Montreal loves its chicken. There’s classic Quebec-style rotisserie, spit-roasted shawarma, and now lots of options for fried, but many flock to the city’s Portuguese poultry: spicy, chargrilled, and doused in flavour-packing piri-piri.
The dish’s grip on the city traces back to the 1970s, when a Portuguese restaurateur, observing Montreal’s fondness for roasted chicken, decided to combine it with his take on the chili pepper sauce that had made its way to Portugal from Africa. Today, Portuguese chicken is a fixture in the city’s culinary landscape, with dozens of places offering it beyond the Plateau neighbourhood with which it is associated. Order it with fries and a token green salad, stuffed inside a powdered bun (a papo seco), or added to a heaping poutine. Whatever you do, ask for extra sauce and a Sumol (a fruity, fizzy drink, ideally orange-flavoured) to wash it all down.
Here are 13 surefire options to choose from. For more on how Montreal got its taste for piri-piri-slathered chicken, head here.
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