The Mon Lapin team on The Mon Lapin Cookbook

“Obviously when people go through cookbooks, they often only look at the photos but I'm super happy with all the head notes and the essays we wrote. They're really good and tell people what the restaurant is really about, aside from the recipes for the dishes we serve.”

Mon Lapin, Montreal, Quebec. Photography: Dominique Lafond

As Mon Lapin co-founder and co-chef Marc-Olivier ‘Marco’ Frappier tells Phaidon.com, The Mon Lapin Cookbook: De Toute Beauté is more than a collection of recipes, it’s an invitation into one of the most vibrant dining rooms in North America. It was created by co-chefs Frappier and Jessica Noël, and Marco’s wife Vanya Filipovic, the restaurant’s sommelier. 

Radishes and Chicken Liver. Photography: Dominique Lafond

This highly visual and readable debut book captures the spirit of the Montreal wine bar-restaurant Mon Lapin (which means “my bunny”). What began in 2018 as a neighborhood gathering place – built by friends with a shared love of food, natural wine, and hospitality – has grown into one of the continent’s most celebrated restaurants for locals and tourists alike. Mon Lapin has earned its reputation through creativity, famously warm service, and a deep respect for ingredients.

It was ranked #1 by Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants in 2023 and #2 on the debut North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2025, which also anointed Vanya Best Sommelier in North America.

Pommes Domino. Photography: Dominique Lafond

Over 100 recipes reflect the Quebec restaurant’s playful, produce-driven cooking and relaxed elegance. Organised into seven chapters the book invites readers to experience the rhythm and recipes of the Mon Lapin kitchen. Signature dishes such as Sourdough Chicken and Buckwheat Celebration Cake showcase the restaurant’s bold flavors and exacting techniques, while remaining approachable for home cooks.

Significantly, each chapter is accompanied by Vanya’s wine essays, reflecting the restaurant’s philosophy that food and wine are inseparable pleasures.  

Kitchen-Ade. Photography: Dominique Lafond

As Vanya tells Phaidon.com. “The thing I'm most happy about is how the book really communicates our eccentricities but also packages them all up in a neat little bow. We're always changing, evolving, so it's nice to have this very grown up book with actual recipes that work that people can make at home, but also that can be a great souvenir of a meal they’ve had or that they're looking forward to having. I'm super happy that this book exists. It's a lovely way to share our little universe.”

 
The Mon Lapin team, with associates of the restaurant. Photography: Dominique Lafond Left to right, starting at third from left: Vanya Filipovic, Marc-Olivier ‘Marco’ Frappier, Jessica Noēl

“And since we rarely write stuff down, in terms of recipes,” adds co-chef Jessica Noël, “now when we add dishes back onto the menu, we can just tell the cooks, we have the recipe for that, look in the book!”

 
Pappardelle with Ragù Bianco and Chestnuts. Photography: Dominique Lafond

Equal parts cookbook and love letter to Montreal, The Mon Lapin Cookbook sits as comfortably on the bedside table as it does the kitchen table. Deliciously irreverent, it celebrates the joy and the magic that happens when great food and wine meet. The foreword is written by Riad Nasr, a Montreal native and lauded co-chef of Frenchette, Le Veau d’Or and Wild Cherry in New York.

Sourdough Chicken. Photography: Dominique Lafond

But what, for each of the co-founders is the taste of Quebec – on the plate and in the glass?
 
“Good question,” says Marco. “There's certainly a joie de vivre to the food. It's quite a recent food culture, but it's very vibrant. Even though our grandparents and great grandparents have been doing it forever, I feel that more and more Québécois are starting to understand the benefits of eating seasonally. We definitely eat more meat in the winter than we do in the summer when the gardens are full and when people go to the lake fishing and you have lighter meals. 
 

Buckwheat Polenta, Oyster Mushrooms and Foie Blond. Photography: Dominique Lafond

“On the wine side,” Vanya adds, “the taste of Quebec is like a very adventurous and wild, like a high acid, very zippy, high energy wine which has many Nordic properties, whether that's low alcohol or those red fleshed hybrid grapes that are pigment-filled, and almost black in the glass. That is what Quebec tastes like in the glass.”
 
Find out more about the new (and established) tastes of Quebec by geting a copy of The Mon Lapin Cookbook, here.