Montreal is a great fuckin’ city. I’d put it in my all-time top 5, for sure, along with Toronto, New York, Portland and Chicago. So I was glad to have an excuse to go there for 10 days recently.
My spouse, mb, and I are knee-deep in the process of trying to secure my green card so I can move to New York to be with them. We’ve been in a long-distance relationship for six years, and married for three, so needless to say, we’d love to finally be able to live together!
As part of that process, I was recently required to attend an immigration interview at the consulate in Montreal. I don’t really know why I needed to trek out there when there’s a perfectly good U.S. consulate in downtown Toronto where I live – but my partner and I noted that the interview date was about a week before our wedding anniversary, so we decided it would be nice to make this bureaucratic necessity into a romantic vacation.
I last visited Montreal in 2019, also with my spouse, and wrote a Date Diaries post about some of my fave places we went while there. Here’s another such post, detailing some of the lovely Montreal spots we got to check out recently.
I have to give a huge shout-out to my spouse for choosing most (all?) of these places for us, and (in many cases) for spoiling me with meals and drinks I wouldn’t be able to afford on my own. The immigration interview itself ended up being somewhat anticlimactic because we were told we need to submit more documents and wait longer to get an answer from the government, and I was pretty sad about that, but going to all of these wonderful places really brightened my mood and helped me see the whole debacle in a more positive light.
We went here on our first night in the city. My spouse had been on a plane for about an hour, and I’d been on a train for 5 hours, so we were both a little tuckered out, but they took very good care of us here.
The menu was wild, and very Québécois. One dish was essentially a lobster bisque with truffle, served with cold whipped cream on top to look like a cappuccino; I normally don’t like lobster but it was quite delish! There was also a French onion soup served inside an actual hollowed-out onion, and a fantastic steak course, among other things. One of my favorite parts of the meal, though, was a maple-flavored cotton candy that was served at the end. I just kept eating more and more – it was like a maple sugar cloud dissolving in my mouth!
This place was near our Airbnb so we went there a couple times, once for evening cocktails and once for brunch, and it was great both times. My favorite thing I got there was my brunch dish, some slices of cured salmon served with blinis, capers, dill yogurt, and a quail egg. The flavor profile reminded me of so many meals I had with the Jewish side of my family as a kid, so it felt like home.
Le Musée des Beaux ArtsWhat a gorgeous museum! We spent an hour or two looking at art one afternoon and it was very relaxing and inspiring. One of the exhibitions was focused on pop art (a fave genre of mine), and it was also fun to peruse the museum’s permanent collection, which features many total showstoppers.
Unexpectedly, one of the pieces that’s stayed with me the most is Ron Mueck’s Dead Dad, a sculpture of a dead man, which was given an entire room to itself, intensifying its solemnity (not to mention creepiness).
This place was named the best restaurant in Canada, so of course my foodie spouse wanted to go. Every single thing we ate and drank there was incredible. I have very few photos of our night there because we legit just kept immediately eating everything they brought us 😂
Cloakroom BarThis place reminds me of my favorite cocktail joint in Toronto, Civil Liberties – both bars have a “verbal menu,” meaning that instead of picking a drink from a pre-ordained list, you have a little chat with the bartender about your likes and dislikes, and they make something great just for you.
On this occasion we were served by a charming Scottish bartender who chatted with us amiably while making us stellar drinks. Cloakroom also has, unusually, a collection of vintage spirits; mb and I were able to sip some decades-old Fernet Branca, which normally tastes like mouthwash (to me, anyway) but which, in this case, had mellowed over the years into something subtler and sweeter. Really cool how booze changes as it ages, just like humans do, and how we can effectively reach back through time to taste retro delicacies.
This was one of my favorite places the last time we visited, so I knew I wanted to go back. The Coldroom is hidden away behind an unmarked metal door; walk down some stairs inside and you’ll find yourself in an ornate basement bar that serves fabulous cocktails.
I’d had a really great Southside when we came here in 2019, so I ordered one again, even though it wasn’t on the menu. It was the Platonic ideal of a Southside, truly. Just perfect. Thank you, Coldroom.
Mount RoyalI’ve been to Montreal several times but had never climbed the mountain which gives the city its name. On this trip, we decided to hike up to the top. It was a challenging journey for me, since I’m chronically ill and not in shape at all, but I was really glad we did it. The hike featured lots of gorgeous views, and near the top of the mountain, there’s a huge, heated chalet that feels like reaching heaven after a long trek through purgatory. We sipped hot chocolate and looked out at the city, vast and dazzling, below. A magical adventure!
This place had a friendly, informal vibe, which contrasted nicely with the top-tier food they served. One of my favorite things we ate there was a knish (a traditional Jewish baked good) topped with a healthy mound of caviar. Like, damn.
They also have a Hemingway daiquiri on their cocktail menu – that’s a daiquiri sweetened with Maraschino liqueur, essentially – and it was one of the best drinks I had during the whole trip. Perfectly balanced, sweet and tart. Yum.
Place CarminI think this might’ve been my favorite meal we had in Montreal. Their duck à l’orange was just perfect, and dessert was a transcendent chocolate tart. The martini they made for me was also, hands-down, my fave martini I had the whole trip (and I order martinis pretty often!). Highly recommend.
We checked out the local Holt Renfrew department store, and got lunch at their in-store restaurant while we were there, which was fancier than I expected. I got a green pea risotto, the memory of which still haunts me because it was that fucking good.
The department store itself was nice too. We wandered around looking at wildly expensive coats, dresses, bags, and shoes, but all I bought was a tube of fancy toothpaste. All in all, a good shopping day!
There’s just something about live jazz… I listen to a lot of jazz when I’m at home, but it’s always different to see it live. The energy crackles. The vibes are electric. The improvisation is (of course) unpredictable, which is exciting. It’s a pretty different experience. I often feel like I’m at church when I go to a jazz club, in the sense that it feels like communing with like-minded strangers while revelling in the near-universal magic of music.
Even though sometimes us anglophones couldn’t understand what Montreal’s many francophones were saying during our trip, seeing live jazz reminded me that music is a language we can all understand, which is beautiful and comforting in chaotic times.
This place holds a special place in our hearts, because the last time mb and I were there together, they told me for the first time that they were having “gender feelings” that they wanted to explore. A few months later, they came out as nonbinary. Accordingly, we wanted to return to this bar in celebration of that memory.
All the drinks we had were great; I’d especially recommend the Ramos slush, their unique take on the Ramos gin fizz, a notoriously hard-to-make cocktail.
I’m a huge fan of sushi, as is my spouse, so we were excited to check out this “theatrical omakase experience.” Omakase means “I leave it up to you,” and so this type of meal involves trusting the chef(s) to serve you a tasting menu of sushi and other delights – great for an indecisive submissive like me, haha!
The “theatrical” aspect of the meal was cool too – we got a front-and-center view of the chefs while they worked, and they presented the dishes to us in various showy ways. Gongs were rung and sake was swilled. It was a memorable and delicious dinner.
We went to this legendary restaurant for our anniversary dinner. It is the very essence of an old-school French restaurant – classy, ostentatious, and generous with butter. We split a bottle of champagne and raised our glasses to toast our love and togetherness.
Earlier in the day on our anniversary, mb totally spoiled me by taking me to this place, which is a spa on a boat. We each got a blissful hot oil massage in the middle of our hours-long stay, and spent the rest of the time in the spa’s various steam baths.
Total silence is required in most of the spa, so we spent a lot of time sitting quietly in wonderfully hot water. It was unbelievably relaxing and meditative. At one point, my partner took my hand and pressed on my inner wrist, a spot that triggers me to go into trance. I drifted in that half-awake state for a few minutes, amazed at how my sweetheart can control me and relax me without saying a word.
Café OlimpicoI always come here when I go to Montreal, because their espresso is so damn good. We needed to kill a bit of time before my train ride home, so this is one of the places we hung out at. As ever, the coffee was A++ and so was the ambiance.
Have you been to Montreal? What are your favorite places there?