The Low Road: The Quart Amendment

Montreal · 5 stops · every stop verified in live map data · ends near a bed

Quebec legislated women out of its taverns in 1937, let them back in on paper in 1979 with a clause exempting every tavern already standing, and only finished the job in 1986. Montreal's answer was to make the tavern immortal anyway. The quart bottle survives, priced, on the last stop of this road. Saint-Laurent runs through the rest of it like a spine, from the Plateau down to the Chinatown gate.

1. 1 · The Cold Open
   Le Verre Bouteille
   Alfred Rouleau bought a drinking house here in 1942 and called it the Buffet De Lorimier. The year rests on the venue's own telling and nothing else, but the state quietly backs the lineage: the licence on the wall today is still issued to Buffet Delorimier Limitée. The name Le Verre Bouteille only arrived on 19 June 1996, after a month shut for a refit, and the current three took it on in June 2018, from the founder's granddaughters. Four generations, one room, two names. It is a bar-spectacle, so the unit is a pichet at nineteen dollars and the thing to eat is the cheddar and bacon grilled cheese at twelve. There is a serious Scotch shelf behind all that if the night turns thoughtful.
   pouring since 1942, this name since 1996 · daily from 2pm, till 3am Tue to Sat and 1am Sun and Mon; shows booked through September · verified Aug 2026
2. 2 · The Character Witness
   Quai des Brumes
   Open since 1985 in a commercial block of 1933, and the 1985 holds up better than most founding years we test because it does not come from a plaque. It comes from the current manager, Jules Gauliard-Martineau, naming his own father among the founders and describing the speakeasy they ran in that father's basement first. The building has two doors on one licence holder, 4481 and 4479, and this is the 4481 one, the room with the stage. The five à sept is the institution here rather than an afterthought, and the Friday session has a name and a sponsor. What they will not publish is a drinks list, so the order is a pint of Quebec beer at the bar and no promises about the price.
   est. 1985, in a building of 1933 · every day 4pm till 3am, music most nights · verified Aug 2026
   the Friday session, after the five a sept
3. 3 · The Wildcard
   Barfly
   Fifty people. That is not a figure of speech, it is the licensed capacity on the provincial permit, and it is the entire claim of the Main's smallest stage now evidenced instead of asserted. The room has no website, no menu and no founding date anybody can produce, and the building underneath it is on the assessment roll as a 1996 build on a street where the neighbours are 1868 and 1900. What it does have is a booking calendar, and in 2026 that calendar is punk, hardcore, sludge and noise rather than the Sunday bluegrass this guide used to promise. The fiddle may still come out. We can no longer show you that it does. Cheapest beer at the bar, and stand where you can see the door.
   the Main's smallest stage, licensed for fifty · every day 4pm till 3am · verified Aug 2026
4. 4 · The Cross-Examination
   Bifteck St-Laurent
   The Main's student dive of record, licensed across three floors, a hundred and sixteen downstairs, eighty five up and twenty five on the terrace, which is the paperwork behind the pool tables. Note the spelling: the province licenses it as Biftheck, with an h, and the shopfront does not, which is exactly the kind of near miss that makes a search come back empty. A pitcher of Boreale and the free popcorn is the order; the popcorn is the signature and it is salted like a dare. The story that VICE was founded at one of these tables is folklore, hedged by every source that tells it. The building is on the roll as 1900, and in this city that number is a shrug meaning old.
   the Main's dive of record · every day 2pm till 3am · verified Aug 2026
5. 5 · The Last Call
   Taverne Midway
   This is where the road gets its name. The grosse, the old Quebec tavern quart, is still on the list here at seven hundred and ten millilitres and fourteen fifty, in Laurentide, O'Keefe or Black Label, and there are not many rooms left that will sell you one. The house claims 1927; the building is on the city roll as 1868, which is unusually specific for Montreal and therefore probably real. Treat the 1927 gently, because the same paragraph that carries it also claims the room saw the end of prohibition, and Quebec's ended in 1919. It had already been reborn once by the summer of 2015 under owners nobody has written down. Two hundred and sixty two people fit in here. It is not an intimate room and it does not pretend to be.
   a taverne since 1927 by their own account, in a building of 1868 · every day 4pm till 3am, 365 days a year, five à sept from four · verified Aug 2026 · 🏨 the night ends at Hotel Zero1 Montreal

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