--°C|Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Whether you're catching a Habs game or a sold-out show, these are the best places to eat and drink near the Bell Centre.
August 24, 2026
The good news about the Bell Centre is that it's downtown. The bad news about the Bell Centre is that it's downtown, where 21,000 people are trying to eat in the same ninety minutes. Doors at 5:30, puck drop at 7, and someone in your group is coming from Laval. The question was never really "where's good downtown." It's "what can I actually pull off before faceoff."
Within a fifteen-minute walk of the arena you've got nationally lauded southern Italian, a Fukuoka-style tonkotsu built to line the stomach before an arena beer, century-old French brasseries, izakayas in old bank buildings, and cocktail bars good enough to justify showing up late to the gate. Enough range to settle an argument between six people with six opinions, anyway.
We've listed walking times from the Avenue des Canadiens doors for every spot. Under ten minutes is safe on a game night. Over that, book early and eat early, because downtown fills fast when everyone's heading the same direction.
If you'd rather skip the ticket and watch from a barstool, our guide to where to watch hockey in Montreal covers that. Otherwise, here's where to go.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 10 minutes
Tsukuyomi ladles out bowl upon bowl of creamy pork bone broth, the base of their Fukuoka-style tonkotsu ramen, nestles in a serving of handmade noodles, and tops the whole dish off with an egg, wood-ear mushrooms, and your choice of protein. They've got a vegan option as well, plus a myriad of sides, donburi, and desserts, amounting to a hearty meal, optimal to line the stomach before enjoying a beer (or two, or three) in the Bell Centre stands. The dimly lit interior makes for a good place to convene before the puck drops, and the warm soup is a comforting antidote to the biting Montreal winter.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 10 minutes
Ensconced in Le Mount Stephen, what was once Sir George Stephen's mansion and has since become a breathtaking historic landmark, is Bar George. The Scottish and British resto-bar, with its Gilded Age boiserie and coffered ceilings, is a veritable institution, and for good reason. Slide into a leather chair or booth and enjoy a craft cocktail alongside some traditional dishes like Beef Wellington, striploin with chips and Reform sauce, and cream of mushroom soup. Lending a certain air of sophistication to the start of the night, there are worse ways to steel yourself before the game.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 9 minutes
Bar Edicola does Italian aperitivo stylishly, with warm wood panelling, red floors, and a wall of magazines nodding to its past life as a downtown newsstand. Their dinner menu of small plates, and modest lunch offerings (if you're catching a matinée), favour classics like bruschetta, mozzarella, radicchio and fennel salad, and ricotta agnolotti. Their drinks follow a similar logic; think three types of negronis and lots of Campari and Aperol. The perfect opening act.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 15 minutes
Bluefin handrolls, hamachi maki, grilled octopus, and shishito peppers. For a sleek izakaya living in what was once a bank, Phillips Bar sticks to the pricing of a more casual spot ($12 handrolls, $15–$24 makis) while serving up dishes a punch above, courtesy of chefs and co-owners Antonio Park and Olivier Vigneault alongside chef S'arto Chartier-Otis. The space keeps the bones of its origins, with marble floors, ironwork railings, and soaring ceilings, setting a mood equal parts grand and unpretentious. Order a little of everything and call it a meal.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 7 minutes
From mixologist Andrew Whibley (Cloakroom Bar) and chef Pablo Rojas (Provisions) is a historic gastropub that carries nearly a century of lives—hotel bar, gay pub, tavern—into its latest iteration. The brass chandeliers and mirrored back bar look like they've been there for all of it, while the menus bestow a contemporary flair. On the drinks side, Whibley hits the standards with the kind of precision you'd expect from the Cloakroom pedigree. Rojas follows suit, with oysters, gravlax, and steak frites. Note that it's 18+, so this isn't the one if the kids are coming to the game. Otherwise, it's the kind of place that improves any night.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 15 minutes
Amid a strip on Sainte-Catherine that locals widely consider a sort of satellite Chinatown is Kazu, a Japanese eatery open Thursday to Sunday. With no reservations, a line typically builds just after their 5 p.m. opening, parties shuffling into the restaurant's small quarters in a steady stream. Once you're seated, order the tuna and salmon salad rice bowl, the shrimp burger, or the beef kalbi plate. With a mechanically efficient staff and menu items written on pieces of paper tacked to the wall, Kazu is where you go when you need a quick, early meal before the Habs.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 9 minutes
Shay brings modern Lebanese cuisine to Griffintown, with a menu built for sharing. With chef Joseph Awad in command, Shay's mezze, spreads of hummus, moutabbal, and mouhamara, pair seamlessly with larger plates like lamb chops, shish taouk, and grilled shrimp, making it an ideal pre-game spot for groups of any size. Designed by Ivy Studio, its interior is eye-catching without feeling unwelcoming; warm-toned furniture, cream-coloured walls, and orb-like light fixtures create an ambience that keeps focus on the food. A lively, low-commitment feast that gets you out the door before faceoff.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 13 minutes
Bringing together some of the city's most popular chefs and concepts, Time Out Market offers a solution for satisfying a group with competing tastes. Inside the Eaton Centre, the food hall covers a host of cuisines, from tacos at La Capital to Indian fare at Le Taj and North, Central, and South American plates at Americas BBQ. The floor is fast-moving and casual, with streamlined counter service and open seating. Flexible and crowd-pleasing, go here when you're short on time and can't agree on a single destination.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 9 minutes
A glowing red neon sign announces the presence of Le Pois Penché, casting a glow over the terrace. The French brasserie, classic not just for its vintage façade or circular raw bar with red velvet stools, but for its enduring Parisian sensibility, feels like a time capsule. Briny oysters, seafood platters, steak frites, and duck confit; the menu reflects its ancestry with familiar dishes, elevated. An elegant precursor to what will likely be a not-so-elegant match.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 14 minutes
Sora 45, positioned aptly on the 45th floor of Place Ville-Marie, offers Japanese fare and specialty cocktails. Light wood interiors and hanging greenery punctuate the space, though a floor-to-ceiling view of the city skyline reliably overshadows all else. Café by day, resto-bar by night, no matter the time of the game you'll likely be able to stop by for some spicy marinated cucumber, beef and oyster tartare, or a yellowfin tuna steak sando. Factor in the elevator on your way out, which makes it a better bet for a matinée than a 7 p.m. start.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 10 minutes
Uniting Portuguese tradition with a more metropolitan atmosphere, the Michelin Guide–recommended Ferreira Café is at once cozy and refined. A family affair, founded by Carlos Ferreira and continued in collaboration with his daughters Sandra and Claudia, it retains consistency in service and cooking; central to the restaurant's identity are its attentive hospitality and Portuguese dishes. The menu highlights chef Natalia Machado Villaverde's use of seafood, with bouillabaisse, black cod, octopus, and more. A wine list with 400 references rounds out the experience.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 5 minutes
No restaurant this close to the arena has any business being this good. Nora Gray has held down Saint-Jacques since 2011, and the room still does what it did on night one: wood-lined, low-lit, loud in the way a good dining room ought to be. Emma Cardarelli and Ryan Gray came out of Liverpool House and built the place on southern Italian cooking and a near-pathological attention to detail. Since 2024, chef Dmetro Sinclair (Salle Climatisée, Willow Inn) has run the kitchen with more clarity and a lighter hand. The menu turns over constantly, but count on house-made pasta, a rustic pork chop with braised cabbage, crudo when the fish warrants it, and a cellar deep in organic, natural, and biodynamic bottles. Works better as a post-game reward than a pre-game sprint.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 13 minutes
Inside Maison Alcan, the Ristorante Beatrice team has installed an Italian-Mediterranean dining room in one of downtown's more handsome buildings. The space is airy and polished without trying to prove anything, and the kitchen, run by longtime Beatrice collaborators Michael Coppa, Jeffrey Capuano, and Frank Gioffre, cooks with restraint. Precise pastas, crudo and carpaccio treatments, grilled seafood, and meat dishes that favour balance over bravado. The pantry is classical Mediterranean, handled with a light contemporary touch. Service runs smooth and informed, aiming for rhythm rather than theatre, which matters when you're watching a clock.
Every place here was visited by someone on our team.
Whether you're catching a Habs game or a sold-out show, these are the best places to eat and drink near the Bell Centre.
August 24, 2026
The good news about the Bell Centre is that it's downtown. The bad news about the Bell Centre is that it's downtown, where 21,000 people are trying to eat in the same ninety minutes. Doors at 5:30, puck drop at 7, and someone in your group is coming from Laval. The question was never really "where's good downtown." It's "what can I actually pull off before faceoff."
Within a fifteen-minute walk of the arena you've got nationally lauded southern Italian, a Fukuoka-style tonkotsu built to line the stomach before an arena beer, century-old French brasseries, izakayas in old bank buildings, and cocktail bars good enough to justify showing up late to the gate. Enough range to settle an argument between six people with six opinions, anyway.
We've listed walking times from the Avenue des Canadiens doors for every spot. Under ten minutes is safe on a game night. Over that, book early and eat early, because downtown fills fast when everyone's heading the same direction.
If you'd rather skip the ticket and watch from a barstool, our guide to where to watch hockey in Montreal covers that. Otherwise, here's where to go.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 10 minutes
Tsukuyomi ladles out bowl upon bowl of creamy pork bone broth, the base of their Fukuoka-style tonkotsu ramen, nestles in a serving of handmade noodles, and tops the whole dish off with an egg, wood-ear mushrooms, and your choice of protein. They've got a vegan option as well, plus a myriad of sides, donburi, and desserts, amounting to a hearty meal, optimal to line the stomach before enjoying a beer (or two, or three) in the Bell Centre stands. The dimly lit interior makes for a good place to convene before the puck drops, and the warm soup is a comforting antidote to the biting Montreal winter.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 10 minutes
Ensconced in Le Mount Stephen, what was once Sir George Stephen's mansion and has since become a breathtaking historic landmark, is Bar George. The Scottish and British resto-bar, with its Gilded Age boiserie and coffered ceilings, is a veritable institution, and for good reason. Slide into a leather chair or booth and enjoy a craft cocktail alongside some traditional dishes like Beef Wellington, striploin with chips and Reform sauce, and cream of mushroom soup. Lending a certain air of sophistication to the start of the night, there are worse ways to steel yourself before the game.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 9 minutes
Bar Edicola does Italian aperitivo stylishly, with warm wood panelling, red floors, and a wall of magazines nodding to its past life as a downtown newsstand. Their dinner menu of small plates, and modest lunch offerings (if you're catching a matinée), favour classics like bruschetta, mozzarella, radicchio and fennel salad, and ricotta agnolotti. Their drinks follow a similar logic; think three types of negronis and lots of Campari and Aperol. The perfect opening act.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 15 minutes
Bluefin handrolls, hamachi maki, grilled octopus, and shishito peppers. For a sleek izakaya living in what was once a bank, Phillips Bar sticks to the pricing of a more casual spot ($12 handrolls, $15–$24 makis) while serving up dishes a punch above, courtesy of chefs and co-owners Antonio Park and Olivier Vigneault alongside chef S'arto Chartier-Otis. The space keeps the bones of its origins, with marble floors, ironwork railings, and soaring ceilings, setting a mood equal parts grand and unpretentious. Order a little of everything and call it a meal.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 7 minutes
From mixologist Andrew Whibley (Cloakroom Bar) and chef Pablo Rojas (Provisions) is a historic gastropub that carries nearly a century of lives—hotel bar, gay pub, tavern—into its latest iteration. The brass chandeliers and mirrored back bar look like they've been there for all of it, while the menus bestow a contemporary flair. On the drinks side, Whibley hits the standards with the kind of precision you'd expect from the Cloakroom pedigree. Rojas follows suit, with oysters, gravlax, and steak frites. Note that it's 18+, so this isn't the one if the kids are coming to the game. Otherwise, it's the kind of place that improves any night.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 15 minutes
Amid a strip on Sainte-Catherine that locals widely consider a sort of satellite Chinatown is Kazu, a Japanese eatery open Thursday to Sunday. With no reservations, a line typically builds just after their 5 p.m. opening, parties shuffling into the restaurant's small quarters in a steady stream. Once you're seated, order the tuna and salmon salad rice bowl, the shrimp burger, or the beef kalbi plate. With a mechanically efficient staff and menu items written on pieces of paper tacked to the wall, Kazu is where you go when you need a quick, early meal before the Habs.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 9 minutes
Shay brings modern Lebanese cuisine to Griffintown, with a menu built for sharing. With chef Joseph Awad in command, Shay's mezze, spreads of hummus, moutabbal, and mouhamara, pair seamlessly with larger plates like lamb chops, shish taouk, and grilled shrimp, making it an ideal pre-game spot for groups of any size. Designed by Ivy Studio, its interior is eye-catching without feeling unwelcoming; warm-toned furniture, cream-coloured walls, and orb-like light fixtures create an ambience that keeps focus on the food. A lively, low-commitment feast that gets you out the door before faceoff.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 13 minutes
Bringing together some of the city's most popular chefs and concepts, Time Out Market offers a solution for satisfying a group with competing tastes. Inside the Eaton Centre, the food hall covers a host of cuisines, from tacos at La Capital to Indian fare at Le Taj and North, Central, and South American plates at Americas BBQ. The floor is fast-moving and casual, with streamlined counter service and open seating. Flexible and crowd-pleasing, go here when you're short on time and can't agree on a single destination.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 9 minutes
A glowing red neon sign announces the presence of Le Pois Penché, casting a glow over the terrace. The French brasserie, classic not just for its vintage façade or circular raw bar with red velvet stools, but for its enduring Parisian sensibility, feels like a time capsule. Briny oysters, seafood platters, steak frites, and duck confit; the menu reflects its ancestry with familiar dishes, elevated. An elegant precursor to what will likely be a not-so-elegant match.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 14 minutes
Sora 45, positioned aptly on the 45th floor of Place Ville-Marie, offers Japanese fare and specialty cocktails. Light wood interiors and hanging greenery punctuate the space, though a floor-to-ceiling view of the city skyline reliably overshadows all else. Café by day, resto-bar by night, no matter the time of the game you'll likely be able to stop by for some spicy marinated cucumber, beef and oyster tartare, or a yellowfin tuna steak sando. Factor in the elevator on your way out, which makes it a better bet for a matinée than a 7 p.m. start.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 10 minutes
Uniting Portuguese tradition with a more metropolitan atmosphere, the Michelin Guide–recommended Ferreira Café is at once cozy and refined. A family affair, founded by Carlos Ferreira and continued in collaboration with his daughters Sandra and Claudia, it retains consistency in service and cooking; central to the restaurant's identity are its attentive hospitality and Portuguese dishes. The menu highlights chef Natalia Machado Villaverde's use of seafood, with bouillabaisse, black cod, octopus, and more. A wine list with 400 references rounds out the experience.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 5 minutes
No restaurant this close to the arena has any business being this good. Nora Gray has held down Saint-Jacques since 2011, and the room still does what it did on night one: wood-lined, low-lit, loud in the way a good dining room ought to be. Emma Cardarelli and Ryan Gray came out of Liverpool House and built the place on southern Italian cooking and a near-pathological attention to detail. Since 2024, chef Dmetro Sinclair (Salle Climatisée, Willow Inn) has run the kitchen with more clarity and a lighter hand. The menu turns over constantly, but count on house-made pasta, a rustic pork chop with braised cabbage, crudo when the fish warrants it, and a cellar deep in organic, natural, and biodynamic bottles. Works better as a post-game reward than a pre-game sprint.
Walking distance from Bell Centre: 13 minutes
Inside Maison Alcan, the Ristorante Beatrice team has installed an Italian-Mediterranean dining room in one of downtown's more handsome buildings. The space is airy and polished without trying to prove anything, and the kitchen, run by longtime Beatrice collaborators Michael Coppa, Jeffrey Capuano, and Frank Gioffre, cooks with restraint. Precise pastas, crudo and carpaccio treatments, grilled seafood, and meat dishes that favour balance over bravado. The pantry is classical Mediterranean, handled with a light contemporary touch. Service runs smooth and informed, aiming for rhythm rather than theatre, which matters when you're watching a clock.
Every place here was visited by someone on our team.
