"Eating at this La Petite Patrie restaurant is like going to a friendly, unfussy dinner party. The evening’s menu, devised by chef Harrison Shewchuk, is modest, with less than 10 items handwritten on a chalkboard. The flowers on the bussing table appear to be plucked from the dépanneur (or bodega). The fridge is full of wine. And the 20 or so seats are full of chatty friends tucking into humble yet perfectly executed dishes highlighting the market’s best: spring’s first asparagus dressed with a smoked-egg-yolk mayonnaise, crispy-skinned chicken with buttery morels, a riff on Fergus Henderson’s sticky toffee pudding with carrots swapped in for the dates. After Shewchuk’s stints at Maison Publique (a meat-heavy Quebecois gastropub) and Tiers Paysage (a sleek wine bar in Old Montreal), it makes sense that he along with partner Brendan Lavery would run such an unassuming, personal, and yes, cool restaurant." - ByMehdi Brunet-Benkritly, as told to Mia Leimkuhler