A 4+ mile Montreal walking tour
A choose-your-own-adventure walking tour
If you loved the cross-town eating and walking tour of San Francisco, here’s another one for Montreal!
My sister’s partner had a work conference in Montreal and they invited me to join for a long weekend. Though I really wasn’t familiar with Montreal, I fell in love immediately! Just a short one hour flight from NYC and you feel like you’ve landed in Europe—except that people can switch between flawless, unaccented (to me) French and English on a dime.
Parks and aesthetic places to sit abound! Although we did plenty of eating inside restaurants next to a window, I almost wished we had done more takeaway to enjoy the parks that popped up everywhere we went.
My cousin (who has lived there since college, around 10 years) described the Montreal culture as “almost ephemeral,” a place where people enjoy life more and everything feels possible. I’m bought in!
Onto the walking tour—whenever I’m traveling to a new city, my ideal activity is checking out all the local food destinations with lots of walking along the way. You’ll find my main walking tour recommendation below along with additional recommendations I received from lots of you on Instagram!
A Mount Royal walking tour
This tour is centered around walking up to the scenic overlook at Mount Royal, starting in downtown and ending around Mile End.
Map of the route: HERE. You should be able to open this on your phone or desktop to see the exact route between all the stops.
Total distance: 4.5 miles/7.3km
Total time: 1 hr 45 min according to Google (we took much longer with all our stops—easily from 10am to at least 2 or 3pm)
Getting to the start: We were staying downtown, but you can obviously Uber, metro or start from wherever you like!
Getting back from the end: We walked back from our last stop and ended up absolutely pooped with 12.5 miles logged for the day. However later in our trip, we also found the metro extremely easy to use! It was $3.75 per ride, easy to buy a ticket from a kiosk at each station, and easy to follow the directions via Google Maps.
The full list of stops (and bonus recommended stops)
In the below itinerary, I bolded all the places we actually stopped, but I’m also including a lot of suggested options that I would personally choose if we did this walk again (and that we would have done had we more energy and stomach space).
So many destinations, so little time!
Crew Collective: This is where we actually started our crawl—this coffee shop is in an old heritage building (formerly the Royal Bank of Canada). It’s a scenic place to grab coffee, but I wasn’t entranced by the food options (they do offer Fairmount bagels, but I wanted to get one fresh from the shop).
Optional stop - Arthur’s Nosh Bar: Had I known about Arthur’s in advance, I definitely would have started here instead of Crew Collective! This was by far the most recommended spot I received in Montreal (possibly because everyone knows I love pancakes), and the cottage cheese pancakes here were truly dreamy. We didn’t order anything else, but the other food looked amazing as well! We arrived right after they opened around 10am on a Saturday and were able to walk right in, though I hear lines are typical later in the day.
Mount Royal: This is an activity that tops a lot of the tourist lists. We used the stairs (339 to be exact) via Peel Street to get to the top, through there are reportedly several ways to get to the scenic overlook (which has bathrooms and a cafe!). The stairs can be somewhat strenuous, but it’s definitely more of a trail walk than a big hike. We probably made it up, took pictures, and came back down in 30 minutes.
Optional stop - Patati Patata: We were starving once we were done with Mount Royal, so if you’re in the mood for poutine, you can get to Patati Patata in 30 minutes from Mount Royal. This came highly recommended by a friend who went on a poutine crawl—it’s the only one I tried in Montreal and I quite enjoyed it! The restaurant is quite small but cute and I appreciated the balance of poutine with a bountiful side salad. The portions are large so you could definitely split one poutine, especially if you have more stops planned.
Optional stop - If you’re not hungry quite yet, you could venture up Ave Mont-Royal for some shopping and outdoor vendors until you’re ready to eat. We loved Sham Mont-Royal (on a separate day, we accidentally ordered a vegan Syrian feast of plant-based beef, lamb and chicken kebabs with pita, salad and dips). A little farther south, the St-Viateur Bagel Cafe Mont-Royal is one of two of Montreal’s most famous bagel shops and this location serves bagel sandwiches (some locations only sell bagels), or you could walk a bit off Mont-Royal to the more touristy La Banquise for poutine.
Optional stop - Kouign Amann: This bakery also came recommended for its namesake: kouign amann. They sell slices of this rich, soft, cake-like laminated pastry (kind of like a croissant cake) as well as other croissants and pastries. They close at 3pm though, so we missed this stop the day we actually did the Mount Royal walk.
Drogheria Fine: This $6 walk up gnocchi window is all over TikTok and feels like a slightly better version of the gnocchi windows we have in NYC. It’s cheap and a huge portion for the price—lots of tiny, squishy gnocchi in a tangy, slightly sweet tomato sauce. Note: the “with cheese” option just means a shower of grated parmesan on top. Would I go back? Probably not, but it’s a fun experience. It’s cash only, so make sure to come prepared (there’s an ATM at the coffee shop on the corner).
Kem CoBa: While you have cash on hand, you can also stop by the cash-only ice cream and soft serve shop next door. We tried the pandan, praline lime, coffee and chocolate. All solid but nothing mind-blowing to me!
Optional stop: Iconoglace: After trying both Iconoglace and Kem CoBa, I preferred Iconoglace—and good news, it’s only a block away from Kem CoBa, so you can consider both! LOTS of options here—we just got a scoop, but you can get sundaes, affogatos, milkshakes, soft serve and more.
Fairmount bagel: You’ll find the other of Montreal’s most famous bagel shops on the other side of Drogheria Fine. Make sure to ask for a hot bagel for the best experience! (This shop only sells plain bagels, no sandwiches.) I personally preferred Fairmount to St-Viateur bagels (less sweet, seems to have a tiny bit of salt whereas St-Viateur seems to have none).
Bernie Beigne: I’d heard a lot about the enormous apple fritter that they serve up at this doughnut shop so we headed there next! It is indeed the largest doughnut I’ve ever eaten (about as long as my forearm and nearly as wide). However, I actually preferred the plain maple glazed doughnut that the very kind bakery worker gave us for free. Some of the best yeasted doughnuts I’ve had recently.
Optional stop: Jean Talon Market: If you have the energy to keep going, Jean Talon is a 24 minute walk past Bernie Beigne. We decided to save this for another day (and then unfortunately never made it over, but I hear it’s very cute!).
Other Montreal recommendations
Where we stayed
Le Centre Sheraton Montreal: This hotel was preselected because of my sister’s partner’s conference, but I’d recommend it! The rooms were spacious and clean and they had a great gym + indoor pool and hot tub. Downtown isn’t perhaps the most scenic place in Montreal, but it was a short walk to Old Montreal and the waterfront, and the best bonus—it’s very close to a food court housing one of the Arthur’s Nosh Bar locations so you can get there right when they open!
Brunch
Arthur’s Nosh Bar: Mentioned above but worth repeating because this was one of my favorite spots we ate at!! Definitely go for brunch and get the pancakes if you can.
Shay: We went for the baklava pancakes which were just okay—the toppings were delicious but the pancakes were a bit lackluster to me. The mushroom eggs benedict was delicious. Feels like a bit more of an upscale/pricey brunch—a reservation might be helpful. We walked in around noon and luckily got seats at the bar, but the restaurant was pretty full.
Dandy: We tried to go to Dandy before Shay but there was an hour wait around 11:30am! I returned another day to find a short line right before opening at 9:55am. I had a similar impression of the pancakes here—the pancakes themselves were lackluster, but the toppings were delicious. All the other dishes coming out of the kitchen looked gorgeous and I wish I’d had stomach space to try more savory items than just the side salad!
Other recommendations: September Cafe (the pancakes look amazing!), Olive et Gourmando (highly recommended from multiple people), Le Petit Dep (lots of little souvenirs like syrup, jams, hats to take home; looks like a great spot to grab a coffee and pastry before wandering Old Montreal).
Dinner
Le Super Qualite: We were trying to walk into Pichai (highly recommended by a friend), but they were completely booked for the night—so we walked 20 minutes to another recommendation. Billed as a South Indian snack bar, they have a pretty small menu of a few apps and a handful of mains. We got pretty much all their vegetarian options and ate very well! I loved the chili paneer and dosa.
Sham: Also mentioned above, but we loved this vegan Syrian restaurant! One of our best meals of the trip! (Mostly became the fake meat kebabs were so novel to us and we found them really tasty—I know faux meat is not for everyone.)
Other recommendations: Stem Bar, Le Vin Papillon, Tuck Shop, Avesta, Damas, Au Pied de Cochon
Other
I went to exactly one bakery (Kouign Amann) but these bakeries also came recommended: Boulangerie Le Toledo, Boulangerie Cheskie, Boulangerie de Froment et de Sève
The Bagel Class: A fun 2-hour workshop where we learned how to make Montreal-style bagels! Highly recommend.
Sandwicherie Viet et Epicerie: We stopped in here one morning and had such a good tofu banh mi!
Hope this helps if you’re planning a little trip to Montreal. Would love to hear if you give this walking route a try ❤️