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Alma

Montreal

Haute Mexican in a residential hood

The dream team: Tucked away on one of the city's most beautiful residential streets, this 22-seat restaurant's success lies not just in skilled cooking or sharp wine service, but in the shared vision of sommelier Lindsay Brennan and chef Juan Lopez Luna, who together have created one of the best Mexican restaurants outside of Mexico.

A change of vision: The restaurant originally began with a menu devoted to cuisine that matched Brennan's wine selection of Catalan and Spanish bottles. But Lopez had an epiphany of sorts while visiting Mexico's Tlaxcala state. Enjoying local dishes, he asked himself why he wasn't cooking Mexican food. With this shift came a wave of critical acclaim. The five or nine-course tasting menus feature dishes like the signature sea bream crudo, Nordic shrimp ceviche with charred Morita chillies, mextlapique (wrapping food to cook on a grill) of Magdalen Island lobster with mezcal butter and stuffed Quebec quail with mole poblano.

The quest for ingredients: The star of Alma's menu is ancestral corn, imported from farmers in Tlaxcala, Oaxaca, Chiapas and Estado de México, then nixtamalised on-site daily to produce corn with optimal taste and texture for the hand-pressed tortillas. Other high quality ingredients are sourced from Quebec, with an emphasis on seafood.

And to drink with all this: The couple's shared devotion to Mexico and Barcelona shines through in the seamless pairing of Brennan's carefully selected Catalan natural wines with Luna's refined cuisine. Brennan now sets her sights on an equally exciting challenge: introducing Mexican wines to complement this remarkable culinary journey.

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