But its mission hasn’t changed: bring every generation of the Vietnamese community together—elders and artists, aunties and adoptees, first-gen kids and brand-new newcomers—and invite the entire city to the table.

It’s part food fair, part homecoming, part block party built on healing, humour, and grilled squid.

According to Association des Vietnamiens Québécois (AVQ) President and co-founder Trang Tran, the idea was born from a gap—a missing space where tradition and contemporary identity could meet. Other events existed, but many were either one-off community gatherings or too inward-facing. What Chợ Đêm MTL set out to do was different: create a space that welcomes everyone, regardless of how far removed they are from Vietnam.

“We wanted to bring people together not just physically, but culturally and emotionally too,” she explains.

The night market format made sense. In Vietnam, these are neutral grounds: places where teenagers on dates, aunties in pyjamas, and families out for dessert all coexist. “You can have anyone there,” Trang adds. “No matter your socio-economic situation, you can get a really good deal at the night market. It’s accessible. It’s joy.”

Still, this isn’t meant to be a replica, but a remix: “We’re not trying to recreate a traditional night market,” Tran says. “We’re evolving it—because here in Montreal, the past and the present have to coexist.”

The result is what AVQ Vice-President Charles Nguyen calls a “movement”—one that’s intergenerational by design, but multicultural by nature. Vietnamese Montrealers who grew up disconnected from their roots have found a way in through the food and community; artists have found a stage; adopted kids have discovered a culture they’d only heard stories about. One visitor even told Tran, “I had no idea what Vietnamese culture was before this, but I felt like I belonged.”

In a single weekend, over 25,000 people wandered through last year’s edition. This year, that number is expected to grow—fitting, as it coincides with the 50th anniversary of Vietnamese resettlement in Canada. 

Three generations later, the stories are still unfolding. Chợ Đêm is where they meet.

Quick Facts: What You Need To Know

📍 Location: Bassin Peel (accessible via Metro @ Bonaventure station)

🗓 Dates: July 17–20, 2025

🕔 Hours: Thursday 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. / Friday 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. / Saturday 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. / Sunday 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.

🏮 Opening Night & Ceremony: Thursday, July 17 at 5 PM

🎟 Admission: Free for kids under 12, seniors 65+, and anyone wearing an áo dài

🌐 More info: chodem-mtl.com

📍 Map: Google Maps

📸 Follow: @chodemmtl on Instagram | Facebook Event

What To Eat: Street Food With Soul

Phở and bánh mì are the gateway drugs, but Chợ Đêm MTL pulls deep from the Vietnamese culinary playbook, spotlighting lesser-known classics you rarely see outside of backyard parties or home kitchens.

Show up hungry and come back the next day for the dish you missed! Here’s just a taste of what’s on offer this year:

• 123Dzo – Chạo tôm (shrimp paste grilled on sugarcane) and mực nướng (grilled squid), straight from the grill with all the smoky char you want.
• Ăn Chơi Plaza – Cừu lá lốt, tender grilled lamb wrapped in betel leaves. Herbaceous, punchy, and a little unexpected.
• Drunken Rabbit – Bánh bột lọc, chewy tapioca dumplings filled with pork and shrimp, served slick with fish sauce.
• Les Street Monkeys – Nghêu xào, sautéed clams that taste like drinking a beachside beer in Da Nang.
• Restaurant Lyla – Bột chiên, fried rice flour cakes with egg—crispy-edged, deeply savoury, and built for snacking.

What To See and Do: Games, Music, and a Sea of Silk

Beyond the bites, the market turns into a full sensory experience. Think late-night performances, traditional games, hands-on workshops, and a crowd that’s half cultural showcase, half family reunion.

Here’s some of what you can expect:

• Vietnamese games like bầu cua cá cọp (squash-crab-fish-tiger) and múa sạp (bamboo pole dancing).
• Live performances ranging from traditional music and dance to V-Pop, Vietnamese hip-hop, and fusion acts on the Quai Sud and Quai Nord stages.
• Workshops and storytelling sessions at the Immersive Dock, connecting generations through memory, food, and family.
• The áo dài experience—try one on, snap a photo, or just admire the sea of flowing silk in every shade imaginable.
• Surprise sets and drop-in collabs—last year’s crowd came for the food and stayed for the artists.

Check the event schedule or just follow the sound of the drums.

Shop for the Handmade, the Heart-Filled, and the Very Giftable

The vendor lineup at Chợ Đêm is curated like a love letter to Vietnamese creativity that’s part old-world craft, part next-gen cool. It’s a portrait of a culture in motion, one booth at a time.

At Quai Nord + Quai Sud, you’ll find things like:

• Alexn.ceramics – High-quality, handcrafted ceramics made with care and clarity of form.
• Artsytamiie – Kawaii pun stickers, Vietnamese-inspired colouring books, and joy in paper form.
• Bodhi Gourmet – Vegan Vietnamese fish sauce (yes, really), plus pantry staples done the right way.
• Mese Goods – Addictive dried fruit snacks that are half treat, half travel memory.
• Flora Exotica – Exotic plants that feel like bringing home a piece of the Mekong Delta.
• Tea and coffee vendors offering slow pours, ice drips, and a full caffeine spectrum, Vietnamese-style.

Cultural Partners and Community Orgs

Over at the Immersive Dock on Quai Sud, Chợ Đêm brings out the soul of the community through workshops, language booths, and cultural showcases. This is where the event gets intergenerational, educational, and quietly powerful:

• Super Boat People – Explore Vietnamese aromatics and the power of scent in memory and healing.
• Les Amis de Montréal – Try on áo dài (traditional dress) for men and women and learn its cultural significance.
• Centre Culturel Vietnamien (CCV) – “Về Nhà Ăn Cơm,” an illustration and photo contest rooted in food memories.
• Swab The World – Join the global stem cell registry. You could help save a life.
• Vietnamese for Kids – A language booth where young ones can learn their first (or fiftieth) word in Vietnamese.

Why It Matters: 50 Years in Canada

This year marks half a century since the first Vietnamese refugees arrived in Canada—and Chợ Đêm doesn’t shy away from that legacy. The festival was built to be a space where old wounds and new traditions can meet in the middle, with food as the common language.

It’s about reinterpreting that history—through second-gen artists remixing Vina house with lo-fi beats, adopted kids discovering dishes they never knew, and seeing four generations of one family enjoying the same event together.

As Charles Nguyen puts it, “Some of these generations don’t usually mix. But when there’s food involved, that changes.”

That’s what Chợ Đêm is: a place where traditions are preserved and reimagined, shared with anyone willing to show up with curiosity and an empty stomach.