For our final dinner of our trip on this very frigid New Year’s Eve in Montreal, I made a reservation at Monarque. Monarque is ranked 16 on Canada’s Best in 2023. They have 2 sides of the restaurant: one is a brasserie and the other is a more formal dining room. We sat in the dining room, which offered a 4 course menu for the night. Our area was a corner spot, where we had plenty of room to also place our jackets and bags without having it coat checked.

Due to a last minute cancellation from Ile Flottante because they decided to shut down to give holiday break for their staff, I had to scramble to look for a reservation to book for our trip to Montreal. I had created a verbose document describing fallback plans on which day should there be problems. Montreal Plaza was one of the few for this day. It was ranked 21 on Canada’s 100 Best.

My partner has lusted for Portuguese chicken for some time for some reason. Essentially, it’s just wood fire-cooked chicken. You can expect lots of woodsy flavors, and supposedly a lot of juicy flavors as well since you’re sweating the chicken. We saw Phil Rosenthal from “Somebody Feed Phil” on Netflix come here and have a fantastic time. The real big question though for me is his palette similar to mine (or ours).