Jatoba

First night in Montréal with my wife and if this is the standard of eateries it should be an epic few days. Buzzing with fast moving servers and bright eyed guests the reviews of previous Unilocalers lived up to the reality. Delicate sushi with inspired cocktails to wash them down had us tapping our feet with happiness. The citrus soup with red curry avoided the overpowering side of the spice while delivering a good chili kick. The oxtail dumplings wth green apple and jalapeño were wonderful and the swordfish seared with a homemade Yuzu and mango shavings took a different slant from the usual approach. In the end we were too full to take on the ultra rare beef tatake with truffles… but we’ve decided to go back tonight and have it as a bar appetizer instead!

Terrible terrible terrible food. Food took 45 min after our appetizers. Came cold and over cooked and over salted. And by the end of it they still charged me for some of the orders

Elevated form of Japanese cuisine. Didn’t have any of the gimmicks you usually find with fusion foods but gravitated towards a more elegant and contemporary taste that reflected all the traditional Japanese ingredients.
Beef tataki and ox-​tail dumplings are must haves.

Can I just say best service ever? Went there on Friday night with my family and everything was delicious. They loved the calamari (reminds you of popcorn shrimp), the filet minion (sliced thin when served with amazing sauce), beef tenderloin, Jatoba salad, dumplings, and to end the evening the chocolate bomb!!! We actually ordered two of them to watch the perfectly closed chocolate bomb melt from the hot chocolate sauce and open to show the inside of the dessert. It was gorgeous! I am vegan and they accommodated me very well.
We will be back! Service extraordinaire.

We almost didn’t go to Jatoba because we’d read some concerning reviews about the service. We took a chance and went anyways and boy am I happy we did. The service was great. Kudos to the owners for reading the Unilocal reviews and taking action! The food was awesome. Great Asian fusion menu done family style. And the décor is great too.

Came here after some research into some great restaurants in Montréal and Jatoba did not disappoint! A great style of Japanese food with a North American flare!
The restaurant is located on a quite street just minutes away from Old Montréal. It look a bit of looking since the restaurant is slight hidden. The incredible décor reminds you of dining in someone’s backyard. The slight upscale feel and the dim lighting sets the mood for the dining experience ahead.
Their five spice old fashion is really something else, a mix of bourbon and five spice mix gives the cocktail a unique flavor. The kumquat balances out the anise flavor to create a delicious mix.
The must have is the kampachi, a great blend of fresh kampachi fish with the spicy flavours of wasabi and jalapenos. A must try at the restaurant, my only complaint is the fact there wasn’t more of it!
I’d definiately come back for sure next time i’m in town!

My colleagues in Montréal were gushing about the quality of the sushi here. We came for a business lunch. We had them order for us, and they brought an assortment of apps and sushi. The food was all decent, but the fish quality wasn’t where it could be. Had much better sushi elsewhere, although in Montréal I have not, so maybe I am being too harsh on them.
The service was great, and the ambiance was decent, but slightly dated.

J’ai adoré mon expérience (choose the bar seats!)L’environnement est particulièrement bien designé, à l’image des plats, aussi delicieux que bien presenté. Excellent service du début à la fin. La serveuse était vraiment sympatique et étonnament utile quant au choix de plats. Elle nous a très bien conseillé et nous a permis d’apprécier l’enchaînement des assiettes bien calculé et particulièrement bien agencé !
A real must! I’ll come back for sure!

I’ve been going to Jatoba pretty regularly for lunch over the summer. This restaurant has one of the nicest terraces in the downtown area. In fact the décor and atmosphere of the entire restaurant, both inside and out, is A+. Whether it is for a quick business lunch or to chill out on the terrace in the afternoon you can’t go wrong here.
Everything on the menu is pretty solid and the presentation is great. If I had to pick out one standout main dish it would certainly be the cod. It is excellently prepared and melts in your mouth. However, the real highlights on their menu are the desserts. Oh my god each one that I have seen or tasted is amazing. The portions are enormous so plan to share and they are rich and just out of this world. Take the chocolate bomb for example, someone has posted a video of this. Yes, this menu item is so amazing and interactive it requires a video. Upon arrival at your table the server will pour hot chocolate melting a chocolate sphere containing more chocolate and fruity goodness. Forget the main course just go straight for the dessert, you won’t be disappointed.
In all honesty, even if it wasn’t for the desserts I would comeback just for the terrace, there is nowhere else downtown with such a nice outdoor space.

I had high expectations about this restaurant from the reviews, the starter of eggplant purée dampling was ok but the cresson that came with it was loaded to the max with salt so I stayed waiting for the sea bass my main dish, the main dish of sea bass was full of salty tomatoes and the fish consisted of around 2 fingers of this sea monster which was also crunchy from salt, so I ended up enjoying the tomatoes which were not even marinated with olive oil but with some oil ! My friends had very tiny dishes of something called sea food like tuna slices portions cut for the birds not for humans! Then came my dessert it was supposed to be meringue but was instead of meringue like a white omelette for cholesterol dieters, soft instead of crunchy and disgusting
filled with some old fruits and topped with sorbet, I ate the sorbet only ! What a shame!! i came home to order a pizza!

If you want a hot restaurant experience with cool people then I highly recommend Jatoba.
You will dine in a newly decorated contemporary and spacious room. The place is buzzing with well healed
MTL foodies and young professionals. So hats off to the owners because they definitely got the crowd in this difficult restaurant town. (Probably more restaurants per capita than anyplace on the planet).
Its the combination of location, eclectically good Asian inspired food and great space thats” bringing them in”.
As for the menu its a sharing concept and we shared:
Apps of sautéed oyster mushrooms in a foamy cheese sauce, asparagus vinaigrette and gyosas; all were nicely plated but did not excel which is what you
want in a place as nice as this.
The mains of Sautéed scallops, miso roasted octopus
And a sushi roll were also well plated and for the most part good except the octopus was an overcooked misfire and the sushi roll was quite pedestrian. We had a side of duck fried rice which was super good.
This may sound like a of food for a table of four but the portions are fair but a bit petite. So there was abdominal space left for desserts which just happened to be the highlight of the evening. A chocolate bombe
that was the bomb;and a rendition of the ever popular red velvet cake which was more like a heavenly mousse than a gateaux. Bottom line: it looked and tasted sen​sa​tional​.ly. Hats off to the pastry chef.
Jatoba has a very extensive and pricey wine list from which we chose an excellent Oregon Pinot Noir (hard to find in Montréal where there is a huge but understandable bias toward French wines. I would have liked to see more bottles in the $ 40 – 60 range because the next steps up appeared @ $ 80 -$ 100 and way more$$$.
All in Jatoba is doing most things right and its a great place for a fun, festive and may I add pricey
dinner.
5 stars are waiting if they kick they food up a notch or two.

Jatoba is the much hyped addition to downtown Montréal. Located inside a large building without an obvious signs, the restaurant is vast with a beautiful terrace out back. The décor and ambiance are very nice and welcoming. The service is excellent with no less than 3 people waiting on your table. I would give it 5 stars just for the service and décor.
The food is what brings this place down. We ordered the pork and shrimp dumplings to start. They were mediocre at best. There are better, more authentic dumplings anywhere in Chinatown but again, you won’t get the nice terrace or a server wiping down your table mid meal.
The brussell sprout chips were my favorite. They were light an crispy but fell short of anything more than a snack. Finally, out starters ended with a very very disappointing seaweed salad. The dressing was bland and lacked the traditional seaweed salad found in almost all of the Japanese restaurants in the area.
I ordered the chicken and my colleague ordered the sea bass as our mains. My chicken was 2 skewers of dry chunks of chicken in a mysterious brown sauce. For $ 24, I would expect an actual piece of chicken with crispy skin (as described in the menu). This was almost inedible. The bass was good with large chunks of tomato. The vegetable fried rice was disgusting. Broken grains of rice in what looked like a mixture of rice and frozen peas. There was no flavor and the rice was dry.
I’m not sure what this place is aiming for because it’s not quite Asian. The venue is gorgeous but the food is terrible. There are many other options for fine Asian fusion in MTL and this is not one of them.

Jatoba is a tremendous addition to the downtown dining scene, which is dire need of variety beyond the chain restaurants. Very fresh and tasty plates, very good price-​to-​quality ratio — the lunch menu is well-​worth it for those not looking to splash out too much.
I’ve enjoyed the pan-​seared tuna, salmon sashimi and beef teriyaki, all done to perfection. The dumplings could be among the best in Montréal. Chef Olivier Vigneault is raising the bar.
The desserts — by pastry chef Kimberly Estrada of Some Kind of Wonderful — are unique: From the Suki blondie bar to the Japanese cotton cheesecake, you can’t go wrong! I just wish they had kept the mango tart on the menu, it was incredible.
My only criticism is that lunch service could be a little faster. But the décor and stylish remodelling of the interior makes it a location worth hanging out in…

Very nice japanese restaurant downtown Montréal. The space is gorgeous and they have an outdoor part as well. Service was excellent. I came here with some work colleagues. The atmosphere is kind of fancy, not too casual. We got the brussel sprouts chips and edamame as a starter, both delicious. I also ordered the roasted bass with zucchini and it was perfectly cooked and flavourful. Chocolate cake for dessert, which tasted really good as well. Price per person can come to 40 – 70 $.

Jatoba is a new restaurant (6 months old). I came here tonight for a work dinner thinking it would likely be decent but it proved to be much more than that. All of my dinner companions agreed that had we been staying in Montréal an additional night we’d all come back again tomorrow for dinner just to try more menu items. It was phenomenal!
We shared dumplings as appetizers — the shrimp were good, the crab/​avocado, outstanding. I had the black cod as my main course choosing that based on Unilocal reviews/​photos. It was a standout meal! The cod was perfectly cooked and broke apart in huge, perfectly uniform flakes. It sat on a delicious veg purée with onion, zucchini, and some other green vegetable. We had a lovely chablis with our meal and stuck with that all evening. Because the meal was excellent we shared a few desserts. I can’t recall every one of them but they were all excellent. One was the green tea maki and it was like a sponge cake had been soaked in green tea and then rolled around fresh berries and served with a side of tart sorbet. Perfect ending to a meal! The service was good as well and the manager even came by to ask us if we were satisfied. The answer was a resounding «Yes». We sat inside but I noticed that they had a huge patio which I would opt for next time. I can’t wait to come back!

When a reservation was made on the fly by a colleague to try out the relatively new resto, I couldn’t help but jump at the chance. The décor is beautiful and set a lovely ambiance right away and the front of house staff moves perfectly, like clockwork. Dishes were whisked away as soon as the food vanished from our plates and glasses were refilled before we realised they were empty. The wine selection is impeccable, but expect to shell out for a bottle– there were few options under $ 50.00.
We dined omakase (multi-​course meal where dishes are chosen by the chef) and were given detailed descriptions of each course by the chef, himself, who was even so kind as to make separate versions of dishes for me, the only pescatarian of the group. We had the Jatoba salad with lobster pieces, spice-​crusted beef carpaccio, a variety of sashimi from Albacore to Blue fin, another course of every type of dumplings, gigantic pieces of succulent shrimp tempura, seared scallops in browned butter, ginger lobster with grilled gai lan, and my coworkers even had the beef with grilled foie gras, while I opted for the buttery grilled king oyster mushrooms.
Each dish was a marriage of fresh and interesting flavour profiles, with classic additions such as grilled shishito pepper and pickled daikon to dwarf peaches and cucumber mixed with the lovely texture of roe and the melt-​in-​your-​mouth fish. Delicate flavours were preserved, yet paired with bold tastes which would please even the most discerning of palates.
Even the desserts were exquisite; although none of the eight of us has a particularly sweet tooth, we couldn’t turn away the last course, which was plates of the mango curd tart with meringue brulé and green apple sorbet and a great take on the humble but delectable pouding chomeur topped with vanilla bean ice cream and raspberries.
In all of my experience dining out, I can easily say this was one of the top three meals I’ve ever had. I tip my hat to chef Olivier Vigneault.

FIRST, book a reservation. I went on Monday night with a party of 3. Thought the restaurant wont be busy. I was wrong. Had to sit in the nice courtyard. Service was attentative.
Ordered scallops, salmon and dumplings. Really exquisite dishes. Small portion. asian fusion With emphasis on taste and presentation. Impeccable.

Yummy yummy in my tummy. Had been meaning to try this resto since it opened. Everything on the menu is really well thought out. The black cod was the best I have ever had. Period. It just melted in my mouth. And even just simple edamame was done right; seasoning was on point, although it might be considered spicy for certain palates.
Def worth a try.

Ambiance parfaite, délicieux repas frais et original, service courtois ! J’ai hâte à ma prochaine visite! À quand la terrasse?!

Visiting from Los Angeles, and this restaurant was fabulous and by far the best restaurant I tried in Montréal, yet they were all great. Everything from this restaurant was great. The entrance the vibe and the style of it. The food was marvelous and the service was great, Matt was our service and recommended amazing dishes especially the caramel dessert.

Décor/​ambiance: C’est très très très très beau! Les tables en bois, les lumières qui pendent, le bar en marbre, etc. Il y a de l’espace, c’est très aéré. Le décor vaut 5 étoiles.
Menu: On est allé sur le diner et le menu était limité, mais très alléchant. On a pris de la morue, un tataki de thon et des dumplings. On était tous très satisfaits de nos plats. Mon thon était par contre mal tranché et il y avait beaucoup de filaments blancs. J’aurai assaisonné un peu plus le thon, mais il était pas mal. Ce sont de petites assiettes, mais assez pour un diner. Les gyozas sont parfaits avec un côté croustillant. L’offre de vins est assez variée. Ils ont aussi des cocktails et de la bière commerciale et importée. En dessert, on a pris un dessert au caramel et un autre au thé vert. Celui au caramel ressemblait à un s’mores, c’était succulent. Celui au thé vert était amer, avec une glacé à la pamplemousse, nous avons quand même apprécié l’originalité de ce dessert, mais sans plus.
Prix: Pour un diner, le prix est raisonnable, leur menu table d’hôte du midi varie entre 25 – 35 $ environ. Avec la bouteille de vin et les desserts, ça l’a couté 200 $ pour trois. C’est parfait pour le midi pour un diner d’affaires. Je né sais pas si le soir, ils augmentent leur portion avec le prix, car c’est quand même des petites portions sur le midi.
On a hâte d’essayer la terrasse l’été.

I give it 3.7 stars.
I went here with a friend shortly after they opened their doors in January. The restaurant is beautiful with great a setting. They have an awesome bar and it looks like they might have a potential terrasse when weather allows. They have a closet as you enter that you can hang your coat. The menu was designed by Antonio Park (well known for Park Restaurant).
The seafood at Jatoba is of the same caliber as Park which is fresh and delicious. Overall the food was great and enjoyable. I enjoyed the roasted eggplant fried dumpling which had great flavors but wish it had more filling in it. The brussels sprout chips and the yellowtail tuna were great also. The portions are rather small so you will end up ordering a lot and on the pricey side. We ended up ordering an extra pulled beef oxtail dumplings and duck confit fried rice (both not shown in the pictures). I would suggest coming with at least another person so you can share different dishes. The prices of the cocktails and sake were reasonable (didn’t check the wine list).
I was rather disappointing in the desserts we had. I was hoping a more elegant and refined dessert that would have been cohesive with the previous courses. The mango tartlettes was a one big mango tart topped with a lot of soft meringue. The crust of the tart was way too thick and had too much meringue but the mango curd tasted good. It came with a green apple sorbet to help cut the richness of the dessert but the sorbet tasted like apple sauce. The suki sandwhich square came with ice cream and tasted good but was on the heavy side also. It tasted like a s’more brownie and wish they gave a bit more ice cream. I believe an updated dessert menu would be needed to have a good transition from the food.
Service was good but the restaurant was not too busy when we got there so it is still to see as the place gets packed.
Overall, I had a good experience at Jatoba. I think I would come back more for the ambience of the place, have a few drinks at the bar and maybe order a few dishes to snack.

Wonderful food. Nice décor. Very expensive and poor service.
The dishes were all fantastic. Favorites were the scallops, beef tataki and yellowtail but the portions are very small (you would need at least 2 entrees per person) and quite expensive. The ingredients were very fresh but definitely not the best Japanese I’ve ever had.
They have limited options of wine by the glass and there are not enough employees in the dining room to accommodate their guests. My wine glass was empty most of the meal and we would have purchased at least one more, if not two more bottles had the waiter been on task with refilling glasses.
I’d go if you’re not in a hurry and budget is no issue. Otherwise, I’m sure there are better options.