Illustration by Fig & Ginger, drawn from the review. The venue's own photo is on its way.
Restaurant in Little Italy / Villeray, Montreal
Le Petit Alep
Two Sisters Across From the Market
Some restaurants are businesses. This one is a family that happens to have a liquor licence. Sisters Chahla and Tania Frangié run Le Petit Alep with Jean-François Potvin, right across Jean-Talon Street from the market, and they have been doing it since 1995. Before that, their father Georges ran Restaurant Alep, five tables, in the same spot. Lineage like that you cannot buy with a marketing budget.
The food is Syrian and Armenian, the cooking of Aleppo, a city the rest of the world mostly knows from bad news. Here it is good news. Start with mouhamara, the red pepper and walnut spread that tastes like somebody's grandmother was right about everything. Get the kebbe naye if raw meat does not frighten you, and it should not. The kebabs come with fléflé, and the stuffed grape leaves are rolled by people who care. Finish with mehalabié, a milk pudding that perfumes the whole table. The wine list is long and leans natural, which is a strange and happy thing to find beside a bowl of mouhamara in Little Italy.
Michelin handed it a Bib Gourmand in 2025, thirty years after opening. The sisters did not need the memo. Anyone borne out of the crucible of the Middle East knows this as the food of patience, of grape leaves rolled one at a time by hands that have done it ten thousand times. Go hungry, order more mezze than seems wise, and let the table fill up.
- Order this
- Mouhamara, kebbe naye, kebabs with fléflé, mehalabié for dessert
- The damage
- $$
- Go
- Thursday or Friday lunch, after a lap of Jean-Talon Market
- Find it
- 191 Rue Jean-Talon E, Montréal, QC H2R 1S8
- Website
- restaurantalep.com