Montreal at 3 A.M. Used to Taste Better: The Legendary Late-Night Eats We’ve Lost

There was a time when last call in Montreal didn’t mean finding a drive-thru. Smoked meat, eggs, burgers, fries and enough grease to make tomorrow slightly more manageable were waiting all over the city. Some of the places that fed generations of Montreal night owls are gone now.

There was a particular moment during a Montreal night when you realized you were hungry.

The bars were closing. The Metro was finished. Somebody had lost their coat. Somebody else was insisting they were perfectly capable of driving, which they absolutely weren’t. And suddenly the most important question in the world was where we were going to eat.

The remarkable thing was that Montreal had answers.

Real restaurants. Places where you could sit down at two or three in the morning and order smoked meat, eggs, burgers, fries or something involving enough grease to make tomorrow considerably more manageable.

Some were diners. Some were delis. None needed exposed brick, Edison bulbs or a twelve-dollar bottle of artisanal water. They needed a grill, a coffee pot, somebody behind the counter who’d seen absolutely everything and a door that was still unlocked when almost every other restaurant in the city had gone dark.

A lot of those places are gone now.

With another old Montreal institution disappearing, it seemed like a good time to remember the places that once fed this city after midnight.

Bens De Luxe Delicatessen

If we’re talking about lost Montreal late-night institutions, Bens has to be near the top.

Bens opened in 1908 and eventually occupied its famous Art Deco location at 990 de Maisonneuve West, at Metcalfe. For generations, it was one of downtown Montreal’s great gathering places. Smoked meat was the attraction, but Bens was bigger than a sandwich. Celebrities ate there. Tourists ate there. Regular Montrealers ate there. Leonard Cohen was photographed walking through the door.

And in its heyday, Bens was almost always open. The restaurant reportedly closed for only a couple of hours in the early morning for cleaning. You could be wandering around downtown Montreal at an hour when sensible people were asleep and still sit down for smoked meat.

Think about how extraordinary that seems now.

Bens lasted 98 years before a labour dispute shut it down in 2006. It never reopened, and the building itself was eventually demolished.

A restaurant can disappear.

When the building disappears too, it feels like somebody erased part of the city’s memory.

Moe’s Casse-Croûte du Coin

If you ever found yourself around the old Forum at four in the morning, Moe’s made perfect sense.

Moe’s Casse-Croûte du Coin sat on de Maisonneuve near Lambert-Closse, tucked into a basement and looking considerably less interested in impressing you than in feeding you.

It was open 24 hours a day.

This was the home of the Big Ed burger, all-day breakfasts, short-order food and the kind of meal that seemed like an extremely good idea at 4 a.m. and might have been the only thing standing between you and a spectacular hangover.

Moe’s had been around since 1958, with the Thomas family operating it from 1978. Hockey crowds knew it. Concert crowds knew it. People finishing work knew it. People who probably should have gone home three hours earlier knew it.

That’s what made these places special. They weren’t merely restaurants that happened to stay open late. They belonged to a completely different version of the day.

Moe’s finally closed in December 2015. The family had tried to sell it, but as they explained at the time, nobody wanted to take on the responsibility of operating a 24-hour diner.

That sentence probably explains part of why we’re writing this story.

Running a restaurant is hard.

Running one while the rest of the city sleeps is something else entirely.

The Main Deli

Across Saint-Laurent Boulevard from Schwartz’s sat the other smoked-meat argument.

The Main.

For almost 50 years, Main Deli Steak House was the place some Montrealers would swear had the better sandwich. You didn’t have to agree. In fact, disagreeing about smoked meat is practically a municipal responsibility.

But the Main had something else going for it.

In its earlier years, it was open 24 hours a day.

One former waiter recalled going there in the 1970s after drinking in Old Montreal, ordering late-night smoked meat and possibly cheesecake. That’s Montreal right there.

There was nothing particularly complicated about the place. That’s part of what people loved about it. You sat down, ordered smoked meat, fries, maybe a pickle, and got on with your life.

The Main opened in 1974 and lasted until May 2023, when customers arrived to find paper covering the windows and a notice announcing that it had closed.

Almost half a century, gone.

And suddenly one of Montreal’s great food arguments became impossible to settle.

Picasso’s

NDG people already know.

Picasso’s, or Serre Picasso, on St-Jacques was not where you went because somebody had just handed the chef a Michelin star.

You went because it was there.

At midnight.

At three in the morning.

At breakfast time.

Which, at Picasso’s, could essentially be any time you decided you wanted breakfast.

The diner opened in the late 1970s and operated around the clock for roughly 30 years. It was known for large portions, comfort food and breakfast whenever you wanted it.

Every city needs places like that.

Actually, let me correct that.

Every great night city needs places like that.

There’s something reassuring about knowing that somewhere nearby the grill is still hot, coffee is still being poured and somebody will make you eggs even though it’s an hour at which eggs make absolutely no chronological sense.

Picasso’s abruptly closed in February 2009, with the difficult economy cited at the time.

Years later, people were still talking about bringing it back.

That’s usually how you know a restaurant was more important than anyone realized while it was open.

What We Lost Wasn’t Just the Food

That’s the part that gets me.

Montreal still has late-night food. We’re not pretending otherwise. La Banquise is still there. Dunn’s downtown still feeds people into the early morning. Miami Déli is still doing something increasingly remarkable by operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

There are steamés, poutine, burgers and plenty of places where a hungry person can still find salvation after midnight.

But there used to be more of a culture around it.

The late-night restaurant wasn’t merely where you bought food after drinking. It was where the night continued.

You sat down.

Someone ordered coffee.

Someone ordered breakfast.

Someone started retelling something that had happened two hours earlier as though the rest of you hadn’t been standing right there when it happened.

The table beside you might have contained musicians coming from a gig. Another had people finishing a restaurant shift. There were cab drivers, bartenders, students, cops, couples, regulars and people who had absolutely no business still being awake.

At three in the morning, everybody ended up in the same place.

That’s a very Montreal thing.

Or at least it was.

It’s 2:30 A.M. in 1995. Where Are You Going?

That’s the question I want Montrealers to answer.

Forget what Google says is open today.

It’s 2:30 in the morning in 1995.

You’ve just left a bar, a concert, a Canadiens game, somebody’s apartment or somewhere you’re probably better off not explaining.

You’re hungry.

Where are you going?

Bens?

Moe’s?

Picasso’s?

Some little casse-croûte whose name I haven’t mentioned and you’re already annoyed with me for forgetting?

Perfect.

Tell me in the comments down below. What’s the Montreal late-night restaurant you still miss, and what did you order when you got there?

Because I’m pretty sure we’ve forgotten a few.

And I’m equally sure Montrealers are about to remind us.