All the Restaurants: Montréal: more than 50 sketches by John Donohue

Admirers of the city’s dynamic dining can explore the collection both online, as well as in person at New York’s lauded L’Appartement 4F, (The New York Times, CNBC, CBS News), transforming its bakery into a limited-time exhibition from October 30 to November 5. Literally bringing a taste of Montréal to NYC, the bakery will also debut a custom pastry created with the city’s culinary icon Chef Normand Laprise of Restaurant Toqué! The limited-edition financier au thé des bois, a wintergreen tea financier, highlights wintergreen, a fragrant wild plant native to the region’s boreal forests and long used by its Indigenous communities, offering an edible expression of Montréal’s landscape and the ingredients that have long informed its culinary heritage. 

Who is John Donohue? 

John Donohue is an artist, author, and former editor and cartoonist at The New Yorker. He launched All the Restaurants nearly a decade ago, setting out to sketch the façade of every restaurant in New York City entirely from life. The project has since travelled to Paris, London and Napa Valley, and yielded three illustrated books published by Abrams. Montréal is his first Canadian destination. You’ll find him on Instagram here: @eat.draw.repeat. 

What happens when the sidewalk becomes the studio?  

Every one of Donohue’s drawings is made on location, usually standing on the sidewalk, in ink on paper: no pencil underdrawing, no erasing, no touch-ups back in the studio. Colour comes later as a selective accent on a single identifying detail: an awning, a neon sign, a doorway. He has compared the process to a one-take recording of a jazz record, where energy on the spot creates the outcome. 

Which Montréal restaurants are in the collection? 

The more than 50 portraits span MICHELIN-recognized dining rooms including Hoogan et Beaufort, Sabayon and Mastard, and North America's 50 Best honourees Mon Lapin and Restaurant Beba. The collection also takes in landmarks such as Schwartz's Deli, St-Viateur Bagel, Joe Beef, L'Express and Restaurant Toqué!, alongside café favourites Olive et Gourmando and Régine Café. 

A portrait of a city that gathers around the table 

The collection is designed to be a visual love letter to Montréal, inspiring travelers to explore the city’s dining scene as it earns growing international acclaim, with an expanding roster of MICHELIN-recognized restaurants and a growing presence among North America’s 50 Best Restaurants. Restaurants are where a city keeps its memory: first dates, family milestones, ordinary Tuesdays. Seeing more than 50 of Montréal’s restaurants drawn by an artist of Donohue's stature is a real honour and a reminder that Montréal's dining scene now travels well beyond the island and the border. 

See the full collection here.