--°C|Thursday, September 10, 2026
Where dive bar regulars, pool hall nighthawks, and cocktail pilgrims drink within a few blocks of each other.
August 24, 2026
Saint-Henri has always been a neighbourhood of contradictions. Historically working-class, built around factories and the Lachine Canal, it has spent the last two decades absorbing waves of new investment, new residents, and new bars. In other words, textbook gentrification.
The drinking scene wears all of it. Old-school dives that open before noon, terrasses that fill up the moment the weather improves, cocktail bars acclaimed on a national level, and hidden basement lounges that are easy to miss.
This guide covers it all: the rundown, ritzy, and in-between. If you stay out way past your bedtime and get a hankering for food, our guide to the city's best late-night and 24-hour restaurants has you covered. And if the weather's cooperating, some of the spots below pair well with a crawl through the city's best terrasses.
Marc-André Filion, Sébastien Chaput, and Vincent Ménard, a guitarist, drummer, and vocalist respectively, met through Montreal’s underground music scene in the early 2000s. Over a decade later, their lasting friendship and love of beer brought Messorem to life, a microbrewery on Rue Pitt. Specializing in IPAs, sours, and aged beers, Messorem serves their own beers on tap, rotating selections regularly. A menu of snacks is also available—typical pub fare like burgers, poutine, and salads—to be shared and paired with a pint, while sitting on the terrasse.
Bar Baby, or Baby Far West, merges cocktail-forward bar and club atmospheres into an audio-social experience. Its space is sleek, a windowless, basement venue that manages to feel expansive and ambient rather than claustrophobic, even when the music gets louder and the bar gets busier. It’s the perfect spot to go for a night out with friends, where dancing takes priority and talking stays at a minimum. Grab one of their signature cocktails, like the “Don’t Put Baby in the Corner” or the “Poison Ivy,” grab a friend, and enjoy the music.
Just beside the abandoned Canada Malting Silo (the one with the pink house perched atop it) along the banks of the Lachine Canal, sits Terrasse St-Ambroise, an expansive outdoor patio serving McAuslan beers straight from their on-site brewery, and a selection of food. During the summer it fills up on afternoons and evenings, cultivating a lively atmosphere. With beer flights, a mix of covered and uncovered seating, two bars, and beanbag toss setups, you could stay there all day.
Regularly regarded as one of the best bars in Canada, Atwater Cocktail Club is a Saint-Henri favourite to which patrons travel from all over the city, province, and country. A dark, speakeasy-style room welcomes you in, with vintage fixtures, long, black leather benches, and rows of bottles lining the back of the bar. As the name suggests, cocktails are attentively created, using high-quality ingredients, house-made syrups, and carefully curated spirits.
Bon Délire, from the same group as Atwater Cocktail Club, is a bar that trades its sibling’s polished energy for something looser and laid-back without sacrificing style. Cheetah-print pool tables, a neon-lit bar top, and slushie cocktails in martini glasses generate their own kind of energy. Their drinks are inventive, like a Sbagliato with cava or a Thai basil smash, and the food stays simple with hot dogs until 3 a.m., Cubano sandwiches, and nachos.
Bar Courcelle has been open for over half a century, and managed to remain a fixture of the neighbourhood despite a switch in ownership in 2013. While updates were made, the metal counter, vintage textures, and checkered flooring honour the interiors of a ‘60s and ‘70s diner. Grab a classic cocktail or beer on tap while listening to live music on select nights, or open mic performances on Sundays.
A classic dive with pool tables, poker machines, and cheap beer, Bar Billard Notre Dame provides Saint-Henri locals with a casual hangout. The bar opens early, at 8 am, and closes late, at 3 a.m., accepts only cash, and reflects ruggedness with neon signs, TVs on the wall, and terracotta and beige vinyl-tiled floors. No matter the hour, a pool cue and cold bottle await.
Right near the Saint-Henri metro, on Saint-Jacques, sits Pub Epoxy, a neighbourhood dive with pool tables, beers on tap, and a steady stream of regulars. Despite previous renovations, which lent the bar more space and added a pool room, it remains a well-loved, simple destination. Even more so when you consider that it operates exclusively as a bar. No food is served here, though you’re welcome to bring your own from Pizza St-Henri a few doors down (if it’s open).
Siboire in Saint-Henri is an outpost of the Sherbrooke-based microbrewery, and sits near the Atwater Market and Lachine Canal. Beers on tap (brewed in Sherbrooke) rotate, while their bistro menu, featuring burgers, chicken wings, and poutine, lines the stomach. With a bright and spacious room, well-suited for groups, and a street-side terrasse that warms up in the afternoon light, it’s an easy place to spend a few hours.
Opened in 2017, in a former factory space near the Lachine Canal, Riverside is a summer-only bar and event venue on Riverside Street, which gave it the name. Its industrial setting lends well to the bar’s format: all outdoor terrasse, with multiple bars and lounge areas. It draws a young, lively crowd, and tends to be one stop of many in a long night out.
Of all the ways Saint-Henri's drinking scene engages with the Lachine Canal (beside it, overlooking it, named after it), Canal Lounge is the only bar that's actually on it. The fifty-year-old bateau-mouche moored at the Atwater quay spent its first life cruising and its second, restored one going nowhere at all, which suits everyone fine: you're here for a carefully made spritz on the water while the sun drops behind the market. Tapas keep it simple, with stuffed vine leaves, chorizo, and olives built for grazing between rounds, and every cocktail on the list comes in a non-alcoholic version. The boat seats few and the rules are firm: parties of six max, no reservations, 18 and over. Show up early on a good evening to claim your spot on deck.
Every place here was visited by someone on our team.
Where dive bar regulars, pool hall nighthawks, and cocktail pilgrims drink within a few blocks of each other.
August 24, 2026
Saint-Henri has always been a neighbourhood of contradictions. Historically working-class, built around factories and the Lachine Canal, it has spent the last two decades absorbing waves of new investment, new residents, and new bars. In other words, textbook gentrification.
The drinking scene wears all of it. Old-school dives that open before noon, terrasses that fill up the moment the weather improves, cocktail bars acclaimed on a national level, and hidden basement lounges that are easy to miss.
This guide covers it all: the rundown, ritzy, and in-between. If you stay out way past your bedtime and get a hankering for food, our guide to the city's best late-night and 24-hour restaurants has you covered. And if the weather's cooperating, some of the spots below pair well with a crawl through the city's best terrasses.
Marc-André Filion, Sébastien Chaput, and Vincent Ménard, a guitarist, drummer, and vocalist respectively, met through Montreal’s underground music scene in the early 2000s. Over a decade later, their lasting friendship and love of beer brought Messorem to life, a microbrewery on Rue Pitt. Specializing in IPAs, sours, and aged beers, Messorem serves their own beers on tap, rotating selections regularly. A menu of snacks is also available—typical pub fare like burgers, poutine, and salads—to be shared and paired with a pint, while sitting on the terrasse.
Bar Baby, or Baby Far West, merges cocktail-forward bar and club atmospheres into an audio-social experience. Its space is sleek, a windowless, basement venue that manages to feel expansive and ambient rather than claustrophobic, even when the music gets louder and the bar gets busier. It’s the perfect spot to go for a night out with friends, where dancing takes priority and talking stays at a minimum. Grab one of their signature cocktails, like the “Don’t Put Baby in the Corner” or the “Poison Ivy,” grab a friend, and enjoy the music.
Just beside the abandoned Canada Malting Silo (the one with the pink house perched atop it) along the banks of the Lachine Canal, sits Terrasse St-Ambroise, an expansive outdoor patio serving McAuslan beers straight from their on-site brewery, and a selection of food. During the summer it fills up on afternoons and evenings, cultivating a lively atmosphere. With beer flights, a mix of covered and uncovered seating, two bars, and beanbag toss setups, you could stay there all day.
Regularly regarded as one of the best bars in Canada, Atwater Cocktail Club is a Saint-Henri favourite to which patrons travel from all over the city, province, and country. A dark, speakeasy-style room welcomes you in, with vintage fixtures, long, black leather benches, and rows of bottles lining the back of the bar. As the name suggests, cocktails are attentively created, using high-quality ingredients, house-made syrups, and carefully curated spirits.
Bon Délire, from the same group as Atwater Cocktail Club, is a bar that trades its sibling’s polished energy for something looser and laid-back without sacrificing style. Cheetah-print pool tables, a neon-lit bar top, and slushie cocktails in martini glasses generate their own kind of energy. Their drinks are inventive, like a Sbagliato with cava or a Thai basil smash, and the food stays simple with hot dogs until 3 a.m., Cubano sandwiches, and nachos.
Bar Courcelle has been open for over half a century, and managed to remain a fixture of the neighbourhood despite a switch in ownership in 2013. While updates were made, the metal counter, vintage textures, and checkered flooring honour the interiors of a ‘60s and ‘70s diner. Grab a classic cocktail or beer on tap while listening to live music on select nights, or open mic performances on Sundays.
A classic dive with pool tables, poker machines, and cheap beer, Bar Billard Notre Dame provides Saint-Henri locals with a casual hangout. The bar opens early, at 8 am, and closes late, at 3 a.m., accepts only cash, and reflects ruggedness with neon signs, TVs on the wall, and terracotta and beige vinyl-tiled floors. No matter the hour, a pool cue and cold bottle await.
Right near the Saint-Henri metro, on Saint-Jacques, sits Pub Epoxy, a neighbourhood dive with pool tables, beers on tap, and a steady stream of regulars. Despite previous renovations, which lent the bar more space and added a pool room, it remains a well-loved, simple destination. Even more so when you consider that it operates exclusively as a bar. No food is served here, though you’re welcome to bring your own from Pizza St-Henri a few doors down (if it’s open).
Siboire in Saint-Henri is an outpost of the Sherbrooke-based microbrewery, and sits near the Atwater Market and Lachine Canal. Beers on tap (brewed in Sherbrooke) rotate, while their bistro menu, featuring burgers, chicken wings, and poutine, lines the stomach. With a bright and spacious room, well-suited for groups, and a street-side terrasse that warms up in the afternoon light, it’s an easy place to spend a few hours.
Opened in 2017, in a former factory space near the Lachine Canal, Riverside is a summer-only bar and event venue on Riverside Street, which gave it the name. Its industrial setting lends well to the bar’s format: all outdoor terrasse, with multiple bars and lounge areas. It draws a young, lively crowd, and tends to be one stop of many in a long night out.
Of all the ways Saint-Henri's drinking scene engages with the Lachine Canal (beside it, overlooking it, named after it), Canal Lounge is the only bar that's actually on it. The fifty-year-old bateau-mouche moored at the Atwater quay spent its first life cruising and its second, restored one going nowhere at all, which suits everyone fine: you're here for a carefully made spritz on the water while the sun drops behind the market. Tapas keep it simple, with stuffed vine leaves, chorizo, and olives built for grazing between rounds, and every cocktail on the list comes in a non-alcoholic version. The boat seats few and the rules are firm: parties of six max, no reservations, 18 and over. Show up early on a good evening to claim your spot on deck.
Every place here was visited by someone on our team.
