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Meetings»PSA 2010»Dining Guide

PSA2010 Dining Guide

Dr. Nicholas Dew
McGill University

Original PDF Version

Montreal is a great dining city, surely among the best in North America. The city's restaurant scene has attracted a lot of attention in the US press in recent years, so you will find several articles in places like Gourmet magazine and the New York Times. Online restaurant reviews are also plentiful, as are discussion boards like Chowhound and its imitators. There are a great many restaurants in the middle price range which offer exceptionally good value for money, and it is mostly those kind of places that we have listed here.

Orientation and Getting Around

Montreal is very much a city of distinct neighbourhoods. The ethnic and linguistic mix varies as you move around the city. The list below is organized by areas, starting with those immediately near the Hyatt. You could see a lot of Montreal just by walking for half a mile or so from the hotel, but we would urge you to roam further afield, and take advantage of the city's excellent public transportation--there's a metro station just across the street. Certain areas of Montreal have so many restaurants that, in some cases, we have simply indicated a stretch of a street: in those strips, you could choose a place at random and be fairly confident of having a good experience. But at the same time, we have tried to list our favourite spots in each area.

Taxis are plentiful, reliable and can be hailed on the street. For most of the restaurants on this list, it will rarely be more than a $10-15 trip each way (including tip). The metro and bus services are very good and run until about 12:40am. The city's famous bike rental scheme, the Bixi, has just extended its service to the end of November, and so will be available for guests: see http://www.bixi.ca for more information.

Like many North American cities, Montreal is built on a grid system, with the blocks numbered consistently (so you can tell roughly where a restaurant is on the grid from the number), but we have tried to make things even easier by including cross-streets below. If you are using Google maps, or a similar system, bear in mind that the street grid is tilted on an angle, so that "Montreal north" is really a little west of north-west. In what follows, all directions are given in terms of the city grid, so "west" means "Montreal west". For east-west streets, the numbering divides at Blvd St-Laurent (so 200 Sherbrooke East is two blocks east of St-Laurent).

Language, Bills and Tipping

Locals debate whether the local tipping code is the same as the US or not, but if in doubt, just go with the rate you would use in the US. However, you should know that service in restaurants is often more "European" in pace than it may be in American cities. One useful thing to know is that Montreal restaurants will have no problem giving you multiple bills. Sometimes, as you sit down in a group, the wait staff will ask whether you want multiple bills, but you can also usually ask for split bills at the end as well, and paying with multiple cards should be no problem.

Almost all service staff will be able to serve you in English (and all should in French), but the further you get from downtown the more likely it is that the wait staff will be more comfortable in French. If you don't speak French, don’t worry, the staff will probably be bilingual; and if you are trying to practise your French, don't be insulted if the waiter switches to English. Many waiters are so used to switching languages that they may not even realize they've done it.

BYO / Apportez Votre Vin (sometimes)

Those on a budget should look out for BYO restaurants. In certain areas, it is common for restaurants to have a Bring Your Own liquor license (look for "Apportez Votre Vin" signs). These restaurants can offer excellent value for money (since bringing your own wine keeps the bill down). You will have to buy the wine from the official liquor stores, the SAQ (Société d'alcools du Québec, branch locator at http://www.saq.com/). There are many BYO restaurants on rue Duluth, in the Plateau neighbourhood, and one of the busiest SAQ branches is on the corner of Duluth and St-Denis. Convenience stores (dépanneurs) also sell wine, but we would advise you to buy your wine from the SAQ.

Two Notes: in most cases, the BYO license applies only to wine, and not to beer or spirits. Do not show up with a six-pack of beer or a mickey of vodka. There might also be a nominal fee for opening your bottles of wine. It’s still worth it.

Links

Université de Montréal historian François Furstenberg has this guide online: http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/furstenf/perso/ffmontrealfoodguide.htm

An online guide to poutine, Québec’s most famous dish, run by a McGill astrophysics professor: http://www.montrealpoutine.com/?index

Local newspaper Voir's restaurant guide (in French): http://www.guiderestos.com/

Restaurants, By Neighborhood

We have not attempted to write something that would replace a full-scale guide to Montreal's restaurants. We have also been thinking mostly of dinner, rather than lunch. What follows is not authoritative gastronomic science, but rather an attempt to pass on a certain amount of local knowledge.

Around the Hotel: The Quartier des Spectacles

The area around the hotel is currently being redeveloped as the "Quartier des spectacles" (theatre district), and there are some new restaurants just across the street, two of which are mid-range sister houses of some of the more famous restaurants in the city. They are so new that we have not yet been able to try them. There are also some cheaper chain restaurants (Eggspectations for breakfast, St Hubert for chicken, Baton Rouge for vaguely American food) on the south side of Ste-Catherine (in the same building as the hotel, the Complexe Desjardins). There are various coffee chains (Second Cup, etc.) nearby.

Chinatown

Montreal has a small and lively Chinatown which is just a short walk from the hotel. Just walk "south", down St Urbain, crossing René-Levesque, then down a block to rue de La Gauchetière. There are too many restaurants to list them all here, with a wide range of styles and prices, most of them very affordable.

Old Montreal (The Old Port)

Keep walking down St Urbain, and a little further south after Chinatown (crossing Viger and St-Antoine) is Vieux-Montréal, the Old City (also called the Old Port), which is well worth exploring. From the hotel (corner of Ste Catherine and St Urbain) down to rue St Paul is 1 kilometer (0.6) miles. There are a great many restaurants here, mostly along St- Paul: some are frankly tourist traps, some are very high-end indeed, and there are many things in between. Locals are often dismissive of the restaurants down here, and it is true that choosing a mid-range place at random in the Old Port can be a risky business. The places that are noteworthy tend to be quite high-end, pricewise. But the architecture and the atmosphere make the old port well worth a visit.

Quartier Latin

Going east from the hotel is the area near to UQAM, known as the Quartier Latin. Walking form the hotel, go north a little (across the Place des Arts) and then right on Ontario, and a half-mile walk brings you to a strip of pubs and restaurants that stretches along rue St Denis from Maisonneuve up to Sherbrooke and along Ontario on both sides. This area has lots of cheap restaurants, bars and pubs, including a famous burger joint, La Paryse (on Ontario at Sanguinet), which almost always has a line-up outside.

Le Village

Going further east from the Quartier Latin is Montreal’s "village gai". The strip of Ste Catherine running east from the "Berri-UQAM" metro (or rue St Hubert) as far as Papineau has dozens of bars, clubs, and restaurants mostly serving the LGB community. There is also a newer strip of restaurants along Ontario from around Amherst to Papineau.

The Plateau (Le Plateau Mont-Royal)

The Plateau is the neighbourhood with by far the longest list of restaurants and bars. There are restaurants all over the Plateau, but the main strips of restaurants are: along St Denis from Sherbrooke to Duluth; along Duluth from St Laurent to St Hubert (many of these are BYO wine); along ave Mont-Royal from about Drolet as far east as Papineau. Get the metro to either the Sherbrooke or Mont-Royal stations, and explore. This is a list of places arranged roughly from north to south.

Mile End / Outremont

Currently the coolest corner of the Plateau, Mile End is area bordered by Hutchison to the west (just west of Parc avenue), the railway tracks to the north, and then (more vaguely) St Denis and Villeneuve to the east and south. There are numerous restaurants, bars and cafés along Laurier (west of Park especially, and east of Mentana), Fairmount and St Viateur, Park (or Parc) Avenue, and Bernard. St Viateur and Fairmount both have Montreal's famous bagel bakeries. (St Laurent north of Laurier has a mixture of cool bars and restaurants, but they are less concentrated here.)

West of Downtown / Near Concordia / CCA

The western end of Downtown is the area from Concordia to the CCA (where the Friday night reception will be). If you are looking to eat in the neighbourhood, there are a great many smaller and cheaper eateries along Ste Catherine and Maisonneuve; this area has recently become a "second Chinatown" with some excellent Chinese restaurants, as well as several Korean places.

Little Burgundy / Saint-Henri

In the south-west of the city, in the "up-and-coming" area between Little Burgundy and St Henri, there are a couple of stand-out places, including the restaurant Joe Beef (once warmly reviewed in the New York Times), and its sister establishment, a pub called Liverpool House. They are accessible by foot from metro Lionel-Groulx.

Further Afield

If you are keen to go further afield, one area worth exploring is the rue Jean-Talon, which has a wide variety of cuisines represented, from the middle east to South Asia, to Italy, Greece, and beyond.

Cheap Eats

Various franchises can be found around the city, but one worth mentioning is:

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