Multiculturalism at Work
We have to announce a tie this year between the two restaurants covering the most culinary ground. Onyx Cocktails & Fine Dining (Halifax) and Fuze Finer Dining (Banff, Alta.) both managed to combine just about every cultural influence on their menus, from kung pao chicken and escargots Bourguignon to Indian pakoras and Texas slow-cooked brisket.

Best Menu Quote
From Big Fish (Calgary): “If you look suspicious or have a group of over six we may add a tip on to the bill. Be respectful to the staff or you will be thrown out.”

Worst Dish from a Best New Restaurant
Poutine à la Belge at Chambar Belgian Restaurant (Vancouver) is just a mistake. In this dish, perfectly good French fries are destroyed by a blanket of salty demi-glace, way too many peppercorns and blue cheese. Did anyone in the kitchen taste this before they served it? But then, Chambar also serves a blue-cheese martini , so their judgement in the cheese area is perhaps clouded.

Best Use of a Ritz Cracker
A smooth and creamy pumpkin salad (which was more the consistency of a dip, really) was whimsically served with everybody’s favourite childhood snack cracker, Ritz, at the cool Shiru-Bay Chopstick Café (Vancouver).

Mom and Pop
Our ideal restaurant seats about 40 and is run by a couple. One cooks; one handles the front of the house. Fleur de Sel (Lunenburg, N.S.), Le Jolifou (Montreal) and Chambar Belgian Restaurant (Vancouver) are all charming examples of such harmony in action.

Locals Only
We almost expect West Coast restaurants like La Pommeraie Bistro (Cobble Hill, B.C.) and Pair Bistro (Vancouver) to use exclusively fresh, local ingredients, but we were pleasantly surprised to see such commitment to regional bounty at other regional restaurants like The Willow on Wascana (Regina) and Fleur de Sel (Lunenburg, N.S.) this year. Greens don’t get much fresher than those pulled straight from the vast garden that surrounds La Table du Villageois (Chelsea, Que.). At the little Granville Island seaside shack that is Go Fish (Vancouver) you can see the boats unloading freshly caught fish that will soon be turned into some of the best battered halibut, seared salmon and fish tacos in the country.

Our Favourite New Bars
You can judge the popularity of Vancouver’s Lift Bar Grill View by the parking lot, which looks like a luxury car showroom. Toronto’s West Queen West has The Beaconsfield for a laid-back vibe and its clubbier cousin, The Social Bar . On the darker side of Toronto’s downtown, The Laurentian Room remains sexy, even though they removed the swing from the ceiling. The Montreal wine bar Pop! cuisines du vin (adjacent to venerable restaurant Laloux) offers light bites and a list of many biodynamic wines amid tasteful Danish Modern teak. L’Assommoir Bernard (Montreal) features more than 250 cocktails, some containing ingredients like green onion or kiwi to match the array of ceviches.

Cocktail of the Year
If you can get past the somewhat intimidating name, the house-specialty Buttstrip cocktail at Le Club Chasse et Pêche (Montreal) is a pretty good blend of gin, Campari, Jägermeister, orange juice and spicy local Émile Bertrand spruce beer, a Quebec specialty that falls somewhere on the taste spectrum between ginger and root beer.

Bartender of the Year
The charming and thoroughly professional Julie Jones at Decca77 (Montreal) has an encyclopedic knowledge of spirits and mixology that extends beyond the bar’s elegant lists of classique and mo­derne cocktails. She also has an uncanny ability to divine just what the customer requires at any given moment. When a needy barfly jonesed for a smoke, one was procured (somehow, she even knew his preferred brand) and offered to him in a tiny, cigarette-size dish.