Fuelling our famed joie-de-vivre is serious business, and we don’t take it lightly: our allegiance to gastronomic pleasure is evident in everything we do.
For example, we don’t consume; we enjoy. We don’t pick up groceries; we pick up tips from the producers themselves as we swap secrets in aromatic market stalls that overflow with amazing local delights, from cheese and foie gras to maple syrup and iced cider.
Our most important decision of the day is a toss-up between the food-wine pairing and the dining ambiance, both absolutely essential. We celebrate our passion for food on a daily basis, in our kitchens, at the market, in world-class restaurants, bring-your-own-wine bistros, wine bars, terraces, cafés, markets and artisanal food boutiques. We’ve even devoted an entire festival to the pleasures of the table, the MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE festival.
It’s about melt-in-your-mouth bagels available fresh at any hour, a steaming allongé with a buttery croissant on a sunny terrace, ingenious chefs that propel French-Canadian cuisine into the culinary stratosphere, smoked meat on the Main, maple-kissed cuisine du terroir and sharing it all with friends.
Montréal gastronomy, from home-cooked to highfalutin, is as varied, genuine and endearing as the city itself. Our unique culinary scene incorporates an influx of cultures with an abundance of regional produce and a cooking tradition that dates back to the very first settlers. The result? An incredible range of dining establishments and gastronomic experiences characterized by Montréal’s exceptional creativity, quality and variety.
Take the famed Toqué! by Normand Laprise, Martin Picard’s boisterous bistro-cum-brasserie Au Pied de Cochon or the “sunshine food” of Jérôme Ferrer’s Europea. Or the legendary Beaver Club that pays tribute to Québec produce with its Menu Découverte and the award-winning Nuances atop the Casino de Montréal that dazzles with culinary invention against the Montréal skyline. All international culinary powerhouses in their own right, these prestigious establishments lend a new definition to “Montréal home-style”.
