Inside the kitchen of one of Canada’s best restaurants, Montreal’s Mon Lapin

Our cookbook of the week is The Mon Lapin Cookbook by Marc-Olivier Frappier, Jessica Noël, Vanya Filipovic and Mireille Silcoff.

Montreal’s Mon Lapin is no stranger to accolades. The restaurant has been recognized as an inspectors’ favourite in the Michelin Guide. It was No. 1 on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list for two consecutive years and placed second in the inaugural ranking of North America’s 50 Best Restaurants.

For chef and co-owner Marc-Olivier (Marco) Frappier, Mon Lapin’s success runs deeper than the honours, any one dish or its celebrated wine list. “What I’m most proud of, personally, is the fact that we opened this as a group of five friends, and eight years in, that group is still untouched and intact.”

Originally part of the Joe Beef group, co-chefs Frappier and Jessica Noël, sommeliers Vanya Filipovic and Alex Landry, and front-of-house manager Marc-Antoine Gélinas opened Mon Lapin in Little Italy in 2018.

Their partnership has led to them growing Mon Lapin organically, adds Frappier. The same core group opened the sister restaurant Rôtisserie La Lune in 2024, which has a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

In their debut, The Mon Lapin Cookbook (Phaidon, 2026), which Frappier, Noël and Filipovic wrote with author Mireille Silcoff, they capture the restaurant’s playful spirit and thoughtful approach to food and hospitality. More than 100 recipes reflect the seasonality of their produce-driven cooking, and each chapter includes a wine essay by Filipovic, the first winner of North America’s Best Sommelier Award in 2025.

“We have kind of a high-low restaurant, like a casual restaurant that has a nice attention to detail,” says Filipovic. “It was important that be communicated through the pages — something that’s not too serious, but it’s just serious enough somehow.”

Mon Lapin began as a 28-seat, no-reservations wine bar. Today, their dining room is more than twice as large, but they find the same pleasure in working within constraints. The tiny size of their original kitchen meant they worked with small animals only. Now they’re in a larger kitchen with the same ethos, which is driven by the seasons as much as the seafood and produce. They don’t serve beef, but there’s lamb in the spring and pork in the fall.

Mon Lapin’s dishes don’t start as recipes, but are created on the fly during service or with very little advance discussion, says Frappier. “That’s when we thrive, and that’s when we come up with our best ideas, I find. We’re not a caviar-driven restaurant. We’re not a gold leaf-driven restaurant. It’s not the type of restaurant we are. Cooking with restraint, right now, in 2026, with the price of food and the space constraints, all of that, I love it.”

Before they wrote The Mon Lapin Cookbook, Frappier and Noël didn’t keep written records of dishes. Developing the recipes for the book required backtracking — relying on memories and photos, and talking to people who used to work with them.

All of the recipes except for one — oven-baked rabbit alla Marco, Frappier’s go-to when he and his wife, Filipovic, host at home — have been served at the restaurant. They cook quite simply at Mon Lapin, so most of the recipes are within reach in a home kitchen, says Frappier.

“There are some that are a little bit more complicated, and that will require a bit more equipment, but we wanted to have a balance, to have some that are quite simple,” adds Noël. “It’s about going to the market and finding the right ingredient, really, and just letting that be showcased.”

Frappier jokes that they almost called the book Brown Butter, Smoked Eel, and Buckwheat — ingredients almost always in use at Mon Lapin.

“Our friends laugh at us because we do use a lot of smoked eel and do use a lot of buckwheat. Smoked eel is a traditional way of preserving this really unused fish that’s present in the St. Lawrence Estuary, and buckwheat, which is also sometimes called black wheat, is used traditionally in food in Quebec.”

The name Mon Lapin (“my rabbit”) is an homage to winemaker Jean-Francois Ganevat in France’s Jura region, who “has an endearing habit of calling anyone who enters his door mon lapin.” Filipovic harvested grapes on a neighbouring property in 2009 and has gone back to the Jura every year since.

“It was just an extremely high-quality, low-fuss way of life where every single detail was really reflected upon and really celebrated, and just a real connection to nature in a really big way,” says Filipovic. “It felt very connected to the way that we all would like to live and work.”

Serves: 4 as a starter or makes a big sharable salad

For the mushroom purée:
50 g (2 oz) beef fat
250 g (9 oz) white button mushrooms, sliced and the chanterelle trimmings below
1 shallot, sliced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
75 mL (2 1/2 fl oz) white wine
75 mL (2 1/2 fl oz) chicken broth
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the yellow beans:
450 g (1 lb) yellow wax beans
1 tbsp olive oil
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
Salt, to taste

For the chanterelles:
1 tbsp beef fat
100 g (3 1/2 oz) button chanterelles, brushed and trimmed (keep the trimmings for the purée)
2 tsp cider vinegar
Salt, to taste

To serve:
As little or as much sheep’s milk blue cheese as you like, cut into thin wedges
Freshly cracked black pepper

Melt the beef fat in a large pan over a high heat, add the sliced mushrooms and trimmings and cook for 2 minutes, then add the shallot and garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Deglaze with the white wine and chicken broth and cook for 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Put the mushroom mix in a blender and blend on high speed until completely smooth. Reserve the mushroom purée in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Prepare an ice bath for the beans. Bring a medium saucepan of water to the boil. Generously salt the water and blanch the yellow beans for 1-2 minutes — they should still have a bit of bite. Drain the beans and transfer to the ice bath to stop them cooking further. When cooled, remove the beans from the iced water and pat dry with paper towels. Keep at room temperature until ready to serve.

Prepare a charcoal grill. Melt the beef fat in a small pan and put the chanterelles in a small bowl. Pour in the melted beef fat and season with salt. Place the mushrooms on the hot charcoal grill (be careful not to pour the contents of the bowl onto the grill — the flames love the beef fat) and cook for 3-5 minutes. Keep moving the chanterelles around to prevent them from burning. Place the cooked chanterelles in a bowl and season with the vinegar and salt. Keep in a warm place.

Put the yellow beans in a bowl and season them with vinegar and salt. Cover the base of a large plate with the mushroom purée and top with the seasoned yellow beans, grilled chanterelles and blue cheese. Add a final crack of black pepper and drizzle some of the leftover hot beef fat from the chanterelles.

Makes: 9 biscuits

75 g (2 3/4 oz) radish tops
280 mL (10 fl oz) buttermilk
285 g (10 oz) butter, very cold
450 g (1 lb) all-purpose flour
26 g (scant 1 oz) baking powder
6 g (scant 1/4 oz) baking soda
8 g (1/4 oz) salt
30 g (1 oz) sugar
50 mL (1 3/4 fl oz) chicken fat (schmaltz), melted, or heavy (whipping) cream

Blanch the radish tops in a pan of boiling salted water for 30 seconds, then drain and squeeze dry. Put the blanched radish tops and buttermilk in a blender and blend on high speed for 1 minute, until very smooth. Transfer to a bowl and keep in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Using a box grater, shave the butter and place it on a tray, keeping it flat. Keep the butter in the freezer while you do the next steps. We want the butter to be as cold as possible (without it freezing) before making the dough.

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Remove the grated butter from the freezer and toss it in the flour mix. Then, with (cold) hands or a wooden spoon, add the green buttermilk and mix lightly until the dough has barely come together. Turn the dough onto a flat surface and roll it out lightly with a rolling pin to further incorporate the butter with the flour. Roll the dough into a rectangle and fold it into thirds, like a letter, then roll it out once more into a rectangle and repeat the letter fold. Roll it out one final time into a 30 x 20 cm (12 x 8 inch) rectangle with a thickness of 2 cm (1 inch). Cut the dough into 9 equal squares.

Preheat the oven to 220C (425F).

Place the squares on a parchment-lined baking tray and cool in the freezer for about 15 minutes. The colder the dough, the puffier it will get.

Before baking, brush each biscuit with chicken fat or cream. Bake for 15 minutes until puffy and golden brown (they should almost double in size), then transfer to a wire rack to cool. The biscuits will keep in a cool place, in a sealed container, for up to 2 days, or can be frozen.

Serves: 4-6 as a main course

For the sugo di baccalà:
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) salt cod
100 mL (3 1/2 fl oz) olive oil
100 g (3 1/2 oz) onions, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, smashed
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) zucchini, grated on a box grater
Large handful of basil leaves
Salt, to taste

For the strozzapreti:
1 x quantity strozzapreti (recipe follows)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
50 g (2 oz) Pecorino Romano, finely grated

Soak the salt cod in fresh cold water in the refrigerator for 48 hours, changing the water four times to desalt the cod. You can ask your fishmonger what the ideal soak time is for baccalà — depending on the salt level, it can take less or more time. When fully purged, drain and dice the baccalà into 1 cm (1/2 inch) cubes.

Heat the olive oil in a deep, large pan over a medium-low heat until hot but not smoking; add the onions and smashed garlic cloves and cook gently for 10 minutes, or until the onions are fully translucent — you do not want colouration on the onions and garlic for this recipe, as it will bring a bitter taste to the ragù. If the alliums start colouring, it’s not the end of the world; just add a few drops of water to your pan to stop the caramelization. Once the alliums are cooked, add the grated zucchini, season lightly with salt and turn the heat up to medium-high. Cook the zucchini for 5 minutes, then add the cubed baccalà to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes. At this point, the fish should be fully cooked and have released a little bit of water. Turn off the heat and add all the basil leaves. Set aside while cooking the strozzapreti, or reserve for the following day.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Drop the strozzapreti in the water and cook for 3 minutes until the pasta is cooked but still toothsome. While the pasta is cooking, heat up the ragù over a medium-high heat, tasting and adjusting the seasoning if needed. Once the strozzapreti is cooked, strain it, keeping some of the pasta water. Take the ragù off the heat and stir in the strozzapreti, lemon juice and Pecorino Romano until emulsified. Adjust the seasoning one last time.

Divide the pasta among plates and garnish each one with a basil leaf. Every time we plate a pasta at home, we tend to leave a little bit in the bottom of the pan. Maybe it’s for good conscience; maybe it’s to have something to go back to. Buon appetito!

Serves: 6-8

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) tipo “00” flour, plus extra for dusting
50 g (2 oz) Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated
50 g (2 oz) fine breadcrumbs
220 mL (7 3/4 fl oz) water, at room temperature
1 egg, beaten

Combine the “00” flour, Parmigiano Reggiano and breadcrumbs in a bowl. Mix thoroughly, then form a well in the centre and add the water and egg to the well. Using a fork and working carefully, gradually incorporate the dry ingredients into the liquid. Once the dough begins to come together, transfer it to a wooden board and knead for about 5 minutes, until all the flour is fully incorporated and the dough is smooth and homogeneous. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for 1 hour.

Lightly flour your work surface and divide the pasta dough into four equal portions. Flatten each piece slightly with a rolling pin, until it’s thin enough to pass through the widest setting of the machine. Roll the dough through the machine on the thickest setting initially, gradually reducing the thickness until it reaches 2 mm. Cut it into strips about 1.5 cm (3/4 inch) wide. Make small batches at a time and cover the dough that is not in use with plastic wrap.

Now for the fun part: gently twist each strip between the palms of your hands to form the classic strozzapreti shape. Cut them into lengths of about 8 cm (3 inches) and place them on a floured tray. You can cook them right away, keep them in the refrigerator — covered with a clean kitchen towel — for up to 3 days, or freeze for later use.

Recipes adapted from The Mon Lapin Cookbook ©2026 by Marc-Olivier Frappier, Jessica Noël, Vanya Filipovic and Mireille Silcoff. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.