Restaurant Beba

When perusing Canada's 100 Best Restaurants, I was a bit curious why a little restaurant in Montreal ranked #7 overall.   In fact, they rank #50 on North America's 50 Best Restaurants in 2025.  Well, it is a bit unique where their cuisine is a mix of Italian and Spanish while paying homage to the founders Ari and Pablo Schor's Argentine-Jewish hertiage.  Located in Verdun, the area doesn't scream world-class dining, but rest assured, Beba has changed that for the better.  I was able to grab a table for 2 from from the 28-seat capacity restaurant.

When they describe Beba as compact, they are being generous.  Let's just say you will get to cozy with the people beside you.  On that note, the menu is equally compact being truly focused on a few dishes.  We shared the Knish à la pomme de terre to start.  This little fried ball of tender slices of potato, onion and chicken fat that was well-seasoned and rich.  It was aromatic and had the silkiness of schmaltz.  On top, there was a generous dollop of osetra caviar.  This added briny saltiness to the bite.

No meal is complete at Beba without ordering their signature dish - Montadita au maquereau (mackerel).   My initial impressions of this wasn't necessarily great, but hey what do I know?  I'm glad that I kept my mind open because these bites were fantastic.  Served on warm crunchy sesame buns, the mackerel was a bit tangy and exhibiting that bright fishy flavour.  It was perfectly complimented by a lot of butter, grated horseradish, chives and salt.  Somehow, this combination of components just plain worked.  We had the creaminess of the butter, the mild kick of the horseradish (was not as strong as I would've imagined) and the brightness of the chives.

Another show-stopper was the Maitake on raw milk taleggio.  First and foremost, the slightly melted taleggio was creamy, sweet and savoury.  This by itself was already a treat, but on top, we found beautifully sauteed mushrooms that were aggressively salted.  Fortunately, we had a bright and garlicky salsa verde on top that helped cut some of the heaviness of the cheese as well as the saltiness of the mushrooms.  This was an outstanding dish yet, we felt some crispy toast on the bottom would've put it over the top.  Mind you, I'm pretty sure there is a good reason they didn't do that, so what do I know?

Trying to include some vegetables in our meal, we had the Radicchio & Escarole with potatoes.  This was a good interlude between heavier dishes.  The crunch from the fresh greens was great along with the tangy "bean-aigrette".  Lots of pecorino ensured that there was salty nuttiness to go along with the acidity.  We also had some tender chunks of potato to soak up all the flavours.

For our pasta course, we had the Tagliatelle with ragù genovese made with ox tongue.  Gotta say this was really good with chewy noodles that had an appealing firmness to them while still being fully cooked-through.  They were also seasoned well with an inherent balanced saltiness.  As for the ragù, there was a generous amount of tender ox tongue that retained its meatiness.  Rich flavours from the tongue (due to the fat content) and the sweetness of the onion really made this dish sing with umami.  Add in some parm and we had extra saltiness with nutty cheesiness.

Our last savoury items was the Bacalao with clams and peppers in a piperade.  The big piece of salt cod was only a bit salty and plenty tender and flaky.  The piperade was sweet and tangy.  It helped compliment the salt cod by balancing out the saltiness.  There was the faintest hint of spice which varied the flavours.  Add in the buttery clams and we got a touch of brininess too.

We ended up with 2 desserts including the Flan with whipped cream and dulce de leche.  This was one of the richest and thickest flans I've ever had.  They must've really went ham with the cream with this one.  It was good though, since it wasn't too egg-forward and was balanced in terms of sweetness.  That left the dulce de leche to do the heavy lifting in terms of providing that rich and deep caramel vibes.

Our second dessert was pretty darn good too in the Valrhona Chocolate Tart.  It was also rich and dense (but in a good way).  Hits of bitter dark chocolate with aplomb where each bite was impactful and purposeful.  The addition of olive oil and salt only helped heighten theses flavours.  Providing some nutty crunch, we found roasted hazelnuts on top.  So guess what?  I now know why Beba is rated so high in all of these lists.  Mind you, I'm a bit confused as to why some of my favourites spots in Canada rank behind them.  Yet, that doesn't take away that the food is pretty darn tasty.

The Good:

- Delicious

- Generous portions

- It's unique

The Bad:

- Super tight seating (and also hard to get a reso)

- Loved it, but not sure if it should rank that high