The Bulletin: Three Generations of Italian Sandwiches, a Best Bartender Crowned, and Techno Bliss [Issue #163]

We rebuilt your guide to Montreal from scratch

We've rebuilt our guides from the ground up with features that help you discover the city: interactive maps that flow smoothly, neighbourhood and transit filters so you can find what's nearby, and a "Surprise me" button for when you're feeling adventurous.

Also: You can now save and recommend your favourite spots across the city—building your own Montreal map as you go.

What's new:

• Neighbourhood filters to explore by area
• Transit filters to find spots near your metro stop
• Prominent "Hide map" toggle for distraction-free browsing
• "Surprise me" button that surfaces random gems
• Randomized list order so every spot gets equal love

Whether you're hunting for the best new restaurants, plotting your weekend, or just seeing what's out there, the guides now work the way you actually explore Montreal.

Activities, parties, points of interest, art exhibitions, you name it: These are the weekend events you don't want to miss.

Thursday

🎵 Kick off the New Year with Sans Soleil’s new monthly program, with no shortage of live DJ’s keeping the spirits high throughout the post-holiday doldrums. 

✨ Experience a live orchestra perform your favourite Abba and Queen songs in the romance of candlelight at Le 9e.

Friday

🎻 The FILMharmonique Orchestra performs Howard Shore's score live while The Two Towers plays in HD at Place des Arts—a thrilling journey back to Middle-earth where the music hits different when 100+ musicians are in the room with you.

🚲 Libre makes its debut at Foil Gallery, showcasing artworks from a Montreal artist who cycled from Norway to France with a canvas attached to his bike. 

🎸 Bar de Courcelle hosts their next Honky Tonk Dance Night! With a live band and a two-step dance lesson, there’s no excuse to sit this one out.

Saturday

🔮 Dômesicle celebrates ten years every Saturday from January 10 to March 21 with nights co-promoted by Montreal's underground collectives, turning the dome into a 360° immersive ritual where techno, house, funk, and rave meet visual performances that wrap around you.

🪩 Dark Area returns for its 2026 edition, taking over Livart with two rooms, six DJ’s for a night of pure techno bliss.

🎤 Belt out your best at Queer Karaoke at Bar Milton-Parc—free admission, no cover, just you, your velvety voice (or lack thereof), and a room full of people who peaked in high school choir. 

⛸️ Slide and Grooves are back at Parc Jean-Drapeau– skate along the trail to colourful lights and a live DJ set.

🎸 Champs honors the duality of Hannah Montana—normal girl by day, popstar by night—at Montreal's homiest queer bar, because what better way to figure out your 2026 personality than channeling Miley's wig-driven identity crisis?

Sunday 

🐉 Cinéma de Sève screens Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—Jane Austen meets Chinese myth in Ang Lee's period epic where Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat search for a stolen sword through unforgettable martial arts sequences and career-best performances.

🎧 Experience Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85–92 in full at the next Listening Room session.

📺 Twin Peaks: The Return at Cinéma du Parc screens all 18 episodes of David Lynch's mystical third season across January—this Sunday catches episodes 3-6, where dreams, horrors, and small-town charm collide in the pie-and-horror universe that still fascinates everyone who discovers it.

🍽️ Learn about the city’s gastronomical history at On the Menu – Montreal: A Restaurant Story at the McCord Museum featuring photographs, archives, objects, and old menus from the eateries that helped shape Montreal’s identity. 

💭 Create your own 2026 vision board and manifest the rest of the year at Dine & Dish’s next workshop, taking place at Les Alchimistes.

WHAT TO EAT & DRINK IN AND AROUND MONTREAL

Scope the latest restaurant openings, recommendations on where to eat, plus new menus, old classics, and everything in between.

Sae Low kicks off 2026 with a special walk-in brunch takeover by Minh Phat Jan. 6–10, offering a rare chance to taste his cooking in a casual daytime setting.

Bossa officially opens its Dix30 location on Jan 10 at 11 a.m. after a soft opening phase.

It’s trivia night at Les Sans-Taverne! Team up and enjoy a night of good food and cold beer on Jan 11.

Pasta Wednesdays have made their return to Leila’s for the New Year. On Jan 14, taste their weekly pasta plate and paired wine for 20$.

Vinvinvin brings back its beloved spaghetti-and-wine deal for 2026, turning Wednesdays into Mercredi Spaghetti from January 7 to April 8—$20 gets you a plate of pasta and a glass of wine, Trattoria-style, no fuss required.

Le Plongeoir hosts a cozy knitting night on January 13, inviting stitchers of all levels to gather for an evening of slow craft, conversation, and wintertime togetherness.

Café Kuya's serving Arroz Caldo—slow-cooked Filipino rice porridge with chicken, ginger, and garlic—for $10 a bowl at their pop-up on Jan 10, because nothing says "new year, same comfort" like steaming-hot congee with classic garnishes when it's freezing outside.

Keith Siu and Ronan Shaftoe from Belle Isle take over Molenne on Jan 19 for one night of Hong Kong-inspired dishes pulled straight from their brains—bold flavors, zero restraint, and absolutely no promises about Fergie-level dance moves.

Burgundy Lion's annual Robbie Burns Supper returns Jan 25 with a four-course dinner featuring traditional haggis, a tasting of four whiskies, bagpipes, kilts, and Ruaraidh MacIntyre flying in from Islay to perform the Address to the Haggis—$125, RSVP fast because seats fill up.

Here, you'll find a weekly round-up of our stories from the past week, plus the latest local news.

Marchigiani's been making Italian sandwiches since before it was cool—three generations, 65 years, and word of mouth have made them a big name in the game, no Instagram required. Read more.

Dazy Chains merges CAPTCHAs and AI imagery with hand-knit fibre arts, while founder Hayley Mortin's publication Needlebound counters social media's ephemerality by giving textile artists a physical space where their work won't disappear into the feed. Read more.

Forget the tourist trinity of bagels, poutine, and smoked meat—rotisserie chicken is Montreal's real everyday heartbeat, feeding more Montrealers than any of them through Portuguese piri-piri, Greek lemon potatoes, Quebecois gravy, and Lebanese garlic sauce. Read more.

Our best new restaurants include yakitori on Plaza St-Hubert, McMillan and Dammann's accessible West Island spot, Marcel Larrea's 24-seat Mezcla speakeasy, and then some. Lots more some. Read more.

From relentless snowmaking to glades and beginner-friendly slopes, Montreal's ski map splits north to the Laurentians for quick laps and night skiing, east to the Townships for longer runs and bigger views. Read more.

January refuses to slow down: Igloofest turns the Old Port into a frozen rave, the WWE takes over the Bell Centre for two nights, PHI offers haptic wearable wombs... Read more.

The fourth Café Gentile opens in Dollard-des-Ormeaux, minutes from where Anthony Gentile grew up embarrassed by meatballs and sangwiches—the same sandwiches he's now built a restaurant empire around. Read more.

Montreal's newest cafés range from stops for Vietnamese-Japanese hybrids to boxing gym caffeine, plant-based donuts, and a spot that pairs Greek food with your morning cortado. Read more.

Venezuelan Montrealers gathered in separate rallies—some celebrating Maduro's U.S. military capture as a long-awaited chance for democracy, others condemning it as dangerous imperialism. Read more.

Quebec emergency rooms hit 245% occupancy at Royal Victoria and 257% at Jewish General as post-holiday flu spikes, staff shortages, and a lack of hospital beds create a bottleneck where more people flow in than out. Read more.

Three major Montreal developers plan to build 2,500 units for people experiencing homelessness at zero profit—not because they're altruistic, but because the luxury condo market they oversaturated has collapsed and homelessness is bad for business. Read more.

Montreal's potholes arrived early thanks to freeze-thaw cycles, with stretches near Papineau and Mont-Royal so deep drivers are calling them ditches. Read more.

Montreal bartender Marie-Louise Roy-Bilodeau just beat 26 bartenders from North, South, and Central America to win Ultimate Bartender Champion after only four years behind the bar. Read more.

Niche perfume shops selling scents inspired by oil paintings and cellos are booming in Montreal. Read more.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts just opened a newly renovated fourth floor in the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, dedicated entirely to temporary exhibitions that revisit Quebec and Canadian art history. Read more.

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And that wraps yet another weekly bulletin. We’ll be back with more curiosities, local stories, and events to discover next week.

If ever you catch something we should know, don't hesitate to reach out to us on Instagram.

👋 Masthead: Philip Tabah, Founder & Head of Creative / Daniel Bromberg, Co-Founder & Head of Operations / Jean-Philippe Lauzon, Co-Founder & Head of Tech / JP Karwacki, Managing Editor / Amber Spector, Social Media Manager / Samuel Vadnais, Head of Partnerships / Anahi Pellathy, Editorial & Production Coordinator / Kaitlyn DiBartolo, Editorial Intern / Jeremy Cox, Editorial Intern / AnnaClare Sung, Editorial Intern