The 2018 Contenders: Canada’s Top 10 New Restaurants 2018

The mission is straightforward: One critic sets out on a month-long food crawl to find the top new restaurants from coast to coast. The methods are old-school: There’s a handy list of fake names for booking tables, and we won’t be swayed by freebies, since Air Canada enRoute always picks up the tab. The margin for error is pretty much non-existent: Restaurants get one shot to impress Nancy Matsumoto, our discerning diner, and then she’s gone. This year, a panel of industry experts pointed us towards dozens of exciting places that launched between late spring 2017 and early June 2018, as well as a few that were missed at the start of the year. If we felt the spots were worth a look, they earned a review on our longlist. And if they were really special – unforgettable, innovative, and just mind-bogglingly delicious – they get to call themselves one of our Top 10 restaurants in Canada.

Read about the longlist of contenders at Air Canada En Route