This winter, the McCord Stewart Museum’s “Au Menu: une histoire de restaurants” exhibition presents 70 years of dining in Montreal.
Every month in Montreal, a new restaurant opens, announcing a new menu, a new chef or a new decor. It’s the city of young chefs, farm-to-table and good food.
Anthony Bourdain once referred to Montreal as “a very dangerous place for chefs” -a good thing, in his opinion.
At the McCord Stewart Museum, a new exhibition tells the story of Montreal’s restaurant scene, from delis to grand restaurants to institutions where you can still eat the city’s best fries.
On the Menu…
The McCord Stewart Museum returns to the basics of catering, which emerged in its current form in the 19th century with modern leisure and tourism.
The exhibition opens with colorful paper menus from the 60s, cutlery from the Queen Elizabeth restaurant, photos of rooms filled to the brim with eph-legged Montrealers in the 70s, and videos of journalistic reports on the city’s restaurant scene.
The Montreal recipe
The exhibition explores the culture of bringing your own wine to the restaurant (a very Québécois practice, we discover), the emergence of the Montréal sunset strip, and Aboriginal and immigrant cuisine.
“Native cuisine has the wind in its sails right now, I think people need to know what our ancestors have bequeathed to us.” – Norma Condo, chef of Mikmaq Catering Indigenous Kitchen
It’s a portrait of Montreal that emerges through the mugs of Orange Julep and the laminated menus of Dic Ann’s, of its cool factor and the creation of its patchwork identity around its waves of immigration-Chinese, Italian, Slav and so on.
It’s also an exploration of fashionable Montreal, from the colonial “New France” revival of the 2000s to the Tiki bars of the 70s, via the Chinatown restaurants of the 80s and 90s and the cult Joe Beef restaurant.
We recommend pausing to listen to Luc de Larochellière sing Chinatown Blues in 1988 – if only for the music video.
The exhibition ends with hundreds of matchboxes from Montreal restaurants, and without taking up smoking again, you’ll want to start collecting them again when you visit a restaurant…
Practical info
Where? McCord StewartMuseum , 690 Sherbrooke Street West
When? The exhibition runs until October 18, 2026
How? Adult admission is $22. To reserve and find out more about the exhibition, click here!
Enjoy your meal!