The Best Places in Canada

A mechanic shop turned coastal Italian osteria in Cambie Village, Elio Volpe does wood-fired pizza with a brunch version that gives people a reason to leave the house on a Sunday. The room has bar seating for solo meals and enough shared plates, including a whole grilled branzino, to make a group feel purposeful. Vancouver Magazine handed it gold for both Best New and Best Italian in the same year, which is the restaurant equivalent of a very good report card.

Arthur Erickson's twisting downtown skyscraper is an unlikely host for a hotel that seems determined to keep you out of your room. A lobby pool table, nightclub, high-end Chinese restaurant, and rooftop-adjacent lounge make the public floors feel like the whole point. The 147 rooms vary in shape because the building does too, but all get leather headboards, wood floors, and floor-to-ceiling city views. Forbes Four Star, if you want the shorthand.

The entry is a freezer door inside a Chinatown dumpling shop, and it only opens if you order dumpling No. 7. What's behind it is a speakeasy done up in teal and gold, channeling 1920s Shanghai with enough sincerity to pull it off. The bar carries over fifty baijiu bottlings, the largest selection in Canada, and the cocktails are built around the spirit rather than just gesturing at it. North America's 50 Best Bars has it at number 72.

A blue neon sign salvaged from the family restaurant that stood here for a generation anchors the bar of this sleek, midcentury-modern Vietnamese spot on Main Street. The brother-and-sister team behind it treat the menu as a love letter to Vietnam, running from pho to softshell crab salad to grilled prawn mousse with fresh herbs. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

The oyster mushroom souvlaki arrives with walnut skordalia and tarragon vinegar, which tells you pretty quickly that this isn't the whitewashed-walls-and-ouzo setup you've been to before. Selene is a fine-dining Greek restaurant in Hastings-Sunrise that takes the canon seriously enough to know exactly where to bend it. Vancouver Magazine gave it a Gold Medal for Best Mediterranean, and the room has earned the quiet confidence that comes with it.

Stone walls, whitewashed brick, and colourful tiles set the mood at this aperitivo bar tucked into Old Montreal. The list leans hard into sherry, vermouth, amaro, and obscure fortified wines, with low-ABV and spirit-free options that don't feel like an afterthought. Small plates are built to pair, not to fill. It landed on Canada's 100 Best Bars list, which tracks for a room where the drinks menu reads like a love letter to everything your wine shop keeps behind the counter.

A vintage vending machine stocked with eight bottled Negronis, including a rotating seasonal riff, is a pretty good thesis statement for an aperitivo bar. Bar Bello is an ode to Italian drinking culture, all taralli, focaccia, and a long list of amari and vermouths alongside Sbagliatos, Garibaldis, and cocktails built for a large patio. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list. Come with a tolerance for bitterness and no plans until evening.

Tagliatelle gets rolled fresh daily, and the menu drifts between English and Italian, but N.L. Ginzburg is doing something more specific than a trattoria. Named after anti-fascist Italian intellectuals, this College Street spot threads Italo-Jewish culinary history through hyper-seasonal Canadian ingredients: a liver toast that nods to both Tuscan fegatini and Jewish chopped liver, rugelach at dessert. Italian movie posters and terrazzo floors do the decorating.

The original Art Deco tile floors and woodwork have been around forever, and the team behind Bar Dominion wisely left them alone. This is a gastropub with a serious cocktail program, the kind of room that feels like a grand hotel bar but where people actually stay for a second drink. The raw bar and steak frites handle the food side; the cocktails handle the rest.

An old-school institution on Avenue Laurier where the service is formal enough that you'll sit up a little straighter without quite knowing why. This French tasting restaurant offers both a multi-course menu and à la carte, so you're not locked into an evening-length commitment. The kitchen treats fine ingredients with a light hand, and the wine list has some genuinely adventurous choices tucked in among the classics.

Stone walls, wooden beams, and leather armchairs make this Old Montreal French restaurant feel like a private club where the membership requirements are a reservation and good taste in wine. The menu rotates with the seasons, leaning on local ingredients and the kind of sauces that remind you why French cooking got famous in the first place. The vibe is dim, intimate, and quietly romantic.

The kitchen grinds fresh masa from heirloom Mexican corn every day, which tells you something about the priorities here. Alma is a tasting-menu restaurant in Outremont where the chef threads his Tlaxcalan roots through Quebec seasonal produce, and the sommelier answers with a Catalan-leaning wine list. The result is modern Mexican cooking that doesn't ask for your permission to be unexpected. Canada's 100 Best ranks it 34th in the country.

The smallest room here is 500 square feet with a gas fireplace and a soaking tub, which tells you exactly what kind of ski resort this is. The Four Seasons sits a few minutes outside Whistler's main village, which is either a slight inconvenience or the whole point, depending on your tolerance for après-ski foot traffic. A shuttle runs to the mountain, where a ski concierge meets you with your gear already sorted. It holds 2 Michelin Keys and a Forbes Four Star.

The gilded logo on the window and a permanent haze of wood smoke inside tell you what this Griffintown restaurant is about before you've sat down. Deep gray walls, long bar, and shiny wood surfaces set a moody, modernist tone for wood-fired Mediterranean sharing plates. The kitchen leans heavily on local and plant-forward produce, with fire as the organizing principle. A Michelin Selected Restaurant.

The charcoal grill in the open kitchen sets the tempo at this Syrian and pan-Ottoman restaurant in Outremont, where the bread comes straight from the fire and the lamb arrives in several forms. The team steers first-timers and regulars through the menu with equal care, and the room has the kind of noise level that means everyone is having a good time, whether they planned to or not.

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.

Most of the space is a working kitchen supplying pasta to other restaurants around the city, which tells you something about priorities. The pasta shop itself opens for lunch only, for a few hours, with two or so pasta dishes on offer that day and not much else. Diners line the sidewalk on an industrial strip of Dovercourt Village to claim one of the scarce tables. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and the limited menu is the whole point.

The rotisserie chicken here gets an overnight brine before it even sees heat, which tells you something about how seriously this neighborhood restaurant takes comfort food. Chairs hung as wall art and a lively patio give the room an easygoing, slightly offbeat feel. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and Vancouver Magazine named the crew among its premier picks. Order the chicken, add a biscuit, and leave room for the cheesecake.

The queue out front on St. Laurent is part of the deal at this old-school Jewish deli, which has been feeding Montreal on smoked meat since before anyone can remember. Beef brisket marinated in the house spice blend, smoked, steamed, and piled high on rye with yellow mustard is the reason strangers share tables without complaint. Order it medium-fat. Chase it with a cherry soda if you're doing this properly.

Stone turrets rising against the Canadian Rockies make the Fairmont Banff Springs look less like a hotel and more like something a railway baron commissioned to intimidate guests. This grand 724-room resort sits inside Banff National Park, with a golf course, a full-service spa, several restaurants, and enough seasonal outdoor activities to exhaust anyone who came to relax. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

A stone building near Place Royale in Old Quebec, where the terrace tables go fast once the weather turns. This is a tasting-menu restaurant sharing its address with the more subterranean Tanière³ below. The chef's creative menu leans heavily on vegetables and local sourcing without making a religion of either, and a vegan version is always available. The Michelin Guide has selected it, and AAA gives it Four Diamonds.

Pendant lights warm up an otherwise industrial dining room at this French restaurant on Yonge, where the kitchen's glass partition lets you glimpse the brigade without quite committing to a chef's table. The menu reads classically Gallic with a contemporary lean, and even the cocktail list has a French accent, which feels either chic or on the nose depending on your mood. AAA Four Diamonds.

The aburi salmon oshi sushi has inspired fan art, which tells you something about how this fine dining Japanese restaurant on Vancouver Harbour operates. Miku folds French and Italian technique into a Japanese framework and takes sustainability seriously enough to mark Ocean Wise options across the menu. The harbour view is genuinely gorgeous, and the kitchen seems aware that coasting on it would be too easy.

Sticky rice is the organizing principle here, turning up beside papaya salad, tapioca dumplings, and Lao barbecue chicken across a menu rooted in Laotian cooking rather than the Thai-leaning stuff the team used to run across town. Lao Lao is a cocktail bar with a kitchen that takes the food seriously, tucked onto St Joseph in a way that rewards people who actually read menus before they go out.

Dim sum that never stayed in its lane sits at the center of this fusion restaurant on Spadina, where MasterChef Canada winner Eric Chong and his mentor Alvin Leung run a menu that pulls from French, Korean, and Chinese kitchens in the same breath. Bao stuffed with kimchi and galbi, flaky pastry hiding foie gras, butter-poached lobster over dashi, the whole thing feels like a cooking competition that nobody stopped. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

Sitting at the edge of old Chinatown, Bao Bei is a Chinese brasserie where the menu reads like classic dishes that took a very interesting detour. The chef's approach leans playful rather than reverent: mantou buns packed with braised pork and miso-serrano aioli, fried rice built around bitter melon and masala-preserved mushrooms. Nothing here is trying to be traditional, and it doesn't pretend otherwise. The Michelin Guide has selected it.

Finding a seat at this perpetually packed Spanish tapas bar on East Seventh requires luck, persistence, or both. The room runs on the warm, slightly chaotic energy of a good Madrid bodega, with conservas lined up alongside the fritos and raciones. Rare Spanish wines are the move, and the servers know them well enough to steer you right. A Michelin Selected pick that draws a neighborhood crowd happy to wait.

The Neapolitan-style pizzas come out of a wood-fired oven with properly blistered crusts, which is a fine way to anchor an otherwise wide-ranging menu of shareable rustic plates. This stylish, high-ceilinged downtown restaurant pulls in business lunches by day and groups of friends by night, and the room handles both without breaking a sweat. The Michelin Guide has selected it, and Vancouver Magazine gave it gold for Best Informal Contemporary.

Wind Cries Mary is a red-brick cocktail bar on Bastion Square where the menu is laid out like a forest, so you pick a drink by whether you want leaves (floral) or roots (earthy). It has made a Spirited Awards regional top ten for international restaurant bars in Canada. The kitchen is serious about its fried chicken, which makes this a good first stop that tends to become the whole night.

Twenty seats below a Dutch-Indo restaurant, this subterranean speakeasy is decorated with 1970s Nederlandse kitsch, Funko Pop dolls, and enough knick-knacks to make a flea market blush. The cocktails lean toward the unexpected, carrot-cake-infused whisky being the kind of thing that shows up without apology. The barman runs the room with a reputation for bespoke pours and a soft spot for single malts. Canada's 100 Best ranks it among the country's top bars.

Rose's knick-knacks line the shelves, and her coleslaw recipe comes printed on a card clipped to the bill. Maven is a warm, sunlit Polish-Jewish restaurant on Harbord where chef Shauna Godfrey, a Momofuku Kōjin alum, cooks from her grandmother's legacy and her own technique in equal measure. The Pickletini arrives briny and composed, and the chicken schnitzel is brined, fried, and completely serious about itself.

Fresh sourdough baked daily sets the tone at this tiny, rustic neighborhood restaurant on Vancouver's west side, where the menu rotates around whatever local produce is worth celebrating that week. The cooking is inventive without being showy, and a Michelin Bib Gourmand confirms the kitchen punches above its modest room. On weekends, the chef pivots to Tausug-Filipino barbecue at lunch, which keeps regulars coming back on a schedule.

Pork secreto with a honey and apple cider reduction is the kind of thing that makes you stop talking mid-sentence at this Spanish taverna on College Street. Grant van Gameren keeps the tapas menu rustic and unadorned, which takes more discipline than it sounds. Half portions mean you can cover a lot of ground, a useful feature when the sherry cocktails are this easy to keep ordering.

The striped black-and-white awning marks this low-lit Italian restaurant on what is otherwise a quiet residential stretch of St-Jacques. The kitchen takes familiar Italian foundations and nudges them somewhere unexpected without making a fuss about it. Fellow restaurateurs and Montréal creatives fill the room most nights, which tells you something. Griffintown has changed around it, but Nora Gray has been the neighborhood's dinner-party reference for a long time.

Natural light and blonde wood keep things calm at this small, counter-forward sushi shop on Main, where the focus is squarely on the fish. The chef's approach is classic: beautifully cut sashimi, seasonal ingredients, and just enough acidity to lift the sweetness of top-notch seafood. Easier on the wallet than the city's omakase circuit, and a Michelin Bib Gourmand. One judge called it the first place they'd send an out-of-towner, which tracks.

Perched above Bloor Street's shopping strip, Amal is a Lebanese restaurant where the room leans sleek and the mood tips toward a night out even at lunch. The halal menu runs through mezze, skewers, and grilled mains in a modern register, and weekends bring belly dancers or a DJ to remind you this isn't a quiet neighbourhood spot. The kanafeh makes a strong case for dessert.

A plain façade on rue Sainte-Catherine hides a quietly ambitious modern restaurant that sits somewhere between casual lunch spot and date-night destination. The kitchen leans on delicate plating and sharp contrasts of texture, and the private-import wine list is the kind of thing the knowledgeable staff are happy to walk you through. Evenings skew a little dressier; lunches draw the crowd that figured out the value.

The sinuous cocoon of curved South African mahogany is the first thing you clock, and it's enough to make you forget you're on College Street. Bar Raval is a pintxos bar and all-day Spanish hangout with a Michelin Bib Gourmand, pouring daytime cava, serious vermouth, and sharp cocktails from a tight modern program. The food runs from conservas to late-night snacks, and the room is designed to make leaving feel like a personal failure.

A cocktail menu built around the golden age of travel sets the tone at this small, intimate bar tucked down a quiet Saint-Roch side street. The drinks lean theatrical, the food leans oceanic, and the whole operation treats oyster shots and caviar as completely normal bar snacks, which they are here. Weekends tip festive; the room is elegant enough that nobody feels overdressed for ordering well.

Natural light pours through lattice screens and past paintings by local Iranian artists at this modern Persian restaurant on West 4th. The kitchen leans into the architecture of Persian flavors: tart dried limes, fragrant spices, richness from nuts and seeds. A judge once said the food has "a mother's touch," which is either the nicest thing you can say about a restaurant or the nicest thing you can say about anything.

A Victorian house in Halifax's North End that survived the 1917 Halifax Explosion and got turned into a public house that feels like your most hospitable grandparent lives there. Rooms cluttered with memorabilia, hand-pumped cask ale, and fiddlers who sometimes bring a bagpiper along for weekends. In winter, a crackling fire makes it very easy to lose an afternoon. Ranked 12th on Canada's 100 Best Bars list in 2026.

A single word above a heavy black door on Queen West is all the signposting BarChef bothers with. Inside, brick walls, dark wood, and dimmed lighting pull every eye toward the bar, which is exactly where Frankie Solarik wants you. The specialty is what the menu calls modernist cocktails, and the theatrical production values are not incidental to the drink. Aged bottled cocktails and punch bowls round out a list that takes itself seriously, and somehow gets away with it.

Roast duck and char siu hang lacquered in the window on East Pender, which is all the sign Chinatown BBQ really needs. It's a casual Cantonese barbecue spot with vintage art on the walls, a lazy Susan in the middle of the table, and regulars who look like they've never once consulted the menu. The barbecue pork travels well in a takeout box, but the room has its own pull. The barbecue goose, a chef's recipe, requires two days' notice.

The white shirts and black aprons are not an affectation; the staff here dress like Parisian servers because the whole point is a Parisian brasserie, transplanted to Outremont and running the same menu it has for years. Braised beef cheek, boudin noir, rum baba: the classics, done straight. The arched brick windows flood the room with light at lunch and turn it into a glowing fishbowl after dark. The wine list leans Burgundy and Rhône.

The Peking duck here requires a phone call to reserve, then arrives tableside in a cloud of flambéed rum, carved to order, with the carcass reborn as soup or a peppery stir-fry for the finale. This Shaanxi restaurant on Granville pairs that theater with biang biang noodles, roast lamb, and waterfront views. A Michelin Selected pick, it draws a crowd that planned ahead and dressed for the occasion.

An old house in the heart of Mont-Tremblant village, turned into a cozy fine dining room where the chef's past life cooking on yachts quietly shapes the menu. Local ingredients get the globe-trotting treatment: Lake Tremblant walleye shows up in a crispy tempura, and the osso bucco is the kind of low-and-slow thing that makes you cancel your ski plans. Italy and France anchor the wine list, and the service is warm without being fussy.

The outdoor sparkling bar overlooking the vines is a good hint at what you're in for at this winery restaurant on the Niagara Stone Road. Inside, it's a prix-fixe contemporary dining room running two and three courses, with the kitchen sourcing close to home and leaning hard into the seasons. The patio at lunch, with rows of vines stretching out ahead of you, is the move. A AAA Four Diamond property and a Michelin Selected Restaurant.

The dining room at Fogo Island Inn sits on stilts over the North Atlantic, which sets the tone before you've even ordered. The kitchen runs a locavore menu built almost entirely from what the island provides, so the fish on your plate may have been swimming that morning. The Michelin Guide awarded three Keys. Getting here takes real commitment, but the island is closer to the eastern seaboard than most maps make it feel.

Ski-in, ski-out at the base of Blackcomb, the Fairmont Chateau Whistler is a castle-sized resort hotel that somehow avoids feeling like one. Rustic wooden beams cross the lobby ceiling, guest rooms lean traditional rather than antiseptic, and the soaking tubs are sized for people who've actually earned them. The heated outdoor pool stays open all season, and a Robert Trent Jones Jr. golf course handles the summers. Michelin awarded it 2 Keys.

Hand-folded dumplings that change with the seasons set the tone at DaiLo, Nick Liu's New Asian-French restaurant on College Street. The menu is built around sharing, with dishes that are generous, boldly seasoned, and clearly personal. Whole fried trout with nam jim and Hainanese chicken with black truffle under the skin suggest the kitchen's register. The cocktails are taken seriously, and the wines are well-chosen. Come with people you like feeding.

The name means "flame," and the yakitori skewers are reason enough to remember that. Honō is an izakaya on Rue Saint-Joseph where pale wood and a live grill set a casual, share-everything tone at prices that won't make you do math. Miso-marinated salmon, artisan chicken sausage, confit duck heart on a stick: the menu roams further than most. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a connecting door leads to sister ramen bar Honō Ramen next door.

A slim vintage diner on Roncesvalles that's been around forever, The Ace holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for doing brunch better than most restaurants do dinner. The sourdough hits the griddle in the morning and the smell makes the lineup feel shorter than it is. The French toast, a thick brioche square with caramelized pears and whipped ricotta, is the kind of thing that makes people rearrange their Sundays.

You reach Lala by walking through the brasserie upstairs and following the crowd toward the back, which is either mysterious or a fire-hazard joke depending on your mood. In the basement, a cocktail bar waits with velvet curves, a golden glow, and retro speakers that actually earn the decor. Vinyl DJs spin nightly, and the bar team turns out drinks with real invention, bottled cocktails and mezcal-spiked riffs among them. Ranked 19th on Canada's 100 Best Bars list.

No two rooms share the same floor plan in this 65-room boutique hotel, a side effect of the heritage building it lives in. The common areas double as gallery space for a serious modern art collection, and the business district address puts you close to everything without the convention-hotel anonymity. Gotham Steak House is on-site when you want a drink and a steak without leaving the building. Staff have been known to arrange bicycles for the seawall.

The wine merchant boutique off the lobby sets the tone: this is a downtown Vancouver hotel that takes its European clubhouse fantasy seriously. Dark wood, warm lighting, and old-world touches give the rooms and lounge a different register than the glass-tower norm. A spa, indoor pool under a sunroof, and a personal concierge round out the comforts, and the business and shopping district sits right outside.

A cocktail bar in the back of a bodega in Inglewood, Business & Pleasure is a little harder to find than your average drink. The nostalgic bent runs deep: the After School Special riffs on cola and tonic but builds it out with shōchū, a Nanaimo-made quinquina, and umeshu. The single malt program is quietly obsessive. Ranked among Canada's 100 Best Bars, it draws a crowd that knows the difference between familiar and basic.

A vintage pinball machine throws just enough light to appreciate the chromium-and-formica bar stools at this Japanese rockabilly cocktail bar on Dundas West. Sake cocktails, Sapporo pints, and whisky highballs are the move, with Asahi served at a temperature the bar takes personally. The owner fronts a rockabilly band around town, which explains why the ephemera on the walls feels curated rather than accumulated.

The interior leans European, all Armani-quiet sleekness, but the kitchen stays firmly in Japan. Yuwa is a chic Japanese restaurant in Kitsilano where the menu shifts daily around whatever is freshest, and the co-owner doubles as one of Vancouver's sharpest sommeliers, which shows in a sake and wine list that keeps food people talking. The monied west-side crowd dresses accordingly and never needs to ask how anything works.

A casual Thai restaurant on East Broadway where the green curry beef shank reportedly stops conversations cold. Song holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and Vancouver Magazine's gold for best Thai, and the room feels built for lingering over pomelo salad and lemongrass wings with a group that shows up hungry. The menu runs deeper than the familiar standards, though the pad Thai earns its place on the table without apology.

Two copper-toned glass towers rise over the edge of Yaletown, standing out from the steel-gray skyline in a way that feels either bold or slightly overdressed, depending on your mood. The hotel itself has 329 rooms, a Spa by JW, an executive lounge, and enough meeting space to host a small nation's parliament. BC Place is steps away, and the casino is on-site, so guests are rarely short of somewhere to be.