The Best Places in Canada

The pizza comes out charred and puffy, the kind that makes you rethink your original plan to order pasta instead. Giulietta is a classic Italian restaurant on College Street that somehow manages to feel both polished and genuinely neighbourhood, the sort of room where the team treats first-timers like regulars they just hadn't met yet. The Michelin Guide lists it, and Canada's 100 Best has it in the top 100.

Oxblood leather banquettes, marble everywhere, and a cocktail trolley that arrives tableside bearing elaborate Martinis: Sammarco is Toronto's Italian steakhouse at full volume. The five Ontario dry-aged cuts are the backbone, sourced from Cumbrae's and treated simply, but the menu wanders into grilled sweetbreads and snow crab risotto for those who came for more than beef. The wine list runs long and expensive. Dress accordingly.

The tartare here arrives bright with herbs and anchovy salt, which tells you most of what you need to know about Chez Céline's register. It's a French bistro and bar on Fraser Street, the kind of neighbourhood spot that somehow also reads as subtly refined, in the Quebec casse-croûte tradition. J-C Poirier and Margaux Herder's room is cozy without being sleepy, and the cocktail program is serious enough to earn a Spirited Awards regional nod.

Artifacts from the site's past life as a cannon battery and maritime warehouse sit alongside guest room furniture, and the reception desk is built from oak planks two centuries old. This boutique hotel in Old Québec's lower port earns its Michelin 2 Keys with rooms that feel quietly contemporary, river views from nearly every window, and heated bathroom floors that make a lot of sense come January.

The dining room of this fine dining restaurant looks out over Lake Massawippi, which does a lot of work before anyone has touched a fork. The chef builds modern tasting menus on classic technique, leaning into Quebec terroir with the kind of quiet confidence that doesn't need to announce itself. A vegetarian menu runs alongside the main, and the digital wine list is deep. AAA Five Diamonds.

The building juts into Halifax Harbour like a ship that forgot to leave, which is the point: Muir is a luxury hotel whose seafaring references stop well short of nautical kitsch. Rooms are lined in gray oak, bar shelves curve like portholes, and nearly every window faces water. A spa, a gallery, and a well-regarded restaurant fill out the rest. It holds a Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key.

The room arrives before the menu does: red-tinged lighting, curves everywhere, the kind of design that makes a Tuesday feel like an occasion. June is a French bistro and serious cocktail bar on Cambie that landed at number 17 on North America's 50 Best Bars and fourth on Canada's 100 Best new restaurants in the same year, which is a neat trick. The food runs to butter-heavy, comforting bistro standards; the drinks list is the other reason to come.

A living wall of potted plants and a polished-pine bar greet you before the open kitchen takes over the room. This fine dining spot in Canmore pulls diners in from Calgary and well beyond for a menu that folds the chef's Québécois roots and time spent cooking in Japan into a tight, confident tasting format. Ranked 25th on Canada's 100 Best and holding four AAA Diamonds, it earns the drive through the Rockies without ever feeling like it's trying to.

A small, romantically lit cocktail bar built around a single obsession: Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century naturalist whose travels shape every drink on the menu. The cocktails trace his expeditions through flavor, from bright and citrusy to smoky and feral, one of them made with a spirit flavored by raw venison suspended in the still. The corner banquette is exactly as good as it sounds.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton got married here, which tells you most of what you need to know about the register this hotel has always played in. A grand, old-school property anchoring the Golden Square Mile, it sits close to the Museum of Fine Arts and a stretch of serious shopping. The rooms run quietly luxurious, the service formal without being stiff, and the whole place carries the easy confidence of somewhere that has never needed to explain itself.

Every course arrives when all thirty plates are ready, chefs carrying them out in unison while someone narrates to the whole room. Le Mousso is a tasting-menu restaurant where the chef's background in fine art bleeds into the choreography: the sommelier takes a turn at a makeshift stage, the kitchen cheers each dish, and the whole thing runs about three hours. A Michelin Selected Restaurant, and dinner here is closer to a performance than a meal.

The kitchen is a wood-fired rig inside a converted garage dressed up with subway tiles, and the menu drifts through seasonal Italian territory, from antipasti at lunch to grilled arrosticini and handmade pasta at dinner. It comes from the team behind Elena and Nora Gray, so the natural wine list is long and taken very seriously, which in Montreal is less a quirk than a baseline expectation. A reliably convivial neighborhood restaurant on Rue Lenoir.

There's no menu at this Bloor West cocktail bar, which is either the most liberating or the most anxiety-inducing news you'll get all evening. The bartenders build something custom around what you're after, or they'll walk you through the house-made liqueurs until the right one finds you. The room shifts from low-key spirits conversation to full party depending on the hour, so arrive accordingly.

Rabbit Rabbit is a narrow, very mauve wine bar on Herald Street that plays vinyl and loosely commits to an Alice in Wonderland bit without making you wear ears. The menu runs eclectic, so tallow-fried chips and a green scallop aguachile share a table without apology, and the pasta could double as dinner. The wine list leans European with a few natural oddballs, and it was an Air Canada Best New Restaurants finalist.

Bone marrow crumpets are a reasonable thing to serve in Montreal if you're a British chef cooking from a tasting menu in a cozy Plateau room. Marc Cohen sources much of his meat from his own nearby butcher shop, and the seasonal menu moves at a pace that makes the whole meal feel considered rather than rushed. The wine list leans toward lesser-known labels, which is either adventurous or a little homework, depending on your mood.

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.

The front door is frosted top to bottom, the curtains are drawn, and there's no signage to speak of, which is a choice for a French bistro on Harbord. Inside, the narrow townhouse room runs on dim lighting and Italo-disco, and the cooking is smart, seasonal, and indulgent in the way that only a chef with Joe Beef on his résumé can pull off. Pommes dauphines are a fixture; everything else shifts with the microseason. Listed in Canada's 100 Best and the Michelin Guide.

Daniel Boulud's fine dining room inside the Ritz-Carlton takes contemporary French cooking and runs it through a quietly New York sensibility, the kind of place that manages to feel grand without feeling stiff. The glass fireplace softens things considerably, and in summer the garden terrace pulls you far enough from Sherbrooke that the city politely disappears. Jackets are optional; the foie gras and pâté en croûte are not.

A below-ground Tuscan tavern where the kitchen leans into luxe ingredients without losing the rustic soul. The team behind it comes from fine-dining stock, and the pasta is made in-house, sauced simply. Grilled bread with whipped ricotta and pickled green tomatoes show up early and are hard to argue with. The wine list tilts Italian, and the room has a warmth that makes a two-hour dinner feel like a reasonable Tuesday. It landed on Canada's 100 Best list.

The entrance is a horse-race bookie front, and you have to place a bet on King Louie to get through the door. Inside, this Indian-inspired cocktail bar has a barrel-shaped ceiling studded with horseshoes and palm-tree wallpaper that lands somewhere between Victorian colonial club and Jungle Book fever dream. The cocktails lean into the conceit, with spiced spirits, pistachio orgeat, and coconut ginger tea doing most of the convincing. North America's 50 Best Bars has it at 59.

Barrel-aged Negronis rest along a minimalist backbar while the kitchen, so to speak, runs on kombucha, lacto-ferments, and house-brewed potions. Mother is a fermentation-focused cocktail bar on Queen West where the drinks lean more mad-scientist than mixologist, in a good way. The chiaroscuro lighting keeps things moody and polished. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars, which tracks for a room this quietly serious about what's in the glass.

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.

Seaweed pressings on deep blue walls and dried grasses set the coastal mood at this small, plant-forward restaurant in Kitsilano. The menu rotates around whatever vegetables the kitchen is currently obsessing over, and the cooking is the kind that makes omnivores forget to keep score. A no-tipping policy made headlines when it opened, but the food is what keeps people coming back. It holds a Michelin Guide selection.

A Syrian and Armenian mezze restaurant on Jean-Talon, run by two sisters whose family heritage shapes every dish on the table. Shared plates of labneh, hummus, and fattoush arrive with grilled pita, and the beef kebabs come seasoned with fléflé, a Syrian red pepper condiment that quietly runs the show. Save room for the mehalabié, a rosewater and orange blossom pudding that earns its place at the end. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

Lingcod Bourguignon, with bacon and pearl onions, is about as far from a typical sushi menu as you can get, which tells you something about what the kitchen is up to here. Marilena is a fine dining raw bar where the nigiri and sashimi lean on sustainable local seafood and the rest of the menu keeps the same restless energy. Vancouver Magazine gave it the gold for Best Victoria restaurant, which tracks.

The fish tanks near the entrance set the tone: this is a grand Cantonese seafood restaurant where the crab you're eyeing is still very much alive. The dining room runs to white tablecloths and banquet-scale celebrations, but the kitchen handles a casual dim sum lunch with equal care. Vancouver Magazine named it Restaurant of the Year, and it holds a Michelin Guide selection. Regulars know to call ahead for off-menu specials that never quite make it onto paper.

Three thousand live plants line almost every surface of this eco-luxury hotel in King West, which means the lobby smells like a greenhouse and that is entirely the point. Rooms run crisp and contemporary with organic textures doing the warmth-lifting, while Harriet's Rooftop handles sundowners above the neighborhood. The Michelin Guide awarded it one key, which suggests the whole sustainability-meets-pleasure argument lands.

Bentwood bar stools and the general feeling of a European café that got off the ferry in Dartmouth and decided to stay. Dear Friend is a cocktail and oyster bar that helped put this side of the harbour on the map, and the drinks have a culinary lean that earns the comparison: dashi, spruce, sea buckthorn. Beers and ciders run local; wines run funky. Ranked among Canada's 100 Best Bars in 2026.

Rob Feenie, the chef behind the beloved and long-mourned Lumière, took over this longstanding French fine dining institution and quietly made it new again. The bones remain, foie gras terrine, Dover sole, veal with morel sauce, Alsatian apple tart, but the sauces have lightened and Asian grace notes have crept in without the menu losing its French accent. The renovated room is warmer, blonder, and easier to love than before.

Closed weekends by design so the staff can have a life, Niwa is a small Japanese dining room on Powell Street where blonde wood, filmy lights, and a kitchen counter set a mood of deliberate calm. The chef, formerly of Le Crocodile and Farmer's Apprentice, runs a menu tied to whatever the Pacific Northwest offers right now. Pickles, rice bowls, mochi sourdough, sake, and clarified cocktails. Weekdays suddenly feel like a reward.

The worn white cabinets behind the bar hold the spirits like a well-organized medicine cabinet, which feels right for a cocktail bar that started as somewhere to wait for a table across the street and quietly became a destination of its own. Up a short flight of stairs on Dundas West, the room is tiny, warm in winter, breezy in summer, and usually full of people who knew exactly where they were going.

Dishes that look like small color-pop paintings arrive in a 36-seat French restaurant tucked into the Saint-Sauveur neighborhood, where the decor is sleek and the staff seem to enjoy themselves. The kitchen earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand and closes strong: the desserts are a genuine reason to pace yourself through dinner. Reservations are advised before someone else takes your table.

A working maple orchard an hour from Montreal, with a wood-fired evaporator doubling as the stove. Martin Picard and Vincent Dion-Lavallée run this cabane à sucre as a long, celebratory tasting experience, feeding groups of six to twenty-four through fifteen or more courses of Quebec terroir. Come winter, it's all tourtière and woodsmoke inside the heated cabin. By summer, the feast moves into the orchard under canvas, and the menu tilts toward the garden.

A tasting menu restaurant tucked into a small house on Clinton Street, where the kitchen channels years spent in Majorca and Venice into Spanish and Venetian cooking that leans heavily on seafood. The wine list chases obscure regions with evident purpose, and Sunday service slows down for family-style paella rounds. A spot on Canada's 100 Best keeps the room full of people who booked weeks ago and are pleased with themselves for doing so.

Lipstick-red banquettes and white tablecloths in Yorkville signal a Chinese restaurant with more polish than your usual regional spot. MIMI is the fancier sibling in its family of restaurants, leaning into refined technique and good ingredients rather than homestyle comfort. The menu moves across regional Chinese classics, and the four-foot belt noodles have a way of commanding the table. Groups do well here; portions are built for sharing.

A whitewashed-brick gallery on Dundas West that turns into a cocktail bar once you push past the dark curtain at the back. The curved bar glows, curated art lines the walls, and the menu reads like a love letter to Toronto, organized like a Yellow Pages from another dimension. The drinks are serious enough that combinations which look alarming on paper arrive exactly as they should. North America's 50 Best Bars ranked it 69th in 2026.

A red-brick former mill on the Brome-Missisquoi wine route, this restaurant runs a single set menu built almost entirely from the kitchen garden just outside the window. Jean-Martin Fortier, celebrated in farming circles long before anyone plated his vegetables, grows over 40 varieties on site. The food is quietly serious, local to a degree that borders on a philosophy, and selected by the Michelin Guide.

A pastel-washed Parkdale cocktail bar where the martinis come topped with a little caviar and the daiquiris are built around caramelized banana. The cocktail menu tends toward the nostalgic and playful, but there's enough craft underneath to keep things interesting. Come evening, the kitchen pivots to Asian comfort food, udon carbonara and stuffed bāo among them. Half-pours served in vintage glassware solve the problem of wanting everything.

Burnt-orange carpets, vintage TV sets, and retro beer signs set the scene at this cocktail bar on Mount Pleasant's quieter side, where the decor reads like your grandparents' basement but the drinks are anything but. The bar landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the cocktail program earns it, with clarified Greek yogurt turning up in tequila drinks and mezcal slushies arriving alongside tater tots in tin lunch boxes.

A converted Victorian house in the quietly charming town of Dundas, Quatrefoil is the kind of upscale dinner spot where someone's parents are always celebrating something at the next table. The menu is short and unfussy, built around seared scallops, duck breast, and grilled tenderloin, with a team that runs the room like they've been doing it forever. A Michelin selected restaurant.

Gas masks line the bar, imported from Ukraine and Poland or made by local artists, which tells you this cocktail bar is not taking itself lightly but is absolutely taking its drinks seriously. The menu is built around the science of aroma, so every cocktail arrives with a deliberate fragrance doing half the work. It's intimate, a little theatrical, and landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

The house bread changes with whatever the chef has on hand, garlic scapes one week, sundried tomatoes the next, and it arrives crusty and worth slowing down for. FK is a neighborhood restaurant with a sun-filled room that reads more tearoom than bistro, and a market-driven menu that follows the season without making a fuss about it. Service moves at its own pace, but the kitchen's unhurried honesty tends to make that forgivable.

The soft-serve ice cream comes spiked, which tells you something about how Bar Mordecai runs its cocktail program. This lively Dundas West bar spans a hotel-lobby-feeling main floor and a karaoke basement, with an events calendar that fits bachata classes, tarot readings, and drag-hosted bingo into the same week. The fizzy wine list runs from Champagne to sparkling sake to non-alc. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars.

Handmade Arita pottery lands on the table before the food does, and that sets the tone for this Michelin-starred Kyō-kaiseki room tucked below Yorkville. The chef's multi-course menu is intricate and personal, each dish built from layered techniques rather than straightforward ingredients. The minimalist room keeps things quiet so the plates can do the talking, which, given the cooking, turns out to be a reasonable arrangement.

The kitchen is the room at this Michelin-starred fine dining counter on East Pender, where an L-shaped bar puts you close enough to watch every move the chef makes. Patrick Hennessy came up at Eleven Madison Park and carries that precision into cooking that reads simple on paper but lands as something more considered on the plate. Local sourcing is the quiet backbone of the menu, though the technique is doing most of the talking.

A wrap-around terrace and sliding patio doors make this fine dining room in downtown Oakville feel more like a smart summer evening than a white-tablecloth ordeal. The menu reads straightforward, beef tartare, oysters, pasta, but the kitchen turns each into something careful and considered. A Michelin star hangs over the whole thing, and the optional tasting menu is where the chef's ambitions come through most clearly.

Floor-to-ceiling windows look straight into the glass-walled kitchen, so the brigade becomes part of the spectacle before the first course arrives. This is fine dining on the grander end, with silver service, Magdalen Islands lobster, and Appalachian venison built around Quebec terroir and French classical technique. A Michelin star sits above the door. The maple pre-dessert and aperitif pork rinds read as nostalgia, which turns out to be a smart move in a room this polished.

A kaiseki restaurant tucked inside the Canadian Japanese Cultural Centre, reached through corridors that feel less like a hallway and more like a border crossing. Guests eat in fully private rooms, so the vibe is intimate rather than performative. The seasonal menu follows traditional kaiseki form with real conviction, and the sake list gets the same care as the food. It holds a Michelin star.

Across from St. Germain Cathedral and a short walk from the St. Lawrence, this intimate creative restaurant holds a Michelin star and a bring-your-own-wine policy, which together make for a very good evening. The open kitchen keeps things warm rather than formal, and the menu reads like a travel diary, pulling in techniques and references from Madeira to the Canary Islands while leaning on local Quebec producers for the raw material.

The hinoki counter running the length of the room sets the tone before anyone's poured water. This is Edomae omakase, so settle in and let the chef lead, whether that's the shorter introduction menu or the longer, more personal progression. The nigiri moves from delicate silvery kohada up through richer cuts in a deliberate arc. The rice blend is left uncolored, its acidity calibrated to the fish. A Michelin star for those keeping score.

Six seats tucked into the corner of an unrelated restaurant, accessed through a print shop, which tells you everything and nothing about what follows. This is a Michelin-starred omakase counter where the chef trained at a top Tokyo bar, and the room is so spare that the food has nowhere to hide. His wife runs hospitality with the kind of quiet attentiveness that makes a long tasting meal feel effortless rather than ceremonial.

The name nods to the old Canadian practice of hauling a canoe between two waterways, which turns out to be a decent metaphor for what the kitchen does: carry Newfoundland produce into unexpected territory. This convivial Water Street restaurant runs on local ingredients steered by Asian technique, so cod arrives under miso hollandaise and the vegetable section is quietly the most interesting thing on the menu. Ranked on Canada's 100 Best, and no reservations about the cod.

Vikram Vij built his reputation working the room personally, stopping at tables each night in a dining room that takes Indian cuisine seriously without taking itself too seriously. This is an elegant sit-down restaurant where the cocktail list is designed to hold its own against heavily spiced food, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand keeps showing up for a reason. The lamb popsicles in fenugreek sauce have their own devoted following.

The stainless steel bar runs through the center of the room, with bartenders working inside it rather than behind it, so you're surrounded by the action whether you want to be or not. It's a cocktail bar on Saint-Laurent doing force-carbonated highballs and tableside martinis poured into glasses refreshed mid-drink to hold temperature, but a Labatt 50 sits on the menu without irony. Named a Regional Top 10 Honoree at the Spirited Awards, and already on Canada's 100 Best Bars list.

Reservations for this tiny Italian trattoria's 24 seats vanish within minutes of dropping, and have for years, which tells you something. The Michelin Bib Gourmand goes to the kind of cooking where the ciabatta is grilled in-house, the cold cuts are made in-house, and the pasta and ice cream are too. Counter seats put you right at the action, the wine list leans Italy and France, and the whole room feels like someone's very good dinner party.

Sitting on a small island in the middle of the Bow River, surrounded by Prince's Island Park, this rustic dining room feels like a cabin that wandered into the city and decided to stay. Exposed wood, stone, and vintage fishing gear set the mood, and fireplace tables are fought over in winter with quiet desperation. The kitchen commits to Canadian and Albertan ingredients only, landing on Canada's 100 Best list. The patio, when weather allows, is the whole argument.

The circular brass bar in the Château Frontenac's turret room looks out over the St. Lawrence, and local lore has Churchill plotting Allied strategy in this same spot, Scotch and cigar in hand. The cocktail bar has moved on: seasonal drinks draw from Canadian literature and local ingredients like maple gum and verjus from Île d'Orléans. The whisky list alone has grown considerably since Churchill's Johnnie Walker days.

Marcus Samuelsson's Canadian debut sits inside the Four Seasons Montreal, but the terrace restaurant earns its own look. The menu moves from crudos and seafood towers to robata-grilled cuts and whole fish, the kind of progression that suits a long, leisurely dinner rather than a quick bite. Expense accounts are comfortable here; personal ones survive happiest at happy hour. AAA Four Diamonds.

A painted duck above a handleless door is the only sign you're in the right place. Ring the bell, wait, then descend into a 19th-century warehouse that now runs as an intimate speakeasy in Old Montreal. The bar team builds spirit-forward cocktails tailored to your mood, and the room rewards the kind of night that starts with "just one." North America's 50 Best Bars placed it at number 97 in 2026.

A boutique hotel a block from the Inner Harbour, the Magnolia leans into Victoria's Victorian mood without becoming a museum piece. Sixty-four rooms keep the scale personal, soaking tubs anchor the bathrooms, and the team has a habit of noticing when guests mention a birthday online and quietly doing something about it. Silk Road tea at turndown, locally made chocolates, hot cider in the lobby when it's cold. It holds a Michelin Key.

A 20-seat fine dining room in Steveston Village, which is otherwise known for fish and chips and frozen yogurt, turns out to be an oddly perfect home for royal Thai cuisine. White-gloved servers bring each course of an 18-dish tasting menu to white-clothed tables overlooking the Fraser River. The chef trained privately with Bangkok cooks before opening this, having no restaurant background at all. Canada's 100 Best ranks it among the country's top 25.

The bar sits above a convenience store on 14th, which tells you nothing useful about what's inside. This cocktail bar runs a wine list across twelve pages, with vintage Champagne magnums, rare Burgundy, and Vin Jaune by the glass. The cocktail menu is equally committed, and quietly funny about it. Party Shots keep things honest. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars, which the room itself gives no indication of caring about.

The china on the afternoon tea service was a gift from the Queen in 1939, which tells you roughly everything about what kind of hotel this is. The Fairmont Empress is a grand railway-era property facing Victoria's Inner Harbour, all ivy-covered limestone and English pageantry in a city that takes its Englishness very seriously. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Key. Renovation has freshened it without sanding off the delightful self-importance.

Exposed brick and mid-century furniture bathed in warm amber light make this Ossington cocktail bar feel like someone's very cool living room, if that someone also happened to know a lot about Japanese whisky. The drinks program leans Japanese-inspired, the zero-proof options are taken as seriously as everything else, and the food is good enough that you'll order more than you planned. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list in its first year open.

Four days a week, the couple farm the land around their red-brick country home. The other three, they seat 16 guests across three rooms for a 10-course tasting menu shaped entirely by what's ready. It's an intimate farm dinner, two hours north of Toronto, with all-Canadian wines and a chef's counter close enough to overhear the cooking. The Michelin Guide has selected it, and Canada's 100 Best placed it 39th in 2026.

The name, "Salle Climatisée," is a straight lift from old French commercial signage, which tells you something about the sense of humor running this twenty-seat Little Italy bistro. Seven savory dishes, cheese, two desserts, on a slate board that changes with the seasons. The kitchen leans on Quebec producers and turns out the kind of food that's rustic without being careless. Low-intervention wines, G&Ts brightened with verjus, and a ceramicist's Calder-evoking mobile overhead.

The door says printing shop; the door is lying. Past a psychedelic mirrored hallway, this speakeasy opens into red velvet banquettes and warm rods of light, somewhere between a 1970s supper club and a set from a film that hasn't been made yet. The basement runs centrifuges and rotary evaporators, which is not how most bars do it, and the cocktail menu makes that fairly obvious.

Pine needles and deer lichen aren't typical pantry staples, but the chef at this modern Indian restaurant near Olympic Village uses foraged and hyper-local ingredients as the backbone of a daily-changing tasting menu. Whole spices are roasted and ground in-house, and the effect reads less as fusion than as a very specific argument about where Vancouver actually is. Canada's 100 Best listed it among the country's top restaurants for 2026.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their famous bed-in for peace here, which means this downtown Montreal hotel has been living off that story ever since, though a massive renovation has given it some new ones. The lobby pulls in local art and a genuinely urban energy, the rooms are warm rather than grand, and a 24-hour wellness center handles whatever the conference schedule did to you. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Pull back the velvet curtain and you're inside the world of nhậu, the Vietnamese tradition of drinking and eating with friends until things get blurry. Good Thief is a cocktail bar and restaurant on Main Street, the self-described rebellious younger sibling to Anh and Chi next door. The drinks lean boldly Vietnamese, the food runs from binchotan skewers to Dungeness crab garlic noodles, and the whole menu is designed to share. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

About 20 seats wrap a circular counter where the chef cooks in full view, which sets the whole tone of this intimate contemporary restaurant. The menu moves with the seasons, leaning on fermented vegetables and bright, acidic vinaigrettes to give each plate its edge. The staff keeps things warm and loose, so a solo dinner here feels less like a reservation and more like someone let you into the kitchen.

A proper hi-fi setup anchors this '70s-lounge cocktail bar inside a heritage building in Edmonton's Brewery District, where the lighting stays low and the mid-century furniture looks like it was sourced with actual patience. The drinks lean nostalgic without being lazy about it. Snacks run to chicken wings stuffed with mushrooms and black truffle, because apparently that's where we are now. Named a Canada's 100 Best bar.

A seven-course tasting menu that shifts with the season and the whims of local farmers makes Actinolite one of those fine-dining rooms where you genuinely don't know what's coming until it lands. The chef grew up foraging and hunting in rural Ontario, and that instinct runs through the cooking, which has a Nordic quietness to it. The garden out back supplies herbs in summer. Chefs often bring the plates out themselves, which either charms you or makes you feel mildly observed.