It’s easy to miss when queuing up at Schwartz’s Deli or wandering the labyrinthine underground shopping centers, but Montréal is, indeed, an island city — cleaved from mainland Québec by the St. Lawrence River and its various offshoots. Only with the 1859 opening of Victoria Bridge did residents get a permanent link to shore. Before that, for two centuries after Montréal’s founding, leaving required a boat or a swim.
Perhaps 200 years of watery separation turns the gaze inward. Because up close, La Métropole splinters into an archipelago of neighborhoods whose big, distinct personalities belie their often-compact footprints.
Just a handful of those neighborhoods have landed on the tourist trail. First-time visitors tend to alight in the cobblestoned Old Port, then head up-island to the boho-turned-bougie outposts of Mile End and the Plateau-Mont-Royal. A little farther along is the foodie hub of Little Italy, where Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak made the Montréal news during a goodwill-tour shopping trip to Jean-Talon Market in May. Throw in Little Burgundy and the festival-packed Quartier des Spectacles to collect them all: the Montréal Vacation Starter Pack.
But this travel season we’re branching out and inviting Seven Days readers to do the same. We brought together four Montréal aficionados — two in Vermont, two in the city itself — to make their cases for neighborhoods worth visiting this summer, whether you’re looking for your next foodie adventure or seeking to better understand the city’s remarkable and long-standing cultural diversity.
Some of these neighborhoods are in the grips of change. Montréal writer and editor J.P. Karwacki offers an introduction to historically working-class Verdun, which has seen a recent wave of new bars and stylish restaurants, many clustered around a seasonal pedestrian thoroughfare that Time Out magazine once named “the coolest street in the world.” (Hyperbole? You be the judge.)
In compact Chinatown, a new museum and grassroots efforts seek to celebrate and protect Québec’s rich Chinese heritage. Even longtime visitors to the neighborhood, like myself, can continue to uncover the history preserved there, such as the family-run noodle factory that’s among Canada’s oldest Chinese-owned businesses.
Montréal neighborhoods have big, distinct personalities that belie their often-compact footprints.
Other spots have simply been off the radar for many Vermont travelers yet offer a fascinating lens on the culture of our nearest big city. In the predominantly anglophone and immigrant neighborhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Seven Days writer Alice Dodge shares the largely local pleasures — from front-porch music to old-school chicken plates — of a place where she has deep family roots.
Finally, Montréal artist and art history lecturer Michel Hellman — who created this issue’s beautiful cover — shares a cartoon guide to Shaughnessy Village, a student neighborhood that many visitors overlook but that has fascinating history, great cafés, and a landmark architecture and design museum.
If you’re ready to explore a new-to-you neighborhood, these mini guides are a good place to start. We’ll see you in Montréal.
— Jen Rose Smith
Eat Across Verdun
The borough of Verdun has a city-within-a-city feel to it — and not just because of the highways and waterways that cloister it from downtown. Its sense of community pride runs deep; Verdun’s interconnected riverside parks, sandy beach, and standout collection of restaurants and bars draw visitors from across Montréal.
I live in Verdun. I wasn’t surprised when, as the inaugural editor of Time Out Montréal, I saw the magazine’s local readers single it out as the city’s coolest neighborhood in 2020. I wasn’t surprised, either, when global Time Out contributors chose its main thoroughfare, rue Wellington, as the world’s coolest street for 2024.
On warm nights, when the outdoor crowd is ordering creative small plates, orange wine and PEI oysters, you won’t want to be anywhere else in the city.
Yet Verdun wasn’t always neck and neck with hip mainstays such as the Plateau or Mile End. After the metro arrived in the late 1970s, a once self-contained downtown struggled to compete with the higher-end glitz of the city core. It didn’t help that the borough was partially dry until 2013, when it got its first bar since the 19th century with the opening of the Benelux brewpub.
Booze trickled back just as Verdun began to boom in popularity among Montréalers drawn to the area by more affordable rent. The decade and change that followed brought lively bars, including the Irish pub franchise Le Trèfle and the watering hole Church St. Pub, which opened in tandem with a new crop of restaurants.
The resulting scene has impressive breadth, even for Montréal. It goes from ambitious young chefs and boundary-pushing kitchens to long-standing institutions and blue-collar classics. Eating here means old- and new-school diners, Michelin Guide-recommended restaurants, and damn good pizza. Here’s how to spend a day’s worth of meals, snacks and drinks in Verdun.
Morning: Breakfast and Brunch
With vinyl-backed booths and inexpensive two-egg platters, Verdun’s wealth of diners are not kitschy but classic. New Verdun, La Terrasse (514-600-0099) and Restaurant Zappy are beloved mainstays.
Yet the Acadian-themed diner Chez Jacquie et France (breakfasts CA$10-24.25) offers what might be the best and most affordable breakfast in the borough — and does so while proudly repping Québec’s Îles-de-la-Madeleine, 12 islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. (Verdun has had a significant Madelinot population since the early 20th century.) The restaurant, decked in nautical décor, references the archipelago and maritime lingo on its menu, which spans hearty breakfast options from lobster Benedict to caramel-topped waffles.
Or get a taste of the neighborhood’s more recently established eateries. At zhuzhed-up diner Millmans (breakfasts CA$14-20), chef Nicholas Gaudette brings fine-dining chops to menu classics such as super-fluffy pancakes with maple syrup. You’ll need reservations at the lushly upholstered Janine café (CA$5.25-32) to avoid queuing for its tea services and deluxe variations on brunch classics, including brioche French toast dressed in homemade jam and mascarpone, or croissants stuffed with pulled ham and a spinach béchamel.
Afternoon: Lunch and Dessert
Verdun had decent lunch spots even before its rise in 2020 — the neighborhood is where sandwich slinger Bossa started building its local Italian hoagie empire and where cheekily named Québécois chain Jack le Coq set a pecking order for fried chicken.
But since the pandemic and the turn toward working from home, Verdun has been awash in great options. Among the best is casual-but-hip Cambodian noodle counter Ketiw (lunch mains CA$13.95-18.95), where num pang sandwiches brim with lemongrass beef, fried tofu or fried shrimp patties and kuy teav noodle soups are rich and aromatic.
Housemade charcuterie and CA$10 wines by the glass draw a steady crowd to the sandwich counter at Verdun Beef (sandwiches CA$12-13), a butcher shop that sources all meat from local farms. Their Wagyu-topped grilled-cheese sandwiches with caramelized onions win raves. For dessert, head up rue Wellington for choux pastries or ice cream-stuffed cookie sandwiches from Alice & Theo (CA$4-11.95), choosing among ice cream flavors such as crème de cassis, tarte tatin and rose.
Night: Dinner and Drinks
Evenings are where Verdun shines brightest. The past five years have brought new arrivals with elevated cooking, well-curated wine lists and serious ambience. The buzziest is Michelin-recommended Beba (shared plates CA$17-56) from Argentinean brothers Ari and Pablo Schor. The spot has earned national praise for its thoughtful, inventive dishes and unfussy elegance — think snow crab terrine and Prince Edward Island tuna on capellini, crispy guinea fowl and knishes topped with caviar.
Blending the owners’ Italian and Québécois heritage, Rita (mains CA$18-32) serves Neapolitan-style pies, pasta and antipasti with super-fresh and locally sourced ingredients in a stylish space adorned with family portraits. Always ask what’s on special, as menus here move through the seasons, and save room for the olive oil cake topped with jam and whipped mascarpone.
Another local favorite is creative Cambodian at Ketiw co-owner Tota Oung’s Les Street Monkeys (shared plates CA$15-26), which riffs on traditional cuisine in dishes such as a wasabi-rich shrimp ceviche and chicken wings stuffed with homemade northern Thai-style pork sausage.
Adding to the ambience at both Rita and Les Street Monkeys are their locations on rue Wellington, where cars are banned this summer through September 19 — it’s one of a series of seasonal pedestrian projects across Montréal that started amid the pandemic and proved popular enough to have staying power. With traffic diverted, Wellington diners spill onto sidewalk terraces.
A particularly summery one fronts Verdun Beach (oysters CA$3, shared plates CA$6-32), a restaurant and bar specializing in natural wines. On warm nights, when the outdoor crowd is ordering creative small plates, orange wine and PEI oysters, you won’t want to be anywhere else in the city.
— J.P. Karwacki
Discover Chinatown History
The swooping gold roofs of Chinatown’s four paifang gates were among the first landmarks I learned in my early years of exploring Montréal. Flashing a bright contrast with the gray stones of the Old Port, they send a siren call up and down boulevard St. Laurent: Here be dumplings and hand-pulled noodles.
To me, Chinatown meant über-umami soup from Nouilles de Lan Zhou (514-800-2959, mains from CA$16.99) and steamer baskets bearing xiao long bao at Sammi & Soupe Dumpling (soup dumplings from CA$13.99). For dessert, there are sugary rolls of peanut-filled Dragon’s Beard Candy (CA$6.50) and Macau-style egg tarts from Pâtisserie Harmonie (514-875-1328, egg tarts CA$2.50). Often, I eat them in nearby Place Sun-Yat-Sen (1055 rue Clark), where gray-haired locals practice tai chi and circulate Falun Gong petitions.
Last year, I began to learn more about the community gathered there. That’s when Montréal recognized Chinatown as a historic site, making it the first neighborhood in the city to earn that designation. It came amid worries that the continent’s sole remaining French-speaking Chinatown was at risk as rents shot up and developers circled. The neighborhood saw a corresponding groundswell of grassroots organizing.
“People in the community were like, ‘OK, we’re heritage protected — now what do we do moving forward?'” said Théo Pagé-Robert, a graduate student at Concordia University who works with Chinatown groups including cultural and community nonprofit JIA Foundation and youth organization Jeunesse du Quartier Chinois.
Pagé-Robert, along with grad student Nico Linh, met me on a recent morning at the JIA’s home in historic Maison Yep-Riopel (116 rue de la Gauchetière Ouest). In March, JIA opened a small, inaugural museum exhibit there. “Yep-Riopel House: A Layered History of Resistance and Belonging” (free, through September) showcases the history of the house and artifacts from the Chinese community that began to swell in Montréal in the 1890s.
The exhibit was curated by Montréal filmmaker Karen Cho, whose 2022 documentary Big Fight in Little Chinatown portrays the challenges facing North American Chinatowns. The museum building was home to four generations of the Yep family, starting with Charlie Yep, who arrived from San Wai, China, in 1894.
Inside, I saw images of 1902 newspapers documenting the arrival in Montréal of Vancouver-born Liew She, who traveled east to marry Charlie Yep; she was the seventh Chinese woman to live in the city. In a glass display case were Chinese war bonds from fundraisers to support Allied World War II forces.
“Maison Yep-Riopel is really grounding Chinatown into Montréal and Québécois history. It’s to explain to people that we’re not just passing by; we’ve been there for many generations,” said Sandy Yep, who grew up in the building and is Charlie Yep’s great-great-grandson. “More importantly, it’s saying that we’ve contributed to the development of Montréal and Québec. It’s only recently, with this heritage designation, that we feel our history has been validated.”
“Chinatown is not a museum, and we want to protect the intangible, living community.” Théo Pagé-Robert
On the ceiling, and surrounded by hand-painted paper parasols, was a poster reading “This is my home! I’m here, I’m staying here!” in both French and Chinese. It’s an artifact of the 2021 fight to preserve the building that now houses the museum, which had been bought by developers.
Historic preservation of buildings such as the Yep-Riopel house is just one priority for activists in Chinatown. “Chinatown is not a museum, and we want to protect the intangible, living community and provide support for that,” Pagé-Robert said.
Often, the two go hand in hand. Next door to Maison Yep-Riopel, Pagé-Robert and Linh pointed out the 1826 building that housed the former British and Canadian School (1009 rue Côté) and is now home to family-run Wing Noodles. Founded in 1897 to import Chinese goods, the company has been producing fresh noodles, egg roll wrappers and wonton wrappers in Chinatown since 1946. Enter via the small door on rue Côté to pick up take-home treats, including kosher, bilingual fortune cookies in French and English — an entrepreneurial nod to Montréal’s multilayered identities.
One block farther west is the silver-spired 1834 Chinese Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit (205 rue de la Gauchetière Ouest), which narrowly escaped destruction during Montréal’s massive building projects of the 1970s and ’80s “urban renewal.” Like the Wing Noodles building, the Catholic church is included in the recent historic designation.
From there, we doubled back, heading east. On the corner of rue de la Gauchetière and rue St. Urbain, Linh noted the names of several family associations — Wong Wun Sun Association, Chin Wing Chun Tong — that functioned as mutual aid groups for generations of newly arrived migrants. Their membership is aging but still active, he explained. Recently, Jeunesse du Quartier Chinois organized a mah-jongg event to bring younger players into the historic spaces.
It’s easy to overlook such cultural nuances, which is one reason Jeunesse du Quartier Chinois is offering a series of free, guided tours of the neighborhood this summer. Tours with a variety of social justice themes depart from the Maison Yep-Riopel at 10:30 a.m. on June 15 (food, decoloniality), June 22 (housing) and June 29 (queerness, solidarity). No registration is required.
Even factoring in dumpling stops, it doesn’t take long to explore all of Chinatown, which today measures roughly one city block. It used to be much larger, Linh told me, before urban renewal winnowed down the neighborhood.
Like other parts of Montréal, he said, Chinatown flexed and transformed with the makeup of the city itself; the earliest Chinese immigrants settled among Irish and Jewish residents. Today’s plethora of pho shops reflects a wave of Vietnamese immigration that began with the end of the Vietnam War.
“What about the gates?” I asked, pointing to the elaborate arches delimiting the edges of modern-day Chinatown. They looked ancient, or ancient-ish. Linh shrugged and explained they were a government project dating back to the 1980s and were designed to make Chinatown look more “Chinese,” in part to draw in tourists.
“Those are actually pretty new,” he said.
While You’re There
A 10-minute walk from Chinatown is the Old Port’s PHI Foundation (through September 14, tickets CA$16-20), where the exhibition “Lap-See Lam: Shadow Theatre” explores themes of migration while drawing on Cantonese opera and the millennia-old art of Chinese shadow puppetry.
— Jen Rose Smith
Walk Through Shaughnessy Village
Go Local in NDG
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, as no one ever calls it, is a family-oriented, historically Anglo and immigrant neighborhood in Montréal’s west end. Where the Plateau has nightlife and downtown has festivals, NDG has a laid-back sense of community — one that doesn’t seem to be changing much, despite the pressures of creeping gentrification.
Montréal was once linguistically divided in two: French speakers lived in the east end and Anglos in the west, with boulevard St. Laurent as the line. I was born biased toward the west end of town. My mom grew up in NDG and has lived there, or within a stone’s throw of it, for most of her life. I grew up a few blocks away in lower Westmount, where my brother, Will Dodge, started many high school bands in the basement. Today, at age 53, he lives in Essex, Vt., but schleps to NDG to play keyboards for Street Spirit, a Radiohead cover band, with some of those same friends.
Where the Plateau has nightlife and downtown has festivals, NDG has a laid-back sense of community.
Since 2016, they’ve been playing at NDG’s annual Porchfest (Victoria Day weekend) — an all-volunteer, community-wide event where more than 100 bands and musicians perform on front porches across the neighborhood. Though Street Spirit guitarist Jon Stein said he had never really thought about whether people from outside NDG might come to Porchfest — “I mean, maybe?” — it’s a great excuse to wander leafy side streets and discover this neighborhood that few tourists visit. This year’s edition was mostly rained out, but the lineup included acts as varied as teen rockers Bikini Katz and snarewire, Chinese pop choir ELLE Group, and horror movie-inspired outfit Screaming Demons.
“There is definitely a lot of music here,” said Stein, who also cofounded NDG Music School with fellow band member Mike Fitch. The school focuses on teaching kids to play in rock bands and is conveniently located down the hall from the Wheel Club, one of NDG’s only music venues. Though you could easily mistake the basement establishment for a regular bar — it has rock shows, retro arcade games and an ever-popular Hillbilly Night on Mondays — the Wheel Club is also a nonprofit.
The org grew out of a veterans’ social club, which is not surprising. Visitors to NDG may notice streets of very small, stand-alone homes — an unusual architecture for Montréal — that the government built to house veterans after World War II. Another public project from that era that has recently gotten a much-needed facelift is Benny Park (6445 avenue de Monkland). It now has a recreation complex with a large indoor pool and fitness center. Next to that, a brand-new skate park (which Stein, among others, lobbied for) officially opened on May 31. Colorful designs flow across ramps and rails, and when I visited, people of all ages were already practicing tricks.
Across the street, the Centre Culturel de Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, built in 2016, hosts a wealth of free community resources. From the lobby, a wall of iridescent glass draws the eye upstairs to a state-of-the-art theater. To one side, an art gallery hosts exhibitions such as “No Me Olviden,” remembering victims of Chile’s military dictatorship. To the other, a colorful public library offers a wealth of board games, free programming and a makerspace.
One of NDG’s best features is that it has long been home to immigrants from places such as the Caribbean, Iran and China, including many owners of shops and restaurants along rue Sherbrooke and in Monkland Village (avenue de Monkland, between avenues Melrose and Girouard).
On Porchfest weekend I stopped into Marché Al Amana, a small halal grocery on Sherbrooke. It’s the kind of place where you can buy half-pound bags of dried herbs and rosebuds, Turkish coffeepots, hookahs, and a childhood favorite of mine: sticky, crunchy sesame snacks.
Also on Sherbrooke, a sidewalk sale drew me into Shamie’s Boutique (514-489-7863), run by Chris and Asha Shamlal since 1985. Chris’ parents started the shop after arriving from Guyana in the 1970s. It is crammed floor to ceiling with ball gowns and evening wear sourced from around the world; sequins, ruffles and chiffon burst from every corner. Business is good: If mom-and-pop enterprises are struggling most everywhere, Chris said, in NDG he thinks they’re making a comeback.
Down the street, Encore Books & Records was bustling, a veritable canyon of used books, records and comics, with neat shelves all the way to its high ceilings. Nearby Phoenix Books — no relation to the Vermont stores — has a great selection of local zines, including some by bookstore owner Melanie Zuckerman, also a member of Porchfest death-metal band Skullgörg. The store will be under new management starting in July, Zuckerman said, but she’ll still be running monthly poetry and fiction open-mic nights at the little shop.
Both Monkland and Sherbrooke offer nearly endless culinary options, from Korean to Venezuelan to Persian pizza. Monkland feels newer and more upscale, with brunchy restaurants such as Pigeon Café (mains CA$16-38), which serves several kinds of eggs Benedict and tiered plates of lox with fixings. Just across the street is MELK Café, the place for perfectly foamed espresso drinks and, when I was there, a fragrant scallion, cheddar and cumin scone. A caravan of strollers on its patio signaled families shopping next door at Kidlink Books & Toys, a great source for summer reading in English and French.
But on Sherbrooke, you’ll find a living piece of NDG history wafting its rotisserie aroma across Décarie expressway: Chalet Bar-B-Q (mains CA$8.95-23.95) opened its doors in 1944. Its menu hasn’t changed since then, and neither has the interior. Patrons order the legendarily crispy-on-the-outside, moist-on-the-inside rotisserie chicken in portions of one-quarter, half or whole bird, from paper-menu place mats in dim burgundy leatherette booths with rooster-accented décor, or at the window in the back of the restaurant. If my grandmother ever tired of cooking dinner for six, this was where she got takeout.
I haven’t eaten chicken for decades, but I couldn’t resist an order of fries, which I brought across the street to Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Park (3500 avenue Girouard), where bands play live music on summer evenings. The fries were perfect: soft in the middle, a little bit greasy, crispy and golden. They tasted exactly like home.
Plan Your Visit
Ten rained-out Porchfest bands will perform at the Wheel Club on Sunday, June 22, 2:30-10:30 p.m. Free, with donations to benefit Jeunesse Loyola.
— Alice Dodge
Crossing the Line
A Canadian-born Vermonter reflects on the geographic push and pull of politics
I have crossed the world’s longest land border more times than I can count. Growing up with family on both sides of it, the imaginary line was an inconvenience but not a barrier. Until 9/11, I didn’t even need a passport. So it was deeply unsettling when an NDG business owner, planning their first trip to the U.S. since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, asked me: “Are they really searching people’s phones?” (Short answer: Yes, sometimes.)
Recent coverage of Canadian reactions to our current administration has mentioned feelings of betrayal, economic fears and boycotts. People I’ve talked to are angry and bewildered but sympathetic to individual Americans. The Eastern Townships tourism board even launched an ad campaign offering hugs.
Québecers in particular may know that’s what Americans need because, in some sense, they’ve been where we are now. Decades ago, rhetoric leading up to the 1995 referendum on Québec’s proposed secession from Canada bitterly divided families and friends, creating a climate of angry polarization. Many laws seeking to protect Québec’s French cultural identity marginalized non-French speakers, including my family and those of my English-school classmates. People were only allowed to conduct business in French; immigrants’ kids were required to go to French schools; in a restructuring plan, the government closed several Montréal hospitals that served English areas, one in a collection of moves widely perceived as discriminatory.
In the same era, economic policies, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, led to recession anxieties not unlike the current fears about tariffs. Many families drove from Montréal to Plattsburgh, N.Y., to buy groceries. No one seemed to be investing in Montréal. As a young person there at the time, I thought my prospects seemed pretty grim. Seizing the option to leave, either to Toronto or the U.S., was a no-brainer to many of my peers. I had a golden ticket — a U.S. passport.
In the minds of my friends and neighbors, the U.S. wasn’t exactly the promised land, but it was a place of opportunity, less bureaucracy and fewer stupid laws — that is to say, ones that are either blatantly discriminatory, impossible to enforce, easy to enforce selectively or widely perceived as a waste of time.
To this day, Québec’s politics infuriate portions of its populace. There have been incidents such as 2013’s “Pastagate,” when an Italian restaurant was cited for breaking the law by using a non-French word like, well, “pasta,” on its menu. There is the logistically difficult new requirement, enacted in 2023, that 80 percent of students at English universities be fluent in French by graduation. There’s Bill 21, the 2019 legislation that bars teachers, nurses, police officers and other public employees from wearing a hijab or other religious symbols — a move that would likely outrage many Americans but that hasn’t been overturned by Canadian courts. There have even been calls to require shop owners to greet customers only in French, instead of with the ubiquitous “Bonjour, hi!”
Decades after I settled on this side of the border, that tangle of in-the-weeds rules is starting to look an awful lot like greener grass. Since Trump took office, I’ve often tried to locate that other, interior border: the line that, when crossed, will make me jump in the car and drive north for good.
I thought it was the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Family separations. Mass deportations. Blatant corruption. Slashing funding for the arts. Targeting DEI. Waging war on universities. Restricting trans health care. Disappearing people to foreign gulags. To my surprise, so far my ties to Vermont have proved stronger than my flight response.
Meanwhile, and ironically, Trump seems to be the reason for a new sense of Canadian pride and unity, particularly in Québec. I’ve never seen as many Canadian flags as I did on my recent visit to NDG. Walking around and talking to people there didn’t evoke the past as much as it seemed like an alternate future. People from many different backgrounds are getting along, opening businesses and greeting customers however they choose. Instead of looking to get out — by secession or just by leaving — they are taking charge of their communities to make things better where they are.
It feels like a perspective shift. If only by comparison to the U.S., Québec politics finally seem sane.
My advice for fellow Americans is this: Travel north. Spend money. Eat at immigrant-owned restaurants. See taxpayer-supported art. Remember that our future isn’t where we are now. By then, all the lines, even imaginary ones, will have shifted.
— Alice Dodge
This article is part of a travel series on Québec. The province’s destination marketing organization, Alliance de l’industrie touristique du Québec, under the Bonjour Québec brand, is a financial underwriter of the project but has no influence over story selection or content. Find the complete series plus travel tips at sevendaysvt.com/quebec.
The original print version of this article was headlined “All Over the Map | From foodie adventures to “the coolest street in the world,” follow our guide to Montréal neighborhoods worth exploring”
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2025.
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