For the second straight year, Little Italy eatery Mon Lapin is in the No. 1 spot. Another 27 city establishments made the cut in 2024.
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We can pump up our collective chests once again. On the culinary front, that is.
Montreal is second to none in the land, having placed 28 dining spots on the 10th annual Canada’s 100 Best Restaurant List. That’s one more than what the city achieved on the 2023 list.
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Better still, last year’s No. 1 resto, Vanya Filipovic and husband Marc-Olivier Frappier’s ever-buzzing Little Italy eatery and wine bar Mon Lapin, has landed again in the top spot. It is the first city restaurant to take this honour two years in a row since Normand Laprise’s Toqué! accomplished the feat in 2015-2016.
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The honours don’t stop for Mon Lapin. On the separate prize side here, Filipovic and her fellow oenophile Alex Landry took the Best Canadian Sommelier Team Award for their diverse organic-based selections on the resto’s wine list.
Not wishing to deflate this city’s closest culinary competitor, Toronto, but its final count was 24, four short of ours, although it did nab the No. 2, 3 and 4 spots.
But Ontario has bragging rights of sorts, topping Quebec overall, with 35 picks on the list compared to our 33.
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Kudos once again go to co-owner-chef Ari Schor whose tiny Verdun gem Beba placed eighth, as it did last year. Also scattered throughout the Top 100 were, among other spots, such city faves as Monarque (No. 11), Montréal Plaza (13), Toqué! (19), Cabaret L’Enfer (21), Joe Beef (41), Salle Climatisée (50), Au Pied de Cochon (51), L’Express (53), Nora Gray (56), Mastard (73), Vin Papillon (80) and Liverpool House (93).
Coinciding with the release of this country’s 100 best restos are lists of Canada’s 10 Best New Restaurants and Canada’s 50 Best Bars. Montreal acquits itself quite well on both.
Renowned pastry chef Patrice Demers’s Sabayon, cited on the top 100 list (at No. 79), is No. 5 among best new eateries, followed by Casavant at 6 and Parapluie at 9.
On the watering-hole front, downtown’s ultra-swank Cloakroom Bar landed the No. 3 spot, followed by the uber-hip Atwater Cocktail Club at No. 4. Also acknowledged were Coldroom (12), El Pequeño (27), Milky Way (28), Bisou Bisou (37), Nacarat (38), Le Majestique (43) and Bar Henrietta (46).
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What? No Ziggy’s.
Jacob Richler, the publisher and editor-in-chief of these three lists, has spent considerable … er … contemplative times at Ziggy’s, as did his dad Mordecai, the late literary giant. But as Richler is quick to point out: he assembles and compiles the lists with actuarial-like zeal but he isn’t a judge himself.
Richler, a former Montrealer now living in Toronto, has a team spread throughout all corners of the country to come up with the various selections.
“When we started a decade ago, I rounded up friends who were food critics and writers and experienced diners with discriminating tastes. I had 68 helping me back then. This year, we have 150 judges,” says Richler, a former National Post restaurant critic who figures he has eaten at close to 75 spots on this year’s best restaurant list and has tippled at countless saloons on the best bar list.
“It’s a complicated process arriving at these lists, I will not pretend otherwise,” he says. “We change the rules and regulations every year. We are constantly tweaking to improve the model. So the mathematics and arriving at a consensus are a little complex, and they get a little more so every year.”
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Richler stresses that consensus is absolutely key and vital for the lists.
“As a former restaurant critic, you can get carried away with the importance of your own opinions. But as one matures, as I like to think I did, you find less importance in foisting your own opinions and more in asking questions and arriving at some sort of consensus, because consensus is a little more valuable.
“Restaurant critics have a way of getting obsessed with archaic details about the provenance of the shrimp and the like. All interesting subjects, but completely irrelevant to 99 per cent of diners. Really what people want is to have a lovely experience and not to feel like they were over-charged but to feel like they were treated with respect.”
It’s Richler’s Top 100 dining list that tends to garner most attention from both restaurateurs and foodies. Richler notes that in the list’s early years, more traditional fine-dining sorts of restaurants tended to land on top. Now there are many more less formal eateries on the list.
“Places like Mon Lapin and Beba are more casual and approachable, and if you think about our economic place today, it makes logical sense to me,” he says. “After the pandemic, we should not go racing back to white-tableclothed restaurants, but rather enjoy conviviality and approachable experiences.”
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Apart from the obvious criteria in terms of food, price and service, there is one major consideration in determining the best of the bunch.
“If a restaurant is going to place No. 1 on the list, it needs to have a national appeal,” Richler says. “And Mon Lapin certainly does.”
Mon Lapin’s winning formula is ‘to keep it casual’
Condé Nest Traveler once marvelled: “Mon Lapin has that best-kept secret, intimate neighbourhood vibe.”
The Little Italy resto-bar still has that “intimate neighbourhood vibe,” but forget the “best-kept secret” part. Not after emerging No. 1 on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurant List in 2023 and again this year. We’ll soon find out if Mon Lapin takes top spot in Chris Nuttall-Smith’s Top 20 list for Maclean’s as it did last year.
“This is just surreal,” enthuses Mon Lapin co-owner Vanya Filipovic. “This is beyond our wildest expectations. To have people come from far and wide to little Mon Lapin in Little Italy just blows us away. We really just see ourselves as a small neighbourhood joint but we’re so incredibly grateful for the honours.”
Filipovic, along with her co-owner, co-chef husband Marc-Olivier Frappier and co-owner, co-chef Jessica Noël, earned their stripes after toiling at Little Burgundy’s Vin Papillon for 15 years prior to opening the 50-seater Mon Lapin in 2018.
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Success is really no accident. Mon Lapin provides one of the more intriguing food-and-wine offerings and pairings around town. Frappier and Noël’s menu, which changes daily, is rife with creations all over the map, and Filipovic and colleague Alex Landry’s organic wine choices are exquisite. No accident that Filipovic and Landry also took this year’s Best Canadian Sommelier Team Award for the resto presented by the list-makers.
“We’ve always prepared and served our food and wine the way we like to have it done, and maybe that is the key,” Frappier says. “We’re not going to change that formula, either.”
Frappier credits co-chef Noël: “We really complete each other. That’s the way a restaurant should be run, with two people sharing the load.”
What’s noteworthy about not just Mon Lapin’s selection but so many of the others, including Verdun’s magical Beba at No. 8, is the number of casual restos filling the top 100 list in the country.
“Having more casual restaurants on top of the list really shakes things up in a way,” Filipovic says. “And that’s been our entire philosophy: to keep it casual.”
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Not to take away from Mon Lapin’s top placement, but Frappier feels that this honour also speaks to Montreal’s place overall on the culinary front.
“Regardless whether we’re No. 1 or 90, the more people talk about the quality of Montreal restaurants, the better it is for the city. There are so many restaurants in this city that are just as good as ours, including those not on the list.”
Frappier has an idea that should prove entirely palatable for locals and tourists seeking more summer sustenance: “A festival celebrating this city’s restaurants.”
I smell hit here in Festival City.
For the entire Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list, go to canadas100best.com.
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