November 5, 2021 – Air Canada and presenting partner OpenTable, the world’s leading provider of online restaurant reservations and part of Booking Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), are proud to reveal Canada’s Best New Restaurants 2021, with culinary talent as inclusive and diverse as the Canadian community. This year marks a milestone, as Air Canada celebrates the 20th anniversary of launching the pre-eminent list of top restaurants across the country.

Through incredible commitment and quality, Canada’s culinary talent has preserved a healthy and thriving restaurant scene across the country. This year’s list features the best in fine dining, bar dining, takeout, farm-to-table and other categories, while also highlighting producers of the year and changemakers in the Canadian culinary landscape.

The list of Canada’s Best New Restaurants is created with the help of industry experts from across the country. This expert food panel is inclusive, reflecting the diversity and geography of the Canadian food scene. In celebration of the program’s 20^th anniversary and reflecting upon the industry-wide impact of the past two years, the panel embraced an unranked, category-based list this year, focused on resilience, entrepreneurial spirit, and culinary excellence. 

OpenTable joins for the first time as presenting sponsor, and will be showcasing bookable bespoke Chef’s Menus at a selection of the restaurants featured on the 2021 Canada’s Best New Restaurants list.  Gold sponsor Destination Canada is on board to help travelers experience more of the food and places within Canada.

“Air Canada is proud to celebrate the 20^th anniversary of Canada’s Best New Restaurants, a program that has charted the progress of Canadian culinary talent from coast to coast,” said Andy Shibata, Vice President, Brand, Air Canada. “To mark this milestone year and in recognition of the resilience of our country’s food community, this year’s Canada’s Best New Restaurants are unranked, focusing on and honouring people, places and cultures that make up the hospitality industry in Canada.”

“Canada’s Best New Restaurants represent the vibrant culinary landscape of this country. We know how much people have missed restaurants over the past 18 months and as part of our partnership with Air Canada we are bringing a selection of unique bespoke Chef’s Menu experiences to diners at some of the most renowned and innovative restaurants in Canada,” said Matt Davis, District Director of OpenTable Canada. “We are helping diners  create meaningful moments around the table, whilst also enjoying best-in-class hospitality.”

Whether the experience is terroir cooking just south of the Arctic Circle or a 12-course meal delivered via an unmarked door in an urban parking lot, the power of restaurants to surprise, inspire, satisfy, and unite is as strong as ever. This year’s list is unranked, with each restaurant or producer being best-in-class.

Here are Air Canada’s Best New Restaurants 2021:

• Best Fine Dining: Pompette (Toronto, ON): The modernist French Bistro offers updated classics, striking new flavour combos, modernist cocktails and a 300-plus label wine list that sparkles with Old World and New World gems. Service is always on point, and the vibe ever-relaxed.
• Best Bar Dining: JinBar (Calgary, AB): Chef Jinhee Lee, already an exemplar in contemporary Asian fusion cooking, mixes the lively cocktail-leaning embodiment of her effervescent personality with her love of bold Korean flavours – Korean pizza, anyone?
• Best Farm-to-Table: Bika Farm and Cuisine (Saint-Blaise-sur-Richelieu, QC): Ingredients travel only a few metres to diners’ plates at this farm table 45 kilometres southwest of Montreal. Chef Fisun Ercan’s suppers span a dozen dishes over four servings, all made from produce at peak freshness and inspired by Ercan’s youth on the Turkish Aegean coast.
• Best Tapas North of 60: BonTon & Company (Dawson City, Yukon): Diners at Shelby Jordan and Dennis Dunn’s Yukon restaurant just 240 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle are treated to international cuisine inspired by surrounding farms and producers. BonTon & Company is part of a Dawson City movement to re-establish local food chains and reverse decades of reliance on goods trucked in from away.
• Best Trailblazer, Tropikàl Restobar (Montreal, QC): The St-Henri restaurant has a carnival-like energy that resonates in chef Jae-Anthony Dougan’s cooking. It’s a celebration of Caribbean, Afro-Latin and West African history and cuisine, all backed up by a rum-fuelled cocktail bar.
• Best Hotel Restaurant: Terre (St. John’s, NL): At Terre, which overlooks St. John’s Harbour from inside the ALT Hotel, chef Matthew Swift has orchestrated a symphony of in-season Newfoundland produce, sourced directly from the fishers, farmer and hunters who work on the rugged island.
• Best Takeout: Sunny’s Chinese (Toronto, ON): From its beginnings as an exclusive experience obtained via a mailing list, to the brick-and-mortar incarnation opening 2022, Sunny’s Chinese sums up the entire pandemic restaurant experience in one brown bag filled with meticulously rendered regional Chinese delicacies.
• Producer of the Year: Tim Ball, subsea forager (Garnish and St. John’s, NF): Part-time bayman and full-time subsea forager, Tim Ball is changing the sustainability and stewardship of Newfoundland and Labrador fishing by hand-harvesting scallops and sea urchins that are enjoyed on plates from St. John’s to Japan.
• Grower of the Year: Les Jardins Lakou (Dunham, QC): Jean-Philippe Vézina grows vegetables typically used in Afro-Caribbean cuisine, inspired by a 2017 trip to the land of his birth, Haiti. Since his start in 2020, Vézina has doubled the number of subscribers to his weekly vegetable baskets filled with jicama, sweet potato, giraumon (turban squash), amaranth, okra, collard greens and African spinach.

Canada’s Best New Restaurants Video Series  

Go to CanadasBestNewRestaurants.com for the full list of this year’s honorees and behind-the-scenes videos of three of this year’s top restaurants: JinBar, Bika Farm and Cuisine, and Pompette. Now also screening on the Canada’s Best New Restaurants and Food TV channels on the inflight entertainment system on most Air Canada flights.

About Air Canada

Air Canada is Canada’s largest domestic and international airline, and in 2019 was among the top 20 largest airlines in the world. It is Canada’s flag carrier and a founding member of Star Alliance, the world’s most comprehensive air transportation network. Air Canada is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking according to independent U.K. research firm Skytrax. In 2020, Air Canada was named Global Traveler’s Best Airline in North America for the second straight year. In January 2021, Air Canada received APEX’s Diamond Status Certification for the Air Canada CleanCare+ biosafety program for managing COVID-19, the only airline in Canada to attain the highest APEX ranking. Air Canada has also committed to a net zero emissions goal from all global operations by 2050. For more information, please visit: aircanada.com/media, follow Air Canada on Twitter and LinkedIn, and join Air Canada on Facebook.

About Air Canada enRoute
Air Canada enRoute is Air Canada’s award-winning travel media brand published by Spafax. An inspirational authority for the global traveller, it reaches passengers at every step of their journey through its multimedia portfolio: print publications including Air Canada enRoute, the iconic magazine, digital channels (enroute.aircanada.com) and many prestigious programs and events. Air Canada enRoute November/December issue will be distributed nationally with the Globe and Mail home subscriptions and by direct mail to Aeroplan Super Elite and Million Miler members. Follow on Twitter and Instagram: @enroutemag, #AirCanadaTop10

About OpenTable
OpenTable, part of Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), powers reservations for the hospitality industry. OpenTable’s software seats more than 1 billion people per year and helps more than 60,000 restaurants, bars, wineries and other venues attract guests, manage capacity, improve operations and maximize revenue.

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