The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Canada

Stacks of firewood against the dark brick walls signal what this small-plates Mediterranean spot is actually about: wood-fired proteins and serious cooking from the Alo Food Group, Patrick Kriss's team. The room inside the Ace Hotel runs dark and sleek, with big windows cutting the mood just enough. The menu ranges from carpaccio to roast chicken and lamb, and regulars know to save room for the coconut cream pie if it's on.

The brisket here is cooked low and slow over oak until the smoke does exactly as much work as it should, no more. This is a Central Texas-style BBQ shop in Toronto, with all the markers: smoked meats by the pound, saucy sandwiches, and weekly specials that tend toward the Flintstones end of the portion scale. The pitmaster brought the method up from Dallas, and the regulars who've figured out the beef rib schedule consider that a personal win.

Icebergs drift past the window while you eat, which sets an immediate bar for the drama of dinner. This remote destination restaurant inside Fogo Island Inn leans hard into its subarctic address, pulling edible plants from the shoreline and vegetables from local growers to build contemporary plates that taste like the Labrador Current actually means something. A zero-waste kitchen runs underneath it all, quietly, the way confident kitchens do.

Perpetual tropics in downtown Montreal, regardless of what February is doing outside. Le Mal Nécessaire is a sprawling cocktail bar with tall pillars, soaring ceilings, and a long polished bar that commits hard to the urban-equatorial bit. Drinks split neatly between breezy coconut-and-rum constructions and more serious, grown-up pours, so the crowd tends to contain both people unwinding and people who actually read the back of an amaro bottle.

Dried leaves hang from the ceiling, carved masks line the walls, and the pink lighting will make you look either very healthy or very unwell, depending on how many barrels deep you are. This Parkdale tiki bar runs a barrel-rating system on its cocktail menu, and nothing clocks in below two out of five, which tells you something about the room's general intentions. Rum is the obvious throughline, served in every vessel short of a fishbowl.

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.

Most of the seating wraps around a Tetris-shaped open kitchen, which tells you immediately what kind of place this is: a snack bar built for watching the cooks, not lingering over a bottle. The palette runs aqua and salmon, the vibe is tropical without trying too hard, and the food is Nikkei Peruvian, meaning Japanese technique folded into Peruvian flavors. Small plates, bold colors, a lively crowd, and a tiradito that earned the restaurant its name.

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.

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.

Aged white cheddar popovers land on your table minutes after you sit down, and coffee cake muffins follow you home. That's the bookend philosophy at this sleek, upscale steakhouse in CIBC Square, where the real business is a dry-ageing programme serious enough to earn a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list. Cuts come from Canada, Japan, Australia, and beyond, and the Burgundy-heavy wine list is ready to make any of them expensive.

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.

The curved banquettes, low ceiling, and candlelight will convince you it's a cocktail bar, and the drinks are sharp enough to let you believe that as long as you like. The Alo Food Group's French-leaning restaurant in Yorkville leans hard on a charcoal grill and whatever came off a boat, with a wedge salad and banana cream pie showing up like old friends. The room hums with the particular contentment of people who've already ordered a second round.

An olive oil negroni greets you before the Italian food even begins, which tells you something about how this restaurant on Saint-Denis thinks. The menu runs from crispy arancini and house-made pasta to scallop crudo with fennel granita, traditional instincts with a restless edge. The wine list is carefully chosen, the service warm without being theatrical, and the room feels like somewhere the chef actually wants you to enjoy yourself.

Torafuku anchors itself around an open kitchen in a concrete-heavy room that's going for industrial and mostly gets there. The cooking pulls from Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, then drifts toward Europe at dinner in ways that sound odd and land well, duck rillette sitting comfortably alongside tuna tataki. Lunch is rice bowls and quick turns; evenings run longer and stranger. A Michelin Selected Restaurant, it draws a crowd happy to share the communal table with strangers.

Dumplings shaped like flowers and rice pressed into jewel-colored mounds set the tone at Kiin, a Royal Thai restaurant on Adelaide where the food looks almost too considered to eat. Chef Nuit Regular takes familiar markers like khao soi, larb, and hot and sour beef soup and reframes them through a courtly lens, everything arriving in petite bowls with an attention to presentation that stops just short of theater. The Michelin Guide has it listed among selected restaurants in Toronto.

White-and-orange tile, vintage posters, and a bar long enough to mean business set the tone at this narrow Italian wine bar on Dundas West. The kitchen is barely the size of a coat closet, which makes the from-scratch pastas and focaccia all the more baffling. Half the room is here for the surprisingly deep Italian wine list and has no intention of eating. The other half ordered the ricotta-stuffed cacio e pepe coil and isn't sharing.

A mounted deer keeps watch over the exposed brick and forest-scene walls at this snug Little Portugal restaurant, which is either on-brand or very on-the-nose, depending on your mood. The chef built the menu around locally sourced game, so Ontario venison shows up alongside foraged and seasonal produce. The room is cozy and chef-driven, the kind of place where the hunting ethos runs from the decor all the way to the plate.

The wine list runs entirely to natural and biodynamic bottles, which tells you everything about what Little Burgundy bistro Le Vin Papillon is going for. It's a sharing-plates spot from the Joe Beef team next door, with a menu that shifts on the chefs' whims. The room is lively and genuinely welcoming, the kind of place where the Michelin Guide has taken notice without anyone seeming to have dressed up for the occasion.

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 line outside on weekend mornings is its own kind of landmark, and the smell of Belgian waffles from the kitchen doesn't help anyone's patience. Café Medina is a brunch spot with a Mediterranean lean, the sort of place where regulars shuffle to the counter without looking at the menu. Egg dishes carry the morning, and the orzo paella with chorizo and a fried egg on top has a way of ending the debate over what to order.

Fanny Bay runs its own shellfish farms, so the oysters on your tray were in the water embarrassingly recently. It's a seafood restaurant and raw bar on Cambie, a short walk from the stadiums, which explains why it fills up fast on game days. Sit at the bar and let the shucker guide you, or go for the grilled oysters, hot and bubbling with Creole butter. The Michelin Guide has it listed as a selected restaurant.

Jean-Luc Boulay, a familiar face from the Canadian cooking show Les Chefs, runs this warm bistro in Old Quebec with chef Arnaud Marchand, and the pair have made boreal cuisine their whole project. Lunches are short-menu and easy on the wallet; evenings go longer and richer, leaning into Quebec beef and foraged northern spices. The room feels like a French bistro that wandered north and decided to stay.

The menu at this seafood restaurant on Avenue du Mont-Royal shifts with whatever came off the boat, so the kitchen is essentially never cooking the same thing twice. The room fills fast and stays loud, which makes it feel more like a dinner party than a reservation. Counter seats are worth grabbing if you're solo. The Michelin Guide lists it among its selected Montreal restaurants.

The wood-burning ovens looming above the dining room are a clue to this upscale Italian restaurant's origin story: it was meant to be a pizzeria. The pivot to fine dining came later, and the room never quite forgot its roots, which suits everyone fine. Friendly servers keep things from getting stiff, the kitchen leans into simple preparations done well, and the enclosed patio splits the difference between a proper night out and a relaxed one.

Six seats at the bar and two small tables make the math on reservations here pretty unforgiving. Sushi Jin is a quiet omakase counter that a lot of Vancouver hasn't found yet, which is either a shame or a favor depending on how you feel about crowds. The chef works in a traditional Japanese register with a personal edge, and the nigiri runs from delicate hirame to fatty otoro topped with Hokkaido uni. The Michelin Guide has it listed.

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.

Hand-carved furniture, turmeric-colored booths, and archways that glow like something out of a Mughal painting make this Indian dining room in Yorkville feel pleasantly over-the-top in the best way. The kitchen matches the ambition, moving through dishes from across India with real precision, from clay-oven kebabs to a chicken biryani baked under puff pastry that has no interest in playing it safe. Dress accordingly; the room expects a little effort.

A tasting menu of a dozen small plates to share anchors this modern restaurant in Sainte-Foy, a neighborhood away from the old city's tourist traffic. The kitchen commits hard to Quebec terroir, and the all-Quebec wine list follows the same logic with no apologies. The room is simple, the welcome is not, and the overall effect is the kind of unhurried dinner that makes the drive out feel obvious in retrospect.

Palestinian and Jordanian cooking in a Roncesvalles dining room where the menu runs à la carte or prix fixe and the bar pours only mocktails. The kitchen pulls from both family tradition and refined technique, so brined lamb chops and sea bass wrapped in grilled grape leaves sit alongside an Angus short rib built for assembling into flatbread handhelds. Dessert ends on sticky date with cinnamon ice cream. No wine list, but nobody seems to miss it.

Southern Italian cooking in a relaxed Old Toronto room, ARDO draws from Sicily and points south without making a fuss about it. The menu runs from chickpea fritters and arancini through orecchiette with sausage and rapini, and the seafood is handled with a light touch. Cannoli show up at the end, and they're the right call. A neighborhood place that happens to repay the trip from wherever you're coming from.

The menu arrives as a leather-bound storybook, its chapters narrated by the kitchen team in a candlelit stone building that dates back forever. Asteur is a single-set-menu fine dining room where chef Olivier Robillard works exclusively with Quebec ingredients, weaving personal memory into each course. Old beams, midnight-blue walls, white tablecloths, and a sommelier who clearly has opinions make the whole evening feel rather deliberately unhurried.

A tufted banquette, honeyed lighting, and a bar planted dead center set the tone at this Danforth Avenue tasting menu restaurant. The kitchen leans Mediterranean but follows the seasons, with locally foraged ingredients arranged like the chef has a point to prove about presentation. Esoteric wines and gin-forward cocktails fill out the evening nicely. The crowd across from the music hall tends to settle in and stay a while, which is rather the idea.

The banana cake with salted caramel ice cream lands on your table like the place knows it's having the last word. Bar Banane on Ossington is a cocktail bar that shades into a full dinner, with a raw bar, wagyu, and enough truffle and foie gras to make the room feel deliberate about its own excess. Rich colors, loud music, and a crowd dressed like they know someone on set keep the energy high all night.

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.

The cooking comes out of a kitchenette tucked behind the bar, which tells you everything about Bar Gobo's priorities. It's a natural wine bar on Union Street where the pours run exclusively from small, hip producers and the room is about as fussy as its namesake root vegetable. A short prix fixe rotates with the seasons, and the flavors land with more clarity than the setting would suggest. No attitude from the staff, despite the very correct wine list.

Snowshoes, a canoe, and a rifle on the walls set the tone at this rustic bistro inside Manoir Hovey, where the decor reads less "hunting lodge theme" and more genuinely accumulated. The kitchen leans into traditional Quebec cooking with enough twists to stay interesting, turning out bison tartare and seared scallops with cauliflower and gingerbread crumble. Casual enough for après-ski, serious enough that the food holds the room on its own.

Tucked onto a terrace inside the Shangri-La Hotel, this elegant Northern Italian restaurant draws from the Friuli region, where the cooking carries a Germanic and Slavic undertow you don't expect. Freshly made pastas lead the way, including regional shapes rarely seen on this side of the Atlantic. The menu keeps things seasonal and unfussy, and at dinner you can hand the whole decision over to the kitchen, which suits anyone who finds menus exhausting.

Old photos of the original Mr. Rioux and Mr. Pettigrew still hang on the walls of this traditional Quebec dining room near the Old Port, wooden floorboards and exposed stone completing the picture. The kitchen leans into the province's terroir with hearty, familiar cooking that occasionally surprises. The kind of place where the room feels like it predates everyone in it, and the menu makes a decent argument for that being a good thing.

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.

Linen-draped tables and walls hung with colorful fabric signal that this is a sit-down Northern Indian restaurant on Roncesvalles, not a quick takeout stop. The kitchen runs on Mughlai tradition, and the menu reads like someone's grandmother's repertoire done with real care. Roncy locals fill the room on weeknights, which probably says enough. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

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.

A narrow Trinity Bellwoods room with herringbone floors and exposed white brick, Gia is a plant-forward Italian restaurant where the house-made pasta, not the absence of meat, is the point. The mushroom agnolotti in butter and Parmigiano is the kind of dish that makes you forget you were tracking anything. Walk-ins can grab a seat at the walnut bar when reservations run out, which they tend to.

Globe lighting, forest green cushions, and gold-trim tables give this wine bar on Queen West a mid-century modern ease that makes an evening here feel deliberately unhurried. The menu has no particular allegiance to any cuisine, which turns out to be a feature: it exists to pace the wine list, not compete with it. A retail shop sits next door for when the bottle you're on becomes a problem you need to solve immediately.

A timber barn on a working farm in the Lanaudière countryside, where the single set menu changes with whatever was just harvested. The chef, originally from Réunion Island, folds those roots quietly into produce that was likely growing outside that morning. Maple syrup is made in-house, birds roam free, and the whole thing is cooked to order. It's the kind of country restaurant where the room and the plate are telling the same story.

Old painted panelling and varnished floorboards give this Mile End bistro the feel of a Paris side street that took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere more interesting. The chef runs a carte blanche menu each evening, which in practice means a shifting parade of influences that refuses to settle on one continent. The namesake dessert, a riff on the classic floating island, shows up eventually, but by then you've already forgotten to expect it.

A terrace, two floors, and a Chinatown corner that always seems to have a lineup outside it. This is a Southern Thai restaurant where the kitchen leans into the heat and funk of regional cooking, the kind that doesn't soften things for the room. The staff are young and quick, which matters because tables turn fast enough that the line moves. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and the coconut green curry alone explains why.

White tablecloths and mirrors in the Lower Town, a short walk from the Old Port, where French classics have been the point since forever. This is a traditional French restaurant, the kind where you actually consider the wine list rather than just pointing. The lunch menu is a quieter, simpler affair; evenings lean into full bistro formality. The staff took over the place themselves years ago, which may explain why the service feels like it means it.

The open kitchen runs the full back wall, so the team plates in plain view of everyone in the dining room. This is a modern French restaurant in the Saint-Roch neighbourhood, the kind where the cooking has evident range, shaped by time in Charlevoix and in Tokyo. The menu moves through clean, composed dishes with the occasional unexpected turn. The Michelin Guide has selected it.

A bring-your-own-bottle restaurant inside an 1880 house in Vieux-Saint-Eustache, with weathered wood and the general feeling that the building has opinions about locally sourced food. The kitchen leans hard into Québec terroir, wild plants, boreal herbs, and house-made marinades, and the menu shifts with what the season is actually offering. Generous plates, no corkage anxiety, and a room that makes the whole project feel less like a trend than a given.

The St. Lawrence stretches out wide enough here that you briefly forget lunch is happening. Le SAINTI is a restaurant in Saint-Irénée with a terrace that earns its postcard setting and a dining room done in quiet maritime tones. The kitchen leans on Charlevoix ingredients, running simpler plates at midday and a longer tasting menu come evening, when the region's producers get more of the spotlight.

The entire back wall is a chalkboard menu, which tells you almost everything you need to know about Le St-Urbain. It's a neighborhood restaurant in Ahuntsic, the kind where natural light comes through big windows and you can watch the kitchen work from your seat. The cooking is seasonal and straightforward, built around flavor rather than flourish, and the room manages to feel lively without trying too hard.

A Rimouski restaurant where poutine shares the menu with Korean-glazed chicken and halibut accras, the local catch standing in for the traditional cod. The kitchen swings confidently between Québécois comfort and a looser, globe-trotting curiosity, and the Nagano pork tomahawk, a breed raised right here in the province, arrives paired with shiitake and root vegetables. A Michelin Selected restaurant that earns the nod by staying grounded in the region while refusing to stay put.

A working farm in the Eastern Townships that doubles as a restaurant, where dinner starts with cider on a covered patio around an open fire before you move inside to a wood-lined room with a vintage feel. The set menu pulls from the farm's own gardens and local producers, something like eighty fruits, vegetables, and herbs showing up across the courses. A quiet drive out, but the kind of meal that earns the silence.

A small castle-like building across from the Saint-Sauveur church turns out to house a traditional French restaurant with serious local sourcing ambitions. Suckling pig from a named family farm, boudin noir, maple-glazed sweetbreads, and a flat iron steak done properly with mushrooms and red wine give the menu a distinctly Québécois accent. Lunch runs on a set formula; evenings open up to à la carte. The welcome is genuinely warm, in the way that feels earned rather than rehearsed.

A Catalan tapas bar and cocktail spot in the Distillery District, where exposed brick and cobblestones do a lot of the atmosphere's heavy lifting so the kitchen doesn't have to. The menu runs from pan con tomate to rice pudding croquetas, with a Spanish wine list and a gin and tonic section that treats the drink with the seriousness of a minor religion. Good for grazing through an evening rather than eating in any particular hurry.

A cube of coffee-colored wood cladding in downtown Granby, ninety minutes from Montreal, with a rooftop herb garden and two crackling maple fires inside that make it feel somewhere between a steakhouse and a farmhouse. The open kitchen and chef's counter face a glassed-in wine cellar and black tables, all of it warmer than the minimalist bones suggest. The cooking is mostly live-fire, built around carefully sourced vegetables, fish, and meat. The Michelin Guide has it on their list.

Pita baked in a wood-burning oven arrives at the table looking like a small dome, and that's before the kebabs charred over coals or the meat spinning on a spit show up. Mama Fatma is a Turkish grill in Mississauga where portions run large and tables tend to disappear under platters. The kayseri mantisi, tiny beef dumplings in garlicky yogurt, could carry a meal on their own. Hot tea closes things out, because there's never room for dessert anyway.

A team visible through the back folds dumplings by hand all day at this Chinatown institution, and the room fills accordingly. It's a casual dumpling shop with a full Chinese menu, though most regulars ignore the latter. The boiled pork and dill are the ones to know. Bags of frozen dumplings sit near the door for when you want the same thing at home at midnight, which, fair enough.

The milk bread comes out of the oven in perfect little rows, which is not a thing you expect from a ramen shop. Tucked off the main strip in Roncesvalles, Musoshin built its broths around a vegetable base rather than the usual pork fat wallop, and the house-made noodles go into every bowl. The chef learned her craft over video calls with the original Kyoto location, which is either very modern or very old-school, depending on how you look at it.

A nineteenth-century house with original ceiling beams sits on the banks of the St. Lawrence in a village that also has a chocolate shop, which tells you something about the neighborhood's priorities. Myranel is a set-menu restaurant where the chef sources almost everything from Portneuf County and rotates the menu every couple of months, with a vegetarian version always on offer. Daring sweet-sour combinations are something of a house signature.

Tucked onto the second floor of a shopping mall on Marine Drive, this sprawling Cantonese banquet hall is the kind of place locals fill on weekends without needing to tell anyone about it. Dim sum runs through the afternoon, with dumplings packed with shrimp that actually justify the wait. Dinner pivots to a broader seafood menu, lobster and abalone among them. The room fits large groups comfortably, which is the whole point.

Crystal bead chandeliers and a floor-to-ceiling cherry blossom mural set the scene, though families and groups make sure the room never takes itself too seriously. This is a big, boisterous Cantonese dining hall in East Vancouver, selected by the Michelin Guide, where dim sum is the main event. Diners tick off choices from a photo menu, and everything arrives from the kitchen freshly made and steaming.

A custom reverse-flow wood smoker does the heavy lifting at this halal barbecue spot tucked into a Scarborough strip mall, and the smell reaches you before the signage does. Order a multi-meat plate, a sandwich, or by the pound, and the menu swings from Montreal-style brisket to Korean-inflected short ribs without losing the thread. The maple-smoked beans are a quiet reminder that you're firmly in Canada, not Tennessee.

A blackboard menu, sharing plates, and a bring-your-own-wine policy set the tone at this low-key Montréal bistro. The kitchen leans into seasonal Québec produce from small farms, turning it into rustic, flavor-forward plates you pass around the table. The room itself is put together with recycled materials, which feels fitting given how seriously the place takes its sourcing. Pack a bottle and settle in.