The Best Restaurants in Canada

A covered outdoor taqueria on Yukon Street that feels like someone smuggled a great Mexico City back-alley spot into a Vancouver residential neighbourhood. The Mexican cooking leans a little ambitious, and the cocktail program punches well above the taqueria average. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of place regulars quietly hope you won't find out about.

A slim, stylish contemporary Chinese restaurant on Laurier where the menu quietly mixes Montreal sensibility into familiar staples. Sesame noodles and garlic fried rice get the same serious attention as steamed oysters with fermented black bean sauce or beef tartare spiked with doubanjiang. The cocktails follow the same logic, which is either reassuring or alarming depending on how adventurous you're feeling. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Red lanterns and a ceramic lucky cat set the tone, but scallion bao filled with stracciatella cheese does the explaining. This tiny Bloordale Village restaurant lands a Michelin Bib Gourmand for cooking that defies easy labeling, pairing pan-fried radish cakes and pork wonton noodles with miso cheesecake and Parmesan tapioca fritters. Servers pour natural wines throughout, cheerfully, as if the bottle might run out.

Heirloom corn from Mexico, pressed and griddled into tortillas daily, is the entire argument for this taco shop on Adelaide. The room is white kitchen tile and worn wood, the menu is short, and everything arrives fast and hot before the meal is suddenly, almost rudely, over. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of place you're already planning to revisit before you've finished chewing.

Reclaimed wood panels and colorful murals set the tone at this Indian street food spot on a busy stretch of Bayview, where the menu roams across regions rather than settling into one corner of the subcontinent. Chaats arrive lashed in chutney, thalis land as genuinely oversized platters, and the deep-fried cauliflower in sweet chili glaze has its own following. Servers talk you down from over-ordering, which is kind of them. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

You climb a flight of stairs off Cambie to find white tablecloths, chandeliers, and a wall of pristine fish tanks keeping watch over the room. It's an upscale dim sum shop drawing the kind of crowd that irons its shirts, but the Michelin Bib Gourmand signals the menu won't punish your wallet the way the setting implies. The kitchen plays dim sum mostly traditional, with occasional detours that actually make sense.

Angus An runs a small empire of Thai concepts across Vancouver, but this Kitsilano original is where it all started and still where the cooking cuts deepest. Maenam is a sit-down Thai restaurant where the kitchen balances bold aromatics with serious precision, and rustic-looking plates consistently surprise you. The wine list is genuinely thought-through, not an afterthought. It holds a Michelin Guide selection and has taken Vancouver Magazine's gold for Best Thai more times than anyone's counting.

A 32-seat corner pasta spot in the Rail District that feels more like a borrowed cabin than a restaurant. The portions here are sized for sharing, which is good, because ordering one dish each and then making eyes at your neighbour's plate gets old fast. Pappardelle with duck ragu, bigoli with shellfish, meatballs that show up unannounced and dare you to finish everything else after. The Italian wine list is short and well-chosen.

Briana Kim's intimate tasting menu restaurant on Somerset runs nine vegetarian courses that lean hard on fermentation, and the results smell more like a forest than a salad. House-made sesame tofu arrives in pine-smoked tea broth with seaweed mole, a sentence that shouldn't work but does. Preserved figs in black-garlic oil show up somewhere, and you're glad they did. Wine pairings or house-made non-alcoholic drinks round out an evening that is quietly, stubbornly its own thing.

Tucked behind an old church, this converted rectory keeps its bones visible: exposed brick, parquet floors, and tables made from salvaged pew wood. Candide is a prix-fixe restaurant where the monthly menu follows whatever the market dictates, leaning heavily local and mostly plant-forward. The terrace fills fast in warm weather. A Michelin Selected Restaurant, it's the kind of dinner where the room does half the work before the food arrives.

Jen Agg's Kensington Market restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tells you something about the short, shape-shifting menu: it changes often, leans on raw bar, house-made pasta, and whatever the kitchen feels like doing, and it overdelivers quietly. The room is loud and good-looking, the wine list is serious, and the crowd arrives dressed like they knew about this street before you did. Cash in your pocket optional; attitude is the currency here.

A nine-course tasting menu anchors this intimate fine-dining room on Rue Bélanger, though à la carte keeps things from feeling too precious. The chef came up at Joe Beef and Paloma, and the cooking carries that pedigree without showing off about it: seasonal, tightly composed, precise enough that sea urchin in a butter evoking Sunday roast chicken lands as a coherent idea rather than a stunt. Canada's 100 Best named it among the country's top restaurants.

A former foundry in Griffintown, with ceilings high enough to lose a secret and exposed brick that somehow looks intentional, is now one of the more atmospheric Italian-Mediterranean restaurants in the city. The Carrara marble bar is a fine place to sit alone and feel cosmopolitan. Crudos lean bright and citrusy, pastas run deep and rich, and the menu is short enough that everything on it earns its spot.

Copper and wood panels give the dining room an easy elegance, but the room is really just a warm place to sit while the kitchen does its work. This is an upscale Cantonese restaurant where the menu runs deeper than most, with a "kitchen specialties" section that includes wine-marinated crispy duck tongues and kidneys alongside the kind of congee that makes you want to cancel your afternoon. The Michelin Guide has it listed among its Vancouver selections.

Local artwork and soft industrial lighting set the tone at this city-chic fine dining room in Gastown, where the kitchen plays with combinations that have no business working as well as they do. The menu runs à la carte or as a tasting menu, with a vegetarian version available, and the cooking leans into unlikely pairings with enough confidence that the surprises land. A Michelin Selected restaurant, and one diners tend to return to.

The name is a bluff, there's no hotel, just a warm Indian restaurant in Quebec City with a bar serious enough to anchor the room. The front-of-house team is the kind people mention unprompted. The kitchen leans into tandoori vegetables and braised lamb korma alongside classics like pakora and dal, with a tasting menu that pulls local produce into the mix. Comfort food with good bones and a cocktail to start.

A bistro on Saint-Jean that's been around long enough to feel like civic furniture, Le Hobbit runs brunch until two in the afternoon and keeps going through dinner in a pair of warm, well-worn rooms. The eggs Benedict have achieved something close to neighborhood mythology, and the desserts hold their own. A strong list of beers and ciders gives the menu a slightly different angle than most places nearby. Book ahead.

The blackboard menu changes with the season and the chefs' mood, which keeps the Powell Street regulars coming back to see what's new. This casual fine dining spot leans hard into local ingredients and pun-heavy dish names, so brace for something like "Straight Outta Kombu" before a plate that outpaces the joke. The cocktails are worth starting with. A Michelin Selected Restaurant doing real work in a neighborhood that doesn't demand it.

The room on Kingsway could pass for somewhere in Milan, white marble and warm tiles, the kind of osteria that doesn't need to tell you it has good taste. Savio Volpe has been holding its corner of East Vancouver for a good while now, turning out contemporary Italian that leans on regional tradition without getting museum-y about it. The wine list has a little nerve to it, and the Michelin Guide has taken notice.

A converted theatre in rural Quebec, where the chef grows around fifty varieties of organic vegetables, herbs, and spices on-site and turns them into a modern, multi-course set menu. Scallops from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine and local Arctic char round things out. The kitchen opens onto a bright, simply dressed dining room, and the welcome is the kind that makes you feel less like a tourist and more like a neighbor.

An old stone house in Pointe-au-Pic, converted into an inn with a restaurant that reads like a love letter to Charlevoix's larder. Duck, lamb, smoked sturgeon, oyster mushrooms, local cheese, all sourced within a short drive, then shaped into modern French cooking with a terroir twist. The onion soup made with beer and local cheese is a good argument for the whole project. Sunday brunch brings an extended wine list into the picture.

Exposed brick, a long counter, and bistro tables in an industrial loft in the old part of Trois-Rivières: this convivial neighbourhood bistro runs on sharing plates built around local produce. The chef came up through pastry, and it shows in the desserts. Live music fills the room on weekends, which raises the noise level in a way that seems entirely intentional. The Michelin Guide has it listed as a selected restaurant.

A long bar tiled in azulejos anchors this polished Portuguese restaurant on Rue Peel, where the room feels like it can't quite decide between Lisbon and a Manhattan brasserie, and pulls off both. The kitchen leans hard into fish and seafood, and the wine list runs to some 400 labels, mostly Portuguese, with ports and rare spirits that give the sommelier something to talk about. Upscale but not stiff.

A long, narrow bistro on Granby's main strip, fitted out in wood and leather with a menu that keeps one foot in French-Canadian comfort food and the other in Japan. The chef came up at Joe Beef, which explains both the macaroni gratin with lobster and the izakaya-style mackerel sharing a menu without anyone blinking. Laid-back service, a room that fills up fast, and pudding chômeur on the dessert list.

A mural of the African continent covers the back wall, and the menu follows its logic from there. This intimate dinner-only restaurant runs on a pan-African kitchen where Quebec ingredients meet sub-Saharan spices, game meats, and native vegetables you won't find elsewhere in Montreal. The wine list is exclusively South African, which is either a commitment or a statement, possibly both. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

Stunning murals and colorful carvings make Ophelía one of the more visually lively rooms in Olympic Village. It's a modern Mexican restaurant where the chef cooks pan-regional dishes rooted in family tradition, and the kitchen's Oaxacan mole blanco has a way of making a strong case for itself. Book ahead, because the place is always packed, and the outdoor patio fills fast on any decent evening.

Antonio Park's Westmount restaurant runs on a premise that shouldn't work as well as it does: Japanese technique meeting South American flavors, with 80s pop playing underneath it all. The menu moves between sushi and chimichurri-dressed fish with a kind of easy confidence, and evenings bring an omakase format for anyone who wants the full Tokyo-meets-Buenos-Aires journey. The room draws Westmount regulars who clearly know the menu by heart but order the tuna anyway.

A long counter, a partly open kitchen, and a minimalist room just off the Quartier des Spectacles mark this as a relaxed spot for sharing plates rather than a sit-down-and-settle-in kind of night. The same team behind Bouillon Bilk runs the show, and the tapas-style menu moves through combinations that feel considered without being fussy. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the vibe: good cooking, no ceremony required.

The appam arrives loaded with fresh white crab meat, which sets the tone for what Bar Goa is doing: a Goan Indian cocktail bar on Toronto Street that takes the food as seriously as the drinks. The menu leans toward Goa's coastal cooking but wanders happily into Punjabi territory too, and the kitchen has a light enough touch to pull off the occasional whimsical plate without losing the plot. A seven-course tasting menu is available for the committed.

A red brick building on Queen East houses this upscale contemporary bistro, where the room mixes industrial bones with enough warmth that the patio fills up the moment the weather cooperates. The chef composes tasting menus of five, seven, or ten courses on the fly, which is either reassuring or terrifying depending on your temperament. Half-pour cocktails and small wine pours keep things measured for anyone pacing themselves.

The carrot plate arrives topped with bay leaf ice cream over melted brie, and the menu doesn't apologize for it. This creative neighbourhood restaurant on Queen East has a whimsical, eclectic room and dishes that quietly wink at other spots around town. Tartares and dips give way to burgers, turnip cakes, and kofta with rhubarb yogurt. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which fits the vibe of a place that's clearly having fun without making a big deal of it.

Tealights flickering against brassware and the low pulse of Moroccan music set the tone before you've ordered a thing. This intimate Yaletown restaurant tucks diners into nooks so cozy that a full house still feels like a private dinner, and the kitchen makes it hard to rush: flambéed dishes arrive tableside, belly dancers appear on weekends, and the chicken pastilla, crisp phyllo dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar, keeps drawing people back.

A regional Indian restaurant on Wellington that hopscotches the subcontinent, from Chennai's deep-fried chicken 65 to the fiery vindaloos of Goa. The dining room is quiet and a little sleepy, which makes the kitchen's ambition feel like a pleasant surprise. The chef adds decorative swirls to the plates, a habit the food doesn't need but survives with its dignity intact. An old-school institution that keeps filling tables without making a fuss about it.

The wood-burning grill handles jerk chicken here, and the smoke from it is half the reason to walk through the door. This is an easygoing Jamaican spot where the cooking is homey and unpretentious, the classics run deep, and the gravy from the curry goat or oxtail stew can be ordered as a side, which is the kind of menu decision that earns a place lasting loyalty. The Michelin Guide has taken notice.

Whitewashed walls, bare wood tables, and azures accents that make Fraser Street feel briefly like a ferry ride away. Nammos is a sit-down Greek restaurant where the kitchen sticks to the classics without treating them as an afterthought. Spanakopita arrives with properly shatteringly phyllo, the seafood is the thing to order, and loukoumades come drizzled in honey and walnut at the end. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

The boat noodles here, a funky, aromatic beef broth thick with meatballs and tripe, tell you right away that Zab Bite is more interested in northeastern Thai cooking than in playing it safe. Pad Thai is on the menu because it has to be, but the grilled pork jowl with toasted rice and nam jaew is the reason regulars come back. A casual, cheerful Fraser Street spot where requesting extra spice is treated as a reasonable life choice.

Half the plants are fake, but the tropical-greenhouse-meets-nightclub decor on Fraser Street pulls it off anyway. This Vietnamese bistro draws a fashion-forward crowd with soul-warming pho, lemongrass skewers, and bun bo hue, every dish paired with a vegetarian counterpart. The vibe is energetic and the service disarmingly warm, which makes the whole place feel more West Hollywood than East Vancouver. A Michelin Selected pick.