Bootlegger Cocktail Bar & Cuisine Montréal — Restaurant in Montreal

This will be a long review, but if you’re reading this and thinking about coming, don’t.

I came with 5 friends while visiting the city (we were a party of 6) and they sat us in the lounge area. While there were real tables where they wouldn’t move us and we were left to sit around a coffee table for our soon to be 2 hour meal. We should have left then, but gave them the benefit of the doubt and stayed.

It wasn’t that crowded, but our drinks took 45 minutes to come to the table. When they did, a member of our party ordered a “full pour” of whisky. Only for them to tell us that here 1 ounce is a full pour? (It doesn’t say that on the whiskey page of their menu). Also who orders a one ounce drink of anything? When we complained they said people like to do tastings… but it was very clear we had had asked for a normal sized “full pour” drink. This is a tourist trap, I’d recommend avoiding. The other drinks were fine, but if it take 45 minutes to make 5 drinks then they’re too complicated for the bartender to make.

Food wise, it wasn’t super expensive, so we Had realistic expectations and ordered burgers and chicken sandwiches… but this wasn’t very good and I’m happy no one from our party got sick. The burgers were fine, the chicken sandwiches were big Tyson chicken tenders. All plates came with a “salad” of undressed spinach, And their version of fries were potato wedge so big you needed to eat them with a knife and fork. Additionally they were covered in Mayo? Not to mention that we’re still sitting around this coffee table and eating on our laps.

The Service was rough. Not only did this escapade of a meal take almost two hours for us to get served any food. No one brought forks or plates for us to use for our meals at the coffee table we’re sat at. We needed to wait almost ten minutes to flag down our server to ask them to be brought after the shareable food we had ordered arrived to the table. When they did come, they were bowls because that’s all they had? It’s not a big deal, but how do you not have plates at a restaurant? Overall I can handle rude service if they’re actually serving me. This was nice service where you get ignored and no one actually does serve you.

At the end of the meal, the head waiter came over to ask how everything was. When we told him, he said we were here for the memories not the food or drink. He’s right and this is a meal we’ll...

I’m not sure if it was bad luck or bad organization. I made a reservation last Thursday for Sunday at 8:00 PM and confirmed it the night of. We were running a bit late and arrived around 8:20. The person at the door said it wasn’t a problem and that our reservation wouldn’t be cancelled, but when we got there, it wasn’t in their system at all.

We had to wait about 5 minutes for them to find us a table, with a small line forming behind us. Then we were told we’d be seated at the bar, even though I had requested a table. The host seemed visibly annoyed. I get that it’s stressful, but it wasn’t really my fault that the reservation didn’t go through. He said, “What do you want, to be at a table? Okay, I’ll move everyone around.” I appreciate the effort, but the tone could have been nicer.

When we were finally seated, we ordered 12 oysters, two drinks, an Angus burger, and a Pulled Pork burger. I’m extremely intolerant to spicy food, so I made sure my burger came with BBQ sauce, not anything spicy. The waiter was very kind and professional. He asked which mayo sauces we wanted with the fries (we chose spicy mayo and eggplant mayo). Drinks came quickly and were great, I really enjoyed their smoked cocktails. But after about 30 minutes, we still hadn’t received our order. When I asked a waitress, she said, “The jazz just started, so everyone put their orders at the same time,” which I understood.

Another 40–50 minutes later, our waiter came by, surprised we still hadn’t even received the oysters. Turns out, they had completely forgotten our order and sent it to other tables.

The atmosphere was however lovely: great live jazz, beautiful décor, it really felt like stepping into another era.

Unfortunately, when the food finally arrived, the sauces were switched (no big deal), but my burger had an extremely spicy sauce instead of BBQ. It was inedible for me. The waiter checked the menu and confirmed it didn’t say anything about being spicy. They took the burger off the bill, which I appreciated, but I still left hungry and disappointed after what could have been a great night.

TL;DR: Loved the atmosphere, music, and cocktails. Service was friendly but very slow, reservation disappeared, and the food was way too spicy despite what...

I visited Bootlegger tonight and overall had a great time with the food, drinks, and especially the service.

The Bootlegger burger was absolutely amazing—juicy, flavorful, and something I’d definitely order again. The pulled pork burger stood out as well, tender and satisfying. The side salad with sun-dried tomatoes was a refreshing touch and paired nicely with the mains. On the other side, the wagyu burger was a bit disappointing; it came out quite dry and there was no option to have it cooked more rare since that’s left to the chef. Also, some condiments would’ve made it better and flavourful. For sides, the potato wedges were tasty but a little plain. They really could’ve used more sauce what came with them was barely a spoonful, not enough to go around.

On the drinks side, I really enjoyed the Donkey King. The banana-vanilla flavor profile worked for me, though I can see why some people (like my friends) would find it unusual for a cocktail. The Agent Orange was good—nothing particularly special, but solid.

The service was fantastic. Our servers were professional, attentive, and funny, which made the whole experience more enjoyable.

The only other drawback was the table setup. The tables themselves are really small, and the plates are fairly large, so we ended up shifting things around constantly to make everything fit. If we had been a group of four instead of three, I don’t think it would’ve worked at all—I’d recommend smaller plates to help with space.

All in all, Bootlegger has some good burgers, creative cocktails, and top-notch service that make it worth a visit, but a few tweaks (especially to the wagyu burger, sauce portions, and tableware) would really take the...