Review Food and Drink: Dining Out in Montreal Canada

You’ll be spoilt for choice in Montreal if you love French-inspired bistro-resto / brasserie style food. Plus you’ll love the people – being a restaurant host here is a thing of pride. You’ll get great staff at both these restaurants reviewed, all the way through from a glad-handing maître d’ to the junior who recites the recipe of rouille.

That’s once you are in, as waiting time for a table is spent wrestling coat hangers in the adhoc cloakrooms just inside the door, a sure sign of heavy weather to come. It’s also a thing here if you are dining alone to be perched at the bar with glass in hand and a fine plate of food – there’s no hiding that Montrealers love their restaurants – and you’ll need to book well in advance for these two hotspots.

Top of the list for me in Montreal is:

Leméac

1045 Avenue Laurier, West Outremont, QC H2V 2L1

Leméac – romantically pitched by our waitress, Marie-Chantal as a ‘cosy place in the village’, but more likely named after the newspaper that was there until 2001. Located on Avenue Laurier, an upmarket strip of cafés, restaurants and speciality stores in Laurier Ouest – it’s a little more Madison Avenue than Montmartre. You can see more of what’s on in this swanky neighbourhood here gastronomy and outings.

If you are craving a classy take on French cuisine then you are in the right place and you have to order the escargots with Portabella mushrooms, tubetti pasta and tomato ragout in a basil sauce (C$25). It’s a fine way to serve gastropods, with the mushroom echoing the meaty snails in a fresh, fragranced foam. A starter of smoked herring from Iles-de-la-Madeleine, fingerling potatoes & beet salad (C$24) is picture perfect, but lacking in seasoning oomph and I’m always nervous about chasing frisée lettuce around my plate. This is a smart joint after all. Nothing says French more than mussels (C$34) – here served in a fennel broth, a mountain of frites and, of course, crusty bread and butter. This is not a knife and fork dish, you have to dip into the broth using the shells to get the full effect and taste the subtle complexity. Dive in! The duck leg confit, roasted fingerling potatoes (which must be a thing) and salad (C$34) is a transformational dish if you’ve ever had soggy, greasy confit anything. This duck was crispy with slivers of crunch rendered fat. If eating can be described as sensual, then this is the place. For wine, we enjoyed a Canadian cabernet franc from Trois Moineaux with grapes from the Twenty Mile Bench area of Niagara, theirs is a focus on fresh, delicate and thirst quenching wines. A ten from me.

Restaurant L’Express

3927 RUE SAINT-DENIS MONTRÉAL, QC

7 DAYS A WEEK, FROM 11:30 AM TO 02:00 AM

It’s comfortable to be back at L’Express, even though it’s been five years since my last meal here, so I am sticking to what I know and liked. There are a few more photos on the wall marking the years – the chefs, kitchen brigades and front of house celebrated in gilded frames. We start with a gin and tonic, some local gin if they have it? Well, wow that’s a gin’s name worth writing down on the paper tablecloth. It’s Menaud gin from the dramatic landscape of Charlevoix on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River. Our waiter got quite misty-eyed talking about it, the refreshing breezes and the palette-finish of melted snow. Take it from me, this is a great gin. The saltiness of the marsh samphire provides a balance to the woody, citrus and pepper notes. It’s even got elderberry, spruce and woolly hedgenettle, boy they must have fun making this spirit. And if ever gin is thought of medicine then this is the bottle for it.

Settling in with baguette, butter and a jar of cornichons – every table is presented with these serve yourself apéro pickles, we order fish soup (C$19) a lush, tummy filling dish in deep lionhead bowls and a juicy Hanger steak with shallot butter and fries (C$38). And yes, you can order rare here. With nearby diners from New York seeking out the famed croque-monsieur, you’ll find the menu has other classics such as bone marrow, celery remoulade, endive and blue cheese, calf liver with tarragon and roasted quail – all served with panache, you can almost hear Mimi and Rodolfo singing up there in the atelier. If any notes for the director it would be proper napkins not paper ones. I know you serve hundreds of covers a day, perhaps there is something more elegant than a shrivelling thin sheet.

This is a belovèd classic, love it for both atmosphere and food.

Hallelujah! It’s a thousand kisses deep for these two temples in Montreal…