Montreal is a city unlike any other, known for its vibrant cultural heritage, amazing architecture, and one of the best culinary scenes on the planet.

Not only is it influenced by the French, but also by British, Italian, Jewish, and many other communities from all over the world. If you’d like to make the most of this masterpiece of flavors, I promise that a food tour is unlike any other mouthwatering adventure you could ever go on.

From the most famous eateries to those local hidden gems, you’ll get to savor all kinds of diverse treats on these top Montreal food tours. We’ve carefully curated these 5 fantastic experiences, leaving your taste buds in pure bliss!

Best Food Tours in Montreal

	Montreal Walking Food Tour With Secret Food Tours	Montreal Personalized Private Food Tour with a Local Foodie	Mile End Montreal Original Food Tour - by Local Montreal Tours
	Best Walking Food Tour	Best Private Tour	Best Locals Tour
Departure:	5170 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal	Hotel pickup and drop-off included	5687B Av du Parc, Montréal
Start:	Between 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM	Between 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM	12:30 PM
Duration:	3.5 hours	3 hours	3 hours
Includes:	Alsatian bacon and onion tart, Montreal-style bagel, Poutine and smoked meat, Gnocchi with tomato sauce, Delicious Secret Dish	A local host, 6–8 food tastings suggested by your host, 2 drinks (alcoholic or soft drinks), walking experience	Gravelax sandwich, Montreal bagels, Drogheria, homemade gnocchi with Montreal's best tomato sauce, ice cream, Kouzina Niata, Saint-Laurent, craft brewery 4oz beer or tea
	Tour Information & Booking	Tour Information & Booking	Tour Information & Booking

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Quick Answer: The 5 Best Rated Montreal Food Tours For 2026

1. Montreal Walking Food Tour With Secret Food Tours
2. Montreal Personalized Private Food Tour with a Local Foodie
3. Mile End Montreal Original Food Tour – by Local Montreal Tours
4. Jewish Neighborhood Food Tour
5. Old Montreal Food & Drink Tour by Local Montreal Food Tours

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Montreal Food Tour Reviews

1. Montreal Walking Food Tour With Secret Food Tours

If this is your first day in Montreal, I don’t care what else you do that day but you have to go on this tour first. The Montreal Walking Food Tour with Secret Food Tours is one of the best, most authentic ways to get to know this beautiful city and the versatile culture that lives within it.

Not only that, but you’ll get to try some seriously mouthwatering dishes that will change your life. Start out by meeting up with your tour guide and the rest of your group, which is at a central location that is easy for most people to access.

The group tends to consist of around 10 people, which seemed just perfect for making friends while still having a kind of “exclusive” group experience rather than being another head in the crowd.

I have to commend our guide and how well she did at keeping everyone engaged and interacting with each other naturally, making it feel like one big family!

In fact, you should think of your guide as your secret weapon: providing you with tips on where and what to eat in the city and any other cool insider tips you may be interested in.

You’ll head through Little Italy, where you’ll get to try one of the best gnocchi I’ve ever had in my life, along with tons of classic French dishes. Of course, there’s a bit more of a French influence in Montreal, so it makes sense that you’ll experience more of it here.

The Montreal-style bagels give NYC a run for its money, and the Alsatian tarts and local ice cream were the perfect desserts after sampling all of the delicious dishes and hearing about their history. The Italian coffee works as a tasty digestive ideal after trying the “Secret Dish” and all the other selections, too!

Tour Information & Booking

100% refund for cancellations within 24 hours of tour experience

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2. Montreal Personalized Private Food Tour with a Local Foodie

Listen, I know how personal food is and that can make it difficult when you go on a “standard” food tour. You may worry that you’re wasting your money on food that you may not potentially enjoy, but that will never be the case with this tour.

The Montreal Personalized Private Food Tour with a Local Foodie is an exhilarating culinary journey that will take you on a treasure trove of eats based on your specific interests.

The tour starts off with you meeting with your tour guide in the heart of Plateau, which is known for being a hot spot for students and has a lively charm with tons of 24-hour eateries and casual bars. Make sure to bring some comfortable walking shoes, because you’ll be doing plenty of that today!

The guides are super friendly and will ask you about any interests or food preferences you have, to design a customized itinerary around that!

No matter where you go, you’re bound to explore an amazing array of local specialties in these multicultural neighborhoods, ending up in the trendy Mile End which is around 1.5 miles from the starting point.

I highly recommend you try the traditional bagel shops and “hip” cafes, which I personally could spend all day, every day in! After trying the legendary St-Viateur’s bagels, just know that you’ll always crave them, no matter where in the world you are!

I really enjoyed the local Italian grocery store, with its friendly staff and plenty of delicious wines, cheeses, and meats to choose from. However, if you really are a cheese fan, make your way over to Jean-Talon market for particularly interesting selections (with soft, chewy crepes to contrast!).

What made this experience even more profound, was getting to meet the owners, bakers, chefs, etc, along the way and hearing about the stories behind each locale.

Tour Information & Booking

100% refund for cancellations within 24 hours of tour experience

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3. Mile End Montreal Original Food Tour – by Local Montreal Tours

I guarantee you that you can find delicious, unique food in just about any neighborhood in Montreal. However, if you really want to experience a particularly vibrant food scene with a wide array of culinary offerings, Mile End is your best bet.

On the Mile End Montreal Original Food Tour – by Local Montreal Tours, you’ll get to taste everything from hand-rolled bagels and expertly-crafted espressos to Italian cheeses and Jewish delicacies.

Mile End is probably one of the most representative of Montreal’s multicultural spirit and dedication to culinary innovation, offering something for everyone! This can, however, make it a bit challenging to know where to begin with the huge array of eating options.

Meet with your local guide to ensure you enjoy everything you eat, learning some of the secrets that many tourists tend to miss out on.

First off, you’re going to have the pleasure of trying a gravlax sandwich, which is made with raw salmon cured with salt, sugar, and dill to give it an interesting sweet/salty flavor.

These are super popular in Montreal, and although everyone isn’t a huge fan, it’s worth trying! St. Viateur Bagel has been around for nearly a whopping 70 years, and you’ll get to learn about and try the delicacies from this iconic spot.

If you’re a gnocchi fan, you simply can’t pass up trying the city’s best tomato sauce (and gnocchi, of course) at the Drogheria Fine, which you’ll surely feel at home in.

For those beer lovers, try Siboire Saint-Laurent’s impeccable craft brews and refreshing teas for those non-alcohol drinkers. Depending on the time of year, you’ll also get to enjoy a tasty ice cream dessert at Kem Coba, which is truly some of the best I’ve ever had!

Tour Information & Booking

100% refund for cancellations within 24 hours of tour experience

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4. Jewish Neighborhood Food Tour

While we know that Montreal has quite the international influence, its Jewish neighborhood has one of the biggest influences of them all. It’s no secret that the community has delicious eats, so why not try some while learning all about it on this next tour?

The Jewish Neighborhood Food Tour is one of the most unique food tours I’ve been on, seamlessly incorporating interesting historical accounts with delicious plates of food!

Start out by meeting your guide and the rest of your group at 10 am to set off on a fun walking tour through Montreal’s Jewish neighborhood lined with beautiful homes, cafes, shops, and eateries.

The first stop of the day is a deli known for its delicious smoked meats in Outremont, which is home to a big Hasidic Jewish community. Here, you’ll sample 3 traditional Jewish dishes while the guide tells you about Montreal’s overall history and food scene.

Everyone knows that the best complement to “salty” is “sweet”, so up next, we head over to a local kosher bakery to try some of the best Jewish desserts around!

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Tour Information & Booking

100% refund for cancellations within 24 hours of tour experience

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5. Old Montreal Food & Drink Tour by Local Montreal Food Tours

Old Montreal is one of my favorite places in the world, not only for the historic architecture, but for the Old Port views, lively Place Jacques-Cartier, and definitely the food!

You’ll be feeling like you’ve just been transported over to 17th-century Europe but with a lot better hygiene standards. If that sounds intriguing to you, do yourself a favor and sign up for the Old Montreal Food & Drink Tour by Local Montreal Food Tour!

Much like the previous tour, I felt this one was perfect for history buffs as it seamlessly melded the culinary scene with the history of the unique neighborhood. Start your tour by meeting your guide and the rest of your group at the breathtaking Notre-Dame Basilica.

You won’t go inside, but your guide will tell some fascinating stories and historical accounts about it! Then you’ll set off with your group to your first food stops, walking through the beautiful Old Port of Montreal on the way for some stunning views.

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Tour Information & Booking

100% refund for cancellations within 24 hours of tour experience

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Montreal Food Tours: What to Eat, Where to Walk, and Which Tour Is Worth It

Montreal is the only city in North America where two bagel bakeries a few blocks apart have been arguing since the 1950s about who came first, and people pick sides the way they pick hockey teams. That argument tells you most of what you need to know about how this city eats.

The food here is specific, it is stubborn, and most of it came off a boat with Eastern European and Italian families who never bothered to make it easier for tourists.

A food tour is the fastest way in. You can walk Mile End yourself with a list, and plenty of people do. But a good guide gets you past the line at St-Viateur, explains why the brisket at Schwartz’s is cured rather than turned into the pastrami you already know, and puts the city’s immigrant history on the table next to the food. Here is what you are eating, where the tours go, and which ones earn their price.

What you are actually here to eat

Start with the bagel, because Montreal’s is a different animal from New York’s. It is smaller, denser at Fairmount and lighter at St-Viateur, sweeter than you expect, with egg and honey worked into the dough.

They hand-roll it, poach it in honey water, and bake it in a wood-fired oven until the outside chars a little. You eat it warm, out of hand, no cream cheese required. A New York bagel is a bread roll. A Montreal bagel is closer to a pretzel that found religion.

The two shops are St-Viateur, opened in 1957 by Hyman Seligman and a Krakow-born Holocaust survivor named Myer Lewkowicz, and Fairmount, which traces back to 1919 and still runs under the founding Shlafman family.

Both stay open 24 hours. Locals will tell you one is correct and the other is garbage, and they’re wrong, because the answer is to eat both and decide for yourself. Sesame is the move at either.

Then smoked meat, which is not pastrami. Schwartz’s has been curing beef brisket on Boulevard Saint-Laurent since 1928. The cut, the spice blend, and the dry cure are Montreal’s own, and the result comes out fattier, peppery, and softer than the navel-end pastrami New York steams.

Order it medium-fat on rye with yellow mustard and a pickle. When the line at Schwartz’s is around the block, Lester’s does a serious version with no wait.

Poutine is the third pillar and the most abused once it leaves Quebec. Done right it is hot fries, fresh cheese curds that squeak against your teeth, and brown gravy poured over so the curds soften at the edges without fully melting. Texture is the whole game. If the curds don’t squeak, the kitchen used the wrong cheese.

Past the icons, Montreal does things a chef pays attention to. Quebec makes raw-milk cheeses that hold up against anything in France and almost never leave Canada, so taste them at the markets while you can.

The province also makes cidre de glace, ice cider, pressed from apples left to freeze on the tree. It is the apple answer to ice wine, sweet and bright and roughly forty dollars a bottle, and it’s the one local bottle I tell people to carry home.

Where the tours go

Three neighborhoods carry nearly every Montreal food tour, and they are not interchangeable.

Mile End is the heart of it. This is the old working-class Jewish quarter where both the bagel and the smoked meat were born, now layered with Italian, Greek, and a generation of younger cooks. Leonard Cohen lived here, just off the Main, and ate St-Viateur bagels at all hours.

Most Mile End tours run about three hours and cover bagels, smoked meat, pastries, and a few smaller counters you would walk straight past on your own. This is the one to book if you only do one.

Jean-Talon Market and Little Italy is the produce and the immigrant kitchens. Jean-Talon is one of the oldest public markets in the city, open year-round, and in late summer it overflows with Quebec strawberries, corn, tomatoes, and stone fruit.

The surrounding Little Italy holds Canada’s second-largest Italian community, plus Vietnamese and Latin American cooks who quietly turn out some of the best food in the area. Tours here lean toward grazing through stalls and family-run counters.

Old Montreal is the cobblestone postcard, and on average the food is the weakest of the three, because the rent is high and the tourists show up no matter what.

A good Old Montreal tour works around that by hitting cheese, charcuterie, poutine, and a microbrewery instead of the patios trading on the view. Book it for the history and the river, not because the food beats Mile End.

The operators worth booking, and what they cost

Local Montreal Food Tours runs the most established walks. Their Old Montreal tour is 134 dollars Canadian plus tax for three hours and six-plus stops, including poutine, cheese and charcuterie, a 24-hour braised lamb, and craft beer.

The Mile End version covers St-Viateur bagels, gravlax, smoked meat, and a pour of white wine. Private bookings start around 178 dollars Canadian.

Secret Food Tours runs Mile End, Jean-Talon and Little Italy, and Old Montreal, usually around 90 to 100 US dollars for roughly three hours, with a secret dish they won’t name until you’re standing in front of it. Good value, generous portions, strong guides by most accounts.

On GetYourGuide and Viator the spread is wider. A Mile End walk with seven dishes runs about 100 US dollars and carries thousands of reviews. A small-group Jean-Talon market tour runs around 84.

There is a Jewish-heritage walk through Mile End and the Plateau for about 101, a maple-syrup tasting for around 22 if you want something short, and a supper club led by a Michelin-trained chef for about 105. Private and chef-led tours climb fast, 250 to 315 and up.

My advice. Book a group walking tour in Mile End for your first day in the city, eat almost nothing beforehand, and use what the guide tells you to plan the rest of your eating. The tour is the map. The week is the trip.

When to go

Montreal is a walking-tour town for about half the year. May through October is the window, and late summer into early fall is the best of it, when Jean-Talon is at full harvest and you can stand outside without a parka.

Winter tours exist and the food is just as good, but you’re walking on ice in serious cold, and three hours outdoors in January is a different proposition. If you come in winter, book the shortest, most indoor option you can find and dress like you mean it.

A few things to know before you go

Go hungry. These tours feed you six to eight stops, and most people are uncomfortably full by the end. Skip breakfast.

Carry a little cash for the guide. Fifteen to twenty percent of the tour price is standard and not always built in.

You do not need French, but a bonjour goes a long way and the city warms to anyone who tries. Most guides and counter staff switch to English without a second thought.

FAQ

Are Montreal food tours worth it, or should I just eat my way around on my own?

Both work. A tour earns its price on the first day of a trip, when you don’t know the city yet and a good guide compresses a week of trial and error into three hours. After that, go solo with the list they hand you.

How much do they cost?

Group walking tours run roughly 85 to 135 Canadian dollars, or about 80 to 105 US, for three hours and six to eight tastings. Short specialty tastings start around 22. Private and chef-led tours run 250 and up. Confirm whether tax and gratuity are included before you pay.

Which neighborhood tour should I pick?

Mile End if you only do one. It has the bagels, the smoked meat, and the deepest food history in the city. Jean-Talon and Little Italy for markets and Italian and Vietnamese cooking. Old Montreal for the history and the river more than for the food.

Do the tours include enough food to count as a meal?

Yes, almost always more than enough. Six to eight stops add up to a full meal and then some. Come hungry and you’ll leave full.

Can they handle dietary restrictions?

Most can with notice, vegetarian especially. Smoked meat and charcuterie sit at the center of the classic tours, so vegetarians, and anyone keeping kosher or halal, should message the operator before booking and ask exactly what gets swapped in.

Is winter a dealbreaker?

Not for the food, only for the walking. Montreal winters are cold and long. If you visit between November and April, pick a shorter tour, expect ice underfoot, and dress for it. Late spring through fall is far more comfortable.

What one thing should I bring home?

A bottle of Quebec ice cider and a dozen bagels. The bagels go stale fast, so eat them within a day or freeze them the minute you land.