Four Montreal restaurants have made the finalist list for Air Canada's Best New Restaurants 2026, the country's longest-running ranking of new openings, with the Top 10 to follow later this year in November.
Bistrot Fortune, 3 Pierres 1 Feu, Yakitori Hibahihi and Hana Korean Steakhouse are the city's entries among 30 finalists nationally. Two more Quebec rooms round out the province's showing: Coquette, just outside Quebec City, and MacTaverne in Val-David.
It’s a quieter year for Montreal than the last one, when nine local restaurants turned up across the list and two of them, Le Violon and Pasta Pooks, went on to crack the Top 10. Toronto alone accounts for nine finalists this time, and Ontario for 14 of the 30.
The eligibility rules are narrow by design. A restaurant has to have opened between May 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026, be a genuinely new address rather than a relocation or a second location, seat at least two people for regular dine-in service, operate independently or as an independent concept inside a group, and be open to the public. No private clubs, no ticketed pop-ups.
Here are the four Montreal finalists.
Bistrot Fortune
Bistrot Fortune opened quietly in April at the corner of Jean-Talon Est and De Lorimier, in a space Phong Thach knows intimately: he opened his first restaurant at the address in 2007 before moving on, then came back when it freed up. Tony To runs the kitchen, Carlos Ortiz runs the floor and the wine, and the two of them had been circling the idea of a shared restaurant since they met at Red Tiger around 2016.
Thirty seats, dinner Tuesday through Saturday, a back patio on a slab of asphalt. The cooking is modern Vietnamese with Latin American accents, and the list keeps every bottle under $100. Regulars have already picked a favourite in the crispy pork salad.
3 Pierres 1 Feu
Paul Toussaint's fifth project sits just inside the Henri-Julien entrance of Jean-Talon Market. The name refers to the three-stone fire used for outdoor cooking across Haiti and West Africa, and the kitchen is built around Haitian fire-cooking technique crossed with Texan barbecue. Toussaint brought in Austin pitmaster Damien M. Brockway of Distant Relatives, whose work on the African diaspora has earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a place on Texas Monthly's BBQ Top 50. Meat is ordered by weight, butcher-style. Pikliz and sharp pickled onions cut the smoke. Communal tables keep the room loud (in a good way).
Yakitori Hibahihi
Hiroshi Kitano and Hideyuki Imaizumi have been close friends for a decade, and spent most of it waiting for the right moment to build something together. It arrived on Plaza St-Hubert, with one condition from Kitano: it had to be yakitori. Kitano already had Otto Yakitori, Kitano Shokudo and Ohayo behind him; Imaizumi had Marusan. The name comes from an alias of NIPPS, a founding member of the Japanese hip-hop group Buddha Brand, and translates roughly to flying leaf, flying fire.
Keep reading “Montreal Lands Four Finalists on Air Canada's Best New Restaurants”
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