11 Best Patio Restaurants in Montreal

What executive chef and co-owner Tota Oung built at Les Street Monkeys in 2017 has a clear origin story: born in Thailand, raised in Montreal by a Cambodian mother, Oung opened this 57-seat Verdun resto-bar alongside co-owners William Kit and Sihour Kong with the specific intention of centering Cambodian street food — not as a genre footnote but as the entire argument. The neighbourhood was the right call. Verdun's Wellington Street rewards conviction over concept, and the room here — wooden coffee tables, low lighting, bar stools, an unpretentious layout designed for sharing — signals exactly what kind of place this is before you look at the menu.

That menu is where Oung's dual Thai-Cambodian inheritance becomes legible. The Stuffed Wings are the dish most consistently cited by regulars: boneless, filled with Thai sausage, and reportedly seasoned with turmeric and lemongrass, they're known for arriving fragrant and crackling in a way that reframes what wings are supposed to accomplish. The Wasabi Shrimp Ceviche reads as genuinely ambitious for this price point — sharp, bright, the kind of dish that diners associate with rooms charging twice as much. The Fried Cod with Amok Sauce carries Oung's Cambodian lineage most directly: the fish lands in a coconut milk and red curry base with kaffir lime, coconut foam, and crispy taro, a combination that reportedly keeps the dish from collapsing into a single register. The Crème Brûlée of the Moment rotates, which is reason enough to ask your server about it before committing to anything else on the dessert end. The Scallop Fried Rice functions as a table anchor and is best ordered alongside the smaller plates rather than in place of them.

At price level one, the rational move is to order broadly and share everything. The room seats 57 and has been drawing a consistent crowd since opening, so weekend reservations are worth making in advance. Weeknights are the easier route — particularly at the bar if you're a party of two.

Terrasse Nelligan has built its reputation in Vieux-Montréal on something the city's more technically ambitious restaurants routinely undervalue: the intelligence of the room itself. Perched above the cobblestones of the old quarter, the terrace is reportedly designed around the particular quality of amber evening light that settles over that neighbourhood — unhurried, flattering, cinematic in the way that only old stone can arrange. By all accounts the pacing holds steady through the meal: attentive without crowding, which is the difficult thing to get right. This is a space that diners consistently describe as better suited to a deliberate, two-person evening than to anything that requires sharp critical focus. That is a specific achievement, not a consolation prize.

The menu is contemporary without being restless, and three dishes anchor the evening with particular purpose. The Tour de fruit de mer is the table's opening statement — a cold seafood tower that diners report arriving with real architectural ambition: height, shells on ice, the unmistakable signal that the night was planned. The Tartare de boeuf is known for restraint, a preparation that lets the quality of the beef carry the plate rather than burying it in accompaniment. The Guédille de homard is the menu's most confident gesture: lobster in a deliberately informal format, which takes a certain conviction to place alongside the room's more composed offerings. The contrast, by all accounts, works in the kitchen's favour.

Practical notes worth knowing: the terrace is the booking to make, and early September — when the quarter has cooled but the evenings still hold light — is the window that comes up repeatedly in accounts of the place. Request an outside corner position and open with the Tour de fruit de mer; diners who do tend to report that the rest of the evening arranges itself.