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Canada’sBest Placesto Eat NowThe country’s 20 most magical restaurants, from the tip of Vancouver Island to the edge of NewfoundlandBy CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITHPhotography by JOHN CULLENThe Listthis story is Brought to you byMeet our critic Chris Nuttall-Smith travelled cross-country to find Canada’s most delicious places to eat. Here, he describes how he did it.As the dining business began to settle early this year into a new post-pandemic normal, I set out on an epic, 50-

Nuttall-Smith and friends feasting on Hong Kong–style lobster at Fishman Lobster Clubhouse, a Chinese party spot in Scarborough, Ontario (Photography by John Cullen)
It’s funny what happens when you can’t eat in restaurants for a couple of years.
The stop-start reopening of 2022 took all of a heartbeat to become what I can only think of today as the great Canadian dining frenzy—a record-smashing rush of packed rooms and ravenous patrons unleashing our pent-up appetit

(Photograph by William Ukoh, styling by Chad Burton/Cadre Artists; grooming by Kristjan Hayden/Cadre Artists.)
Preston Pablo has achieved a staggering level of early-career success, unheard of even among Canada’s biggest musical mega-stars. See: 51 million streams of “Flowers Need Rain,” his debut single; a spring Juno win for breakthrough artist of the year; and a slew of sold-out headlining gigs. His origin story sounds a bit more familiar. Pablo grew up in Timmins, Ontario,

(Photography by Elevation Pictures)
BlackBerry tells the story of Canadian tech founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, an opposites attract duo who turned a tech innovation (the world’s first smartphone) into a billion-dollar phenomenon—and then watched it flame out in equally spectacular fashion. The movie premiered at the Berlin Film Festival last month, and it’s already being hailed as Canada’s answer to The Social Network, a comparison director Matt Johnson takes

(Photography by Erin Leydon)
Jay Baruchel is everywhere: in slashers, sex farces and sports movies; opposite mythical lizards in Disney’s How to Train Your Dragon franchise; and he’s worked with directors as varied as David Cronenberg, Judd Apatow and even himself. If you’re wondering how an Ottawa-born, Montreal-raised kid with a Gumby body and a voice like a twisted balloon has been working steadily since 1995 (he’s now 40 and busier than ever), the answer is simple: Ja

(Photography by Erin Leydon)
Jay Baruchel is everywhere: in slashers, sex farces and sports movies; opposite mythical lizards in Disney’s How to Train Your Dragon franchise; and he’s worked with directors as varied as David Cronenberg, Judd Apatow and even himself. If you’re wondering how an Ottawa-born, Montreal-raised kid with a Gumby body and a voice like a twisted balloon has been working steadily since 1995 (he’s now 40 and busier than ever), the answer is simple: Ja

“The Hair Appointment,” by Jeremy Rodney-Hall, 2018 (All images courtesy of Sunday School)
At 24 years old, Josef Adamu was an aspiring model struggling to gain traction in his career. Then he had an idea: if he wanted to find a path forward in his industry, he should carve one out for himself. Adamu initially wanted to start a modelling agency, but found the concept too restrictive. Instead, while working out of his mother’s basement in Toronto, he conceived of Sunday School,

(Photos courtesy of Heather Dapaah)
Any Canadian cinephile worth their salt has seen the original Dead Ringers, David Cronenberg’s 1988 body horror film about unhinged twin gynecologists played by Jeremy Irons. A new Amazon Prime adaptation gender-swaps the premise: Rachel Weisz stars as Beverly and Elliot Mantel, identical OBGYNs who dream of upending the patriarchal women’s reproductive health-care system (when they’re not switching identities to pick up lovers). The plot fol

“I’d love it if these bubbles started popping up across the country, in drag capitals like Toronto and in small towns alike. I’d love it even more if we didn’t need to use them.” (Illustration by Pete Ryan)
Kristyn Wong-Tam is a member of provincial parliament and the critic on 2SLGBTQ+ issues for the Ontario New Democratic Party.
I don’t do heels very well. I never have. I came out when I was a teenager, and my introduction to the world of drag largely happen

Omar Mouallem (Photograph by Aaron Pedersen)
If you didn’t grow up in Alberta, you’ve probably never heard of Burger Baron. It’s a fast-food chain in only the loosest terms, with a menu that varies wildly from location to location. The branding? There is none in the traditional corporate sense, except for the words “Burger Baron” in each restaurant’s name. Some franchisees have pluralized it (Burger Barons), others eponymized it (Kelly’s Burger Baron) an

Once a patchouli-scented pastime, tarot is now decidedly chic (Photograph by iStock)
“So, the very first thing is kind of a kick in the ass,” says Lori Simeunovic, who goes by Tarot Lori professionally, as she draws the Four of Cups. We’ve connected on a Sunday morning over Zoom to talk about her 35-year career in tarot, and when she offers to read for me, I can’t pass up the opportunity. The cups, she explains, represent love and abundance, but the worried figure on the

(Illustration by Celina Pereira)
The Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions lists 83 names. They are people who were driven to make false confessions. People who were convicted based on flawed forensics. People who were named by witnesses who got it wrong. The registry, posted online in February, was co-created by Kent Roach, a law professor at the University of Toronto who has fought to right miscarriages of justice for over three decades. “These names are the tip of an iceberg whose r

Sophie Nélisse as teen Shauna in Yellowjackets (Photographs by Brendan Meadows/Showtime)
It takes a strong stomach to deal with sudden-onset stardom. Sophie Nélisse insists she doesn’t have one, but fame found her all the same. As one part the teen contingent of Showtime’s feral, feverishly successful series Yellowjackets, Nélisse, the 23-year-old Windsor-born, Montreal-bred ingenue, has already attracted her own personal cult following for her portrayal of the d

(Photograph by Emma McIntyre, hair and makeup by Christina Spina)
Some might think Andrea Jin’s trademark sweet-then-dark jokes about, say, China’s one-child policy, veer into too-far territory, but 250,000 TikTok followers can’t be wrong. Mulan, her grandparents—all of it is fodder for the Vancouver comedian, who has channelled her dry, yeah-I-said-it sensibility into online acclaim and a ticket to Los Angeles (where she now lives).
Now 27, Jin was just 10 when her famil