Montreal - Restaurant L'Académie (Crescent St)

Since Restaurant l'académie had been recommended by a few friends we decided to eat there on our first night in Montreal. This also worked out well as we had planned on walking down St.Catherines street to do some shopping before heading to dinner. 

     There are actually several Restaurant l'académie in Montreal. We ended up eating at their popular Crescent street location, just off of Rue Sainte Catherine. The big drawing point at l'académie is that they have a relatively good price point for their food and that you can BYOB. There also doesn't seem to be a corking fee attached, so needless to say there were 

many patrons around us bringing not just one or two bottles of wine, but cases of them!

     A quick glance at their dinner menu indicated that they had a mix of French and Italian style dishes. They also had some dinner specials where you could choose from a soup or salad, a main, and a coffee or tea ranging in price from $20.95 (Italian sausage penne) to $33.95 (grilled fillet of beef with port sauce). We all decided on the soup of the day (lobster bisque) as we were all feeling a bit cold.

Lobster Bisque ($2.95)
notes: We were super excited about this soup originally as we craved something warm.
Unfortunately, this particular lobster bisque was super salty, to the point that we could not taste the lobster
or any seafood flavour at all. Luckily their fresh baguettes came in handy to help sop up the soup - but by this time we used it mainly to have something hot in our system.

Fettucinie Nastabe: Smoked Salmon, green onions in a cream sauce ($15.95)

Spaghetti Bolognese: tomatoes & viande ($14.95)

Linguine Vongole: clams in a tomato and white wine sauce ($15.95)

     Thankfully, the pastas tasted much better than our starters and were a decent portion size. I ended up eating most of my pasta as leftovers was not a viable option given that we were staying at a hotel with no fridge. Plus, we doubted that we would actually eat the leftovers when we got back to the hotel.

     Restaurant L'Académie @ Crescent street is arguably a decently nice restaurant with beautiful furnishings and decor. They're also able to successfully seat and serve a large number of patrons in their 3 story restaurant. It was evidently busy as we were seated quite next to their kitchen and could see servers moving back and forth while we were there. Service was prompt in the beginning, but began to dwindle off as the night got later and more patrons arrived - there was a second wave around 9pm. Nevertheless, a good place to go if you're looking for decent priced food, large portion sizes, and the ability to BYOB - just stay away from their lobster bisque.   

Restaurant L'Académie - Crescent Street location

2100 Crescent Street

Montreal, QC

(514)664-4455

http://www.lacademie.ca/ (check website for other locations)

Mon-Thu,Sun 11:30am-10pm

Fri-Sat 11:30am-10:30pm

also note: restaurants close early in Montreal!