The Best Places to Drink and Do in Canada

Preservation jars line the shelves as decor, which tells you something: this Michelin-starred fine dining room on Main Street ferments, forages, and pickles its way through the seasons before a single plate reaches the table. Chef Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson weaves Manitoba roots and Nordic technique into a deeply West Coast menu, and the bar crowd ordering à la carte gets the same serious treatment as the tasting menu pilgrims. North America's 50 Best lists it at number seventeen.

The marble bar top, tin ceiling, and tile floor make Geraldine feel like it's been on Queen West since long before Queen West was Queen West. It hasn't, but the New Orleans-themed cocktail bar wears the illusion well. Green walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that fold open frame a long, narrow room where the bar along the left wall is clearly where the action is. Cajun and Creole food runs in the background, but the bar stools are the point.

The hotel had a colorful past before its transformation into one of Queen West's anchor addresses, and the lounge bar still carries that energy: loud, packed, and moving fast. Artists in residence leave their mark on the walls, so the room always looks like something is happening, because it usually is. A cocktail bar where the drinks share equal billing with the scene, and where the crowd tends to arrive already in a good mood.

A converted row house near U of T, with a backyard patio and ten seats at the bar, The Harbord Room is a cocktail bar that somehow manages to be a neighborhood spot and a destination at once. The staff is young and unstuffy, the room keeps its tables low and its energy lower, and the whole thing sits at the edge of a residential block like it landed there by accident and decided to stay.

An unmarked brown door on College Street, opened only by membership card, is all the warning you get. Inside, a narrow staircase climbs to a small, dimly lit speakeasy with dark wood, ten bar seats, and two tucked-away seating areas. It's a members-only cocktail bar, though out-of-towners willing to email ahead have been known to get in. The kind of place that makes you feel like you know something most people don't.

The fridges here run deep with natural, low-intervention, and unfiltered wines from B.C. and further afield, and the staff will pop a cork in your direction before you've even settled in. Bar Tartare is a wine bar tucked inside the Birds and the Beets cafe on Alexander, with a short food menu anchored by the tartare the name promises. Guest chefs rotate through on nights, so the kitchen is never quite the same twice.

Marble floors, a signature Indian jasmine scent piped through the air, and live music three times a day set the tone for this hotel lobby bar inside one of Vancouver's glossier addresses. It's the kind of place where the city's famously casual dressing meets conspicuous chandeliers and nobody seems bothered by the contradiction. On weekend nights after ten, the potted plants reportedly double as a dance floor, so plan accordingly if you came to drink seriously.

A Douglas Fir bar that's been around forever runs nearly wall to wall, and the waistcoated bartenders working it keep classic cocktails moving at a clip that suggests they've never had a slow Tuesday. This Gastown cocktail bar pulls off a London pub atmosphere in a city that usually splits the difference between restaurant and lounge, with leather booths and deep couches upstairs for the chattier end of the crowd.

Groupings of clocks, plates, mirrors, and pictures cover the walls of this lively Queen West bar, giving it the feel of a well-curated storage unit that somehow works. High ceilings and a wall of windows that open when the weather cooperates keep things from getting claustrophobic, even when the room fills up and the noise climbs. The cocktail menu holds its own, and the kitchen out back means you can actually eat.

Ten stools, two bartenders, and a wine wall that takes itself seriously without making you feel like you should too. West is a wine bar on Granville that embodies what Vancouver does well: high-touch without the starch. The bartenders have been here long enough to know what you want before you do, and afternoons are unhurried, though weekend evenings pack the room two deep with the pre-dinner crowd treating it as a destination in itself.

The curvy white marble bar anchors one corner of a room that looks like it's been pleasantly roughed up by a century of good times, tiled floor and all. Clough Club is a cocktail bar with genuinely progressive drinks, which sets it apart from the group's other spots. Upholstered benches and club chairs line the walls, a tall marble table invites standing rounds in the middle, and the whole thing reads less like a design statement than a place people actually like drinking in.

A garage-door window folds open along Queen West when the weather cooperates, turning this narrow cocktail bar into something between a room and a street corner. Grey-and-green walls, yellow chairs, and a small raised library nook with a sofa and an aquarium give it the feel of a well-curated living room. The bar industry tends to hold its parties here, which tells you something about the drinks program without requiring further argument.

Antler chandeliers and flickering candles light a narrow, 32-seat bar in the West End that smells like barbecue and stays open until 2am with a full kitchen running the whole time, which is rarer in Vancouver than it should be. Rock and blues play loud enough that you lean in to talk, and at the chatty bar you'll have made friends before the second round arrives. A genuinely un-Vancouver-ish room, in the warmest possible sense.

House margaritas come in mugs here, which tells you most of what you need to know about El Caminos. This Mexican cocktail bar on Main Street does the Pacific Northwest version of a dive, all shabby-chic surfaces and pan-Latin classics poured without ceremony. Locals pack it out on weekends and Margarita Mondays draw a crowd that tends to spill onto the sidewalk, so come early or come patient.

Absinthe comes out the traditional way here, slow drip and all, which tells you where this New Orleans-inspired bar's priorities lie. The cocktail list splits into classics and signatures, and the Louisiana-comfort food is priced like the neighbourhood actually lives here, because it does. Live blues on weekends keeps things from getting too precious. The kind of bar that already has regulars who know the staff by name.

Brick walls, Edison bulbs, and wooden shelves set the cocktail-bar mood, then the flat-screens and thumping house music cheerfully undermine the whole thing. The Granville Room sits on Vancouver's neon-lit strip and leans into it: twenty- and thirty-somethings come here to drink with intention, share some bar food, and not overthink it. Call it a party pub wearing a speakeasy costume, and you've got it about right.

A flight of stairs off Granville Street leads to a low-lit cocktail lounge where nearly everyone is sitting down, cocktail in hand, which sets the mood right away. The team makes their own syrups, vermouths, and preserves for drinks built around local ingredients, and a charcuterie-heavy menu keeps people at the table long enough to order another round. Communal tables and upbeat music give it a party-at-a-friend's-place feel.

A semi-circular tiki bar tucked inside the Waldorf Hotel's entertainment complex on East Hastings. The room is built around a big, curved bar with a red top and a mirror wall behind it that bounces the whole scene back at you. Tiered tables ring the outer edge, leaving floor space for when things get crowded. It shares the building with restaurants and live music venues, so some nights come with a cover; earlier in the week it runs as its own thing, free to wander into.

The garden terrace is what people come for: a sprawling, vine-tangled outdoor spot on Rue Saint-Jean that fills up fast once temperatures climb. When they drop, a demountable wooden lattice structure folds over the space so the drinking continues at -25°C, which feels appropriately committed for Quebec City. Inside, the heritage building keeps things rustic and comfortably worn-in, a neighborhood bar that never feels like it's trying.

Upstairs in a Chinatown walkup, rose banquettes and antique Japanese panels recreate the jazz cafés of 1960s Tokyo, which is a strange and perfect setting for a Michelin-starred restaurant fusing Japanese and Italian cooking. The kitchen plays it straight: hand-cut pasta with miso-cured egg yolk and parmesan, tiramisu made with plum wine-soaked tofu. Cult Japanese whiskies share the drinks list with Italian amari, and the cocktails split the difference. Dress up a little.

The dry-aged fish program is the detail that separates this buzzy Fraser Street seafood spot from every other neighborhood bar doing a raw bar. The menu is small and shifts often, but the cooking stays bold and punchy, from hiramasa with aguachile to squid tagliolini that goes places pasta doesn't usually go. Vancouver Magazine gave it gold for both informal dining and seafood, and the Michelin Guide has taken notice too. Service is friendly without being precious.

A custom wood-fired grill anchors the room at this Yaletown steakhouse and bar, open flame flickering against warm wood tones while the kitchen runs tartares alongside Canadian and wagyu cuts. The butcher shop next door feeds the kitchen's sourcing philosophy. It holds a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list and took Vancouver Magazine's Restaurant of the Year. Dress up a little; the room expects it.

The savory éclair filled with duck liver mousse has become something of a calling card here, and it explains a lot about the place. St. Lawrence is an elegant Québécois French tasting restaurant with a convivial front bar, a semi-open kitchen, and a Michelin star. The fixed menu rotates by season, sometimes leaning into sugar shack classics, sometimes into French bourgeois cooking, always with sauces that deserve more attention than they get.

Sunchoke with salal berry and burnt onion isn't a dish you'd find yourself ordering on instinct, which is part of the point at this creative vegetarian fine-dining room in Mount Pleasant. The kitchen names its organic BC suppliers on the menu and takes texture as seriously as flavor. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and first-timers tend to do well surrendering to the tasting menu rather than pretending they know what salal berry tastes like.