Quebec

• Montreal

  French-Canadian Montréal, just 330 miles north of New York City, is an increasingly exciting place to be, whether it’s live music, cultural festivals, contemporary art, boutique shopping, or incredible food and drink you’re after. We are predisposed to favor the latter, naturally, and Canada’s second-largest city, with its ethnic diversity and rich (if tumultuous) Franco- and Anglophone history, does not disappoint. Start by exploring the most regional of Québécois foods—the meat pies, the pork spreads, the beans in lard—and you’ll begin to notice a theme: This is a meat-centric city. Given the area’s bitterly cold winters and early-European-pioneer lineage of hunters, trappers, fur traders, and farmers, it’s no wonder these foods became (and remain) associated with breakfast, the time of day to stock up on hearty, high-fat protein. The people’s excuse for eating these dishes today? History, tradition, nostalgia—plus the food’s damn good. Thankfully, many of the old dishes have survived even in cosmopolitan Montréal, right alongside more celebrated French favorites and those beloved, comparatively newer classics (smoked meat, bagels) introduced by European Jewish immigrants.

  Which brings us to the modern-day new school of Montréal cuisine, embodied by certain packed-to-the-rafters hot spots that get the most ink from enraptured food writers today. But those younger foie gras temples, cuisine de terroir dining dens, and chic wine bars couldn’t exist without that which came before. In this section, we pay tribute to them all: the iconic luncheonettes and the carnivore cult favorites, the 24-hour poutine diners and the innovative microbreweries, the sprawling farmers markets and the Parisian-style bistros. Together they comprise this vibrant city’s overflowing cornucopia of good food and drink, and we think you should know each of them. Get out your maps, hop on a bike, follow the seemingly incessant flow of local students and sophisticates from upscale restaurant to dive bar: It’s time to eat Montréal.

  French-Canadian Montréal, just 330 miles north of New York City, is an increasingly exciting place to be, whether it’s live music, cultural festivals, contemporary art, boutique shopping, or incredible food and drink you’re after. We are predisposed to favor the latter, naturally, and Canada’s second-largest city, with its ethnic diversity and rich (if tumultuous) Franco- and Anglophone…   Read more

   

  Find local foods in Montreal.

  Poutine

  Cretons

  Tourtière

  Wilensky Special

  Smoked meat

• User Content

Below is user-submitted content for this region. Have something to contribute? Upload your regional-food photo or food memory.

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  Bloody Caesar

  Montreal
  lsr
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  Crepe

  Montréal
  beunpopularblog
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  Bagel (white seed)

  Montréal
  liaht
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  Quebec Cheese

  Ottawa
  eblech

• Blog Posts

• Meet a Montreal Buvette: Le Comptoir

  Le Comptoir. Photo by chef-owner Segue Lepage In the course of our Montréal food research, prior to our last trip there, our Airbnb host was one of several locals we asked to weigh in on the dishes and drinks we proposed to cover. He…   Read more

• Montreal Food & Travel Guide: Now on Kindle!

  We are happy to announce the release of our fifth destination guide on Kindle: the Montréal Food & Travel Guide. Canada’s second-largest city is best known for poutine and smoked meat, but this guide goes far beyond that to point…   Read more

• Q&A: Emmanuel Maniadakis, Organic Wine Maker, Québec

  “You don’t get a true representation of terroir by buying fruit from Ontario and adding a French yeast. A great wine is grown, not made in the winery—that’s the only way to get a true taste of the landscape.”…   Read more

• Quintessential Montreal: What to Eat

  Our latest city spotlight turns north to Montréal, where French-Québécois comfort food meets cosmopolitan nose-to-tail dining, innovative microbreweries, and old-school Jewish classics. The flower market outside…   Read more

• Dish Spotlight: Poutine in Montreal

  Every so often, a dish or drink is so beloved, so synonymous with a place that we just have to pay it a little extra mind. Poutine. The mere thought of it gives you a guilty thrill, doesn’t it? The idea of going to a city where…   Read more

• Montreal Bagels: A New Yorker's Take

  It isn’t every day you’re treated to a historic culinary spectacle while waiting for breakfast—and yet that’s what you get every time you walk into Montreal’s St.-Viateur    Read more