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Restaurants Overview

Good restaurants can pop up just about anywhere in Montréal, and sometimes they appear in the oddest places. Toqué!, for example, long touted as one of the city's best, is on the ground floor of an office tower in the financial district. Still, there are those certain areas -- such as rue St-Denis and boulevard St-Laurent between rues Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal -- that have long been the city's hottest dining strips, with everything from sandwich shops to high-price gourmet shrines.

The bring-your-own-wine craze started on rue Prince-Arthur and avenue Duluth, two lively pedestrian streets in the Plateau that still specialize in good, relatively low-cost meals. Most downtown restaurants are clustered between rues Guy and Peel on the side streets that run between boulevard René-Lévesque and rue Sherbrooke. Some interesting little cafés and restaurants have begun to spring up in the heart of the antiques district along rue Notre-Dame Ouest near avenue Atwater. Vieux-Montréal, too, has a good collection of restaurants, most of them clustered on rue St-Paul and Place Jacques-Cartier.

Wherever you go to eat, be sure to watch for such Québec specialties as veal from Charlevoix, lamb from Kamouraska, strawberries from Île d'Orléans, shrimp from Matane, lobster from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, blueberries from Lac St-Jean, and cheese from just about everywhere.

When you dine out, you can usually order à la carte, but make sure to look for the table d'hôte, a two- to four-course package deal. It's usually more economical, often offers interesting specials, and may also take less time to prepare. If you want to splurge on time and money, consider a menu dégustation, a five- to seven-course tasting menu executed by the chef. It generally includes soup, salad, fish, sherbet (to cleanse the palate), a meat dish, dessert, and coffee or tea. At the city's finest restaurants, such a meal for two, along with a good bottle of wine, can cost more than C$200 and last four hours.

Menus in many restaurants are bilingual, but some are only in French. If you don't understand what a dish is, don't be shy about asking; a good server will be happy to explain. If you feel brave enough to order in French, remember that in French an entrée is an appetizer and what Americans call an entrée is a plat principal, or main dish.

Dinner reservations are highly recommended for weekend dining.