The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Canada

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Martini "My Way" lets you spec your gin or vodka, then choose from olives, twists, caper berries, cocktail onions, or the ominously listed "Monster Munch," for which the menu offers only: Trust Us. This Junction cocktail bar and cafe runs all day, moving from breakfast sandwiches in the morning to caviar and chips after dark, with a deep natural wine cellar and a serious ice program keeping the evening crowd honest. It landed at number 25 on Canada's Best Bars list.

A glazed wine cellar anchors the dining room at this modern French bistro on Cartier, where the open kitchen lets you watch the team plate food that leans more confident and less classically Gallic than the name might suggest. Portions are smaller but the ingredients are not modest, and the owner's own market garden supplies the produce in season. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks with the neighborhood crowd it draws.

A copper-clad bar, vinyl on the turntable, and a menu that changes every day: Buvette Scott is a wine bar in the Saint-Jean-Baptiste neighbourhood where small plates and good pours are the whole point. Plan on four dishes, split them, and pick something from a wine list that leans local and stays affordable. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a room this unpretentious and this easy to return to.

This is a seafood restaurant with a wall of vintage etched mirrors and a menu that cheerfully ignores the rules. The focaccia arrives on a toddler's melamine alphabet plate, the caesar gets sprouting broccoli and tempura crunchies, and the margarita involves gingered rye and douglas fir. Now and then the spot prawn guy walks in mid-service with the day's catch, which is as close to a fish market as a mirror gallery gets.

The entrance is through a barbershop on Ossington, which should tell you everything about the vibe before you order a thing. Gift Shop is a compact cocktail bar that runs on classic inspiration, with originals built from combinations that have no business working as well as they do. The Lycheese Martini, which is exactly what it sounds like, rehabilitates the lychee martini with Parmigiano Reggiano. Ranked on Canada's 100 Best Bars list.

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.

The ceiling-height backbar comes with a library ladder, which tells you everything about how seriously this cocktail bar takes its inventory. The menu is organized by spirit, playfully named and genuinely long, so the half-sized classics are a smart way in. It ranks on North America's 50 Best Bars, yet the neighborhood vibe keeps it from feeling precious, and first-timers browse alongside the regulars hunting 25-year Macallan.

Named for the balsam fir, this bright, casual bistro in the Laurentians feels like a neighbourhood spot that happened to end up somewhere very pretty. The team, with roots at Le Mousso and Le Club Chasse et Pêche, turns out modern Québécois cooking built for sharing over natural wine. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a room where bottles circulate freely and nobody seems in any particular hurry to leave.

The team behind Faux Bergers runs this lively little wine bar on the main drag in Baie-Saint-Paul, where the point is Charlevoix ingredients handled simply and shared around the table. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The room fills fast with locals and visitors who order in rounds, and the menu moves with the seasons, leaning on the kind of regional produce that makes this corner of Quebec worth the detour.

A family-run restaurant on the banks of the St. Lawrence, with a terrace that earns its postcard reputation in summer. The kitchen leans hard into Quebec terroir, right down to the duck, which comes from a local farmer who once cooked here himself. Menus shift with the seasons, service runs warm and unhurried, and the adjoining shop sells mostly local goods for the drive home. A Michelin Bib Gourmand.

Vintage amps and speakers from the '70s and '80s line the walls of this Japanese kissaten-style bar on Dupont, which pulls double duty as a daytime café before DJs take over at dusk. The cocktail list leans on yuzu, oolong, sake, and Japanese teas, with signatures drawn from famous albums. Rice paper Noguchi lamps and koinobori streamers hang overhead, and the mid-century furniture makes clear that nobody here is in a hurry to leave.

Down a staircase beneath a Chinatown restaurant, red lanterns mark this below-street Vietnamese cocktail bar as something worth finding. The drinks lean tropical but take detours, like a Vietnamese iced coffee built with cold brew, condensed milk, and coconut. Small plates of bánh mì and shaken beef have a way of appearing at tables where nobody ordered food. It landed on Canada's 100 Best Bars list, which tracks, given how often people seem to lose track of time here.

A loft-style beer bar in Inglewood where the list is organized by style and vintage, the way a serious wine shop might do it. The team behind it includes Alberta's first Certified Cicerone, and the draft and bottle selection runs from rare Trappist ales to hard-to-find natural fermentations from brewers most people haven't heard of yet. Charcuterie and conservas fill the gaps. It ranked 36th on Canada's 100 Best Bars list for 2026.

Lines form before the doors open at this cash-only Chinatown institution, which has been running Vietnamese and Cambodian food out of the same room forever. The menu stretches to nearly a hundred dishes, but regulars navigate straight to the beef luc lac, the salt-pepper-sugar wings, and a plate of thinly sliced raw beef in pineapple fish sauce that sounds odd until it arrives. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

The "no cutlery" rule wasn't an accident, it was the whole point. 416 Snack Bar is a candlelit neighborhood bar on Bathurst where the industry crowd figured things out fast and never really left. There's no cocktail list to speak of, just a well-stocked bar happy to make the drinks people kept asking for. Ranked among Canada's 100 Best Bars, it lands its vibe by knowing exactly what it is and quietly ignoring everything it isn't.

Wood panelling, mounted deer heads, and mismatched chairs set the tone at Le Majestique, a festive bar on The Main where the seafood tower arrives with theatrical intent. Industry regulars fill the room early, working through a deep list of natural wines, microbrews, and classic cocktails. The oysters stay hyper-fresh, but most people are here to drink well in a room that looks kitschy and acts like it means it.

Frankie Solarik's follow-up to BarChef trades smoke machines for herb jars, mortar and pestle, and a chemist's storefront you walk through to reach the bar. The cocktail menu on West Queen West reads like a compendium of house-made bitters, hydrosols, and foraged botanicals, with drinks built to order from vintage apothecary vessels. The showmanship didn't go anywhere, though, and neither did the '90s hip-hop.

Oysters shucked to order, caviar service, artisanal cheese, and a wine list deep in small-production naturals, all of it happening in Saskatoon. This wine bar leans hard into the Parisian boîte fantasy, and the list rewards the curious: skin-contact wines from the Okanagan, odd co-ferments, bottles that traveled a long way to end up somewhere genuinely surprising. The cocktail side runs to very cold Martinis and milk punches. Canada's 100 Best ranks it among the country's top bars.

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 long counter and vintage wallpaper say diner; the cocktail list politely disagrees. This College Street bar leans into the greasy-spoon aesthetic while the kitchen sends out cod with Osetra caviar and the bartenders fold Szechuan peppercorn into a White Negroni. Cold beers are always an option, of course. Regulars fill the stools early and stay a while, which tracks for a place that ranked on Canada's 100 Best Bars.

The menu lists "Silk Pappadelle with sesame, pecorino and secrets," which tells you a lot about what Deer + Almond is up to. This fine dining room on Princess Street lands on Canada's 100 Best at number fifty, and earns it through Prairie ingredients routed through unexpected global detours: local venison with Thai nahm jim, beets alongside tuna and ginger-soy. A four-course prix fixe runs the dining room; the bar takes à la carte orders from the same kitchen.