Casa Azul Montreal

COQCOR — the name is a contraction of *Le Coq Coréen*, Korean Chicken — commits to that premise without apology.

Ethiopian cooking is architecturally communal — everything arrives on a shared spread of injera, the soft, tangy flatbread that functions as both plate and utensil, and the meal only works when the whole table leans in.

Saint-Henri has a way of producing restaurants that feel genuinely local rather than locally themed, and La Toile — sitting on Saint-Jacques in the thick of the neighbourhood — sounds like a textbook example.

Le Manners positions itself as a resto-buvette in the Mediterranean mode — the kind of place where the format does a lot of the heavy lifting.

Quickstop is a Haitian snack bar in Montreal North — not a neighbourhood that shows up in the usual roundups of Montreal's dining scene, which is precisely the point.