Bar, restaurant, cigar recommendations in Montreal?

Chez Ashton? You're going to Québec City, or what?

In any case, here's a couple of advices:

- For poutine, ditch La belle province/Ashton and go to La Banquise on Rachel, a couple of blocks from St-Denis
- For breakfast, you may want to try Beauty's on Mont-Royal as its a Montreal classic.
- Dieu du Ciel isn't as good as it used to be. However, its still a good place. If you want to go for a good drink in that neighborhood, you can also go to the Baldwin Barmacie (115 Laurier-O, a couple of blocks from St-Laurence) or Bouchonné! (wine bar)
- For a cigar room, I guess you could go to the Winston Churchill on Crescent? I really don't know much about that.
- Au pied de cochon is great. However, it seems like you're going with a lot of calories heavy meals on the trip. I'd advise you to take a light lunch on the day you're going there.
- Kaizen is good for sushis. Jun I might be a tad superior, though.
- Schwartz's!
- Bagels at St-Viateur or Fairmount.
- Foufounes électriques can be okay, I guess. It depends what kind of crowd you're into. I went there years ago and it was full of emokids. I didn't go back. I don't know much bars playing rock music though.

Pretty much it.

Edit: I forgot about Unibroue. There's a place in Chambly that I believe to be affiliated to them. Its called Fourquet Fourchette and its a restaurant. I've heard its not worth the price and quite touristy in general. I would avoid it.

Poutine is good, but I wouldn't eat it more than once a month, so maybe having three fast food places on your list is overkill. I would also skip La Belle Province on Ste-Catherine, or actually any restaurant on St-Catherine. It's right at Montreal's sleaze nexus - worth visiting but altogether unappetizing.

There is a Fourquet Fourchette in Montreal at the Palais des Congrès in the old city and I have heard good things, although prices are high. I don't eat meat though, so there doesn't seem to be a point in me going. Mostly stuff like moose steaks in Trois Pistoles sauce and that kind of thing.

Foufounes Électriques is boring (but the beer is dirt cheap) - it's the place for suburban mall punks and wrinkly old metal heads. If you like punk bars, go to the Katakombes (crusty) or l'Escogriffe (garage).

As far as brewpubs go, Dieu du Ciel is still the best but l'Amère à boire (St-Denis near Sherbrooke) and Le Cheval Blanc (Ontario) are also great. There are also some great beer bars like Le Saint-Bock (St-Denis downtown) and Vices et Versa (St-Laurent past Jean Talon IIRC). Check out this beer guide. Unibroue does not have a pub but you can buy their products in all but the smallest backwoods dépanneurs (convenience stores).

Fairmount bagels are better than St-Viateur, but some misguided people will insist on the contrary.

Aux Vivres (St-Laurent) is probably my favourite restaurant in the city but avoid it if you're not into vegan food and can't deal with the hippies. Their sandwiches are something else altogether (the Végé-Lox is amazing). Also, it is a few blocks from Dieu du Ciel and the Sala Rossa and Casa del Popolo (good places for shows) so you can spend the entire evening there. Also, it is a short walk from U&I, which is arguably the best clothing store in Montreal.

edit: Oh yeah, more about poutine:

There are many variations of the classic poutine that you may want to try if you're feeling adventurous. Ask for a Galvaude (gal like in gallon and vaude like road with a v) and you'll look like a real connaisseur.

Wife and I had a fantastic dinner at L'Epicier last year. I would recommend it if you're into inventive cuisine that goes a little beyond traditional Italian/French/American classics...

I really enjoyed Whisky Cafe, which is a pretty decent cigar bar. I don't know if it's still open, but it was last time I checked (about 2-4 months ago, maybe?). They request that you buy at least some of your sticks on site (which is a bit pricey) since they rely on selling a certain amount of cigars in order to be allowed to have smoking indoors. Lafleur's is pretty great. I like them, since they have the only vegetarian poutine I know of, and they have a location close to my fiancee's apartment in the suburbs. If you're down for vegetarian food, Chu Chai is pretty great. It's entirely vegetarian/vegan Thai cuisine. As for cigars, you can get them all over the place. Loblaw's grocery stores sell them in a little separate cigar area (and they carry tons of Unibroue), but there's also La Casa del Habano downtown, which is supposed to have a great selection and at least used to have a little smoking room/bar inside.

Well, as in many cigar bars, the sticks are marked up considerably. I think I dropped about $45 something last time I was there, which I think was towards the upper-middle or upper-end of the list. It's an abbreviated list, for sure, but they've got some decent selections. Unfortunately, I don't remember them having many of my favorites (Siglo VI, Montecristo #2, etc), but what they had was pretty solid. Good mix of countries, including quite a few Cubans, of course. The food is actually exceptional. My fiancee had never had fois gras until that night and was HOOKED. I did a flight of top-shelf single malts that blew my mind, and she had a tasting of dessert wines (I believe), including a white port and a few other interesting drinks. Seriously, from what I remember the scotch selection was enough to bring a tear to any malt-lovers eye. All in all, it's NOT cheap, but it's amazing. I think I dropped about $150-175 for one or two cigars, a tasting of scotch, a flight of wines, two small dishes (fois gras for her, possibly a mushroom dish of some sort for me) and maybe one or two other glasses of wine. My view on prices is probably skewed, though, since I'm from West Virginia, where everything is much, much cheaper than Montreal. Fair warning, the neighborhood looks sort of sketchy, but the bar is gorgeous inside.

Born, raised, and living in Montreal. It depends on what you're looking for... For sushi - Kaizen is the BEST in the city. So good, in fact, that I proposed to my fiancee there last week. A really nice restaurant on St Laurent is Robin Des Bois (robindesbois.ca). It's high end food prepared and delivered by volunteers. Proceeds go to Charity. It's a nice way to balance a night of debauchery with a good deed... that tastes good too! For Thai, Thai Grill is really good. For a 'typical' montreal breakfast - post hangover - there is Beauty's and Cosmo's - the latter being a very greasy spoon.

Amirs on rue st catherine, fun crowd at 2am. Good lebanese food.

Beauty's is so over-rated it's not even funny. The only place I eat breakfast at in Montreal (aside from my grandma's) is Cosmo's. Beauty's only looks authentic, but everything tastes like it does at Chez Cora. Cosmo's is the real deal. My favorite expensive restaurants in the city (Anise was the best, by far, but it closed and was replaced by Bazaar Anise -- which is still quite good): Le Mas des Oliviers Milos La Queue de Cheval Bice Cafe Ferreira Lucca Primo e Secondo

I agree that Beauty's is overrated - BUT, when you've been going there your whole life, it becomes something else. Plus, it's nice on a Sunday to walk over the mountain from NDG / Westmount and have a $10 smoothie!

Bice is excellent - re-opened this week from renovations. Has anyone seen what it looks like?

Les 3 petits bouchons on Saint-Denis is pretty good; great food and an excellent selection of sulfite-free wines. You can also find two japanese restaurants you might enjoy near the Ritz-Carlton.