Meet the Mon Lapin Chefs (and their award-winning Sommelier)

Main image, above, 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

What began in 2018 as a neighborhood gathering place – built by friends Vanya Filipovic, Marc-Olivier ‘Marco’ Frappier, and Jessica Noēl - who shared a love of food, natural wine, and hospitality, has grown into one of Canada’s most celebrated restaurants. Quebec's 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.

The just published The Mon Lapin Cookbook: De Toute Beauté: From Montreal, With Love is more than a collection of recipes – it’s an invitation into one of the most vibrant dining rooms in North America.

Over 100 recipes reflect the restaurant’s playful, produce-driven cooking and relaxed elegance. 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 while remaining approachable for home cooks.

Each chapter is accompanied by Vanya’s wine essays, reflecting the restaurant’s philosophy that food and wine are inseparable pleasures. Beautiful photographs, cheeky illustrations and a jumping rabbit appear throughout.

We sat Marco, Vanya, and Jess down to ask them a few questions about the book and the restaurant, and a few other things besides. When you've read the interview you can buy The Mon Lapin Cookbook here.

Pappardelle with Ragù Bianco and Chestnuts. Photography: Dominique Lafond

Take Phaidon.com readers inside the restaurant, what’s it like?
Vanya: The space itself is very festive and jovial but also quite simple. So there's not the decorum that might lead guests to feel intimidated. It just really flows and that encourages organic conversation and lots of discovery. That's the atmosphere.
 
What music do you play in there?
Vanya: We're really into funk and Italo disco. That’s our go-to right now.
Marco: But we also really like to change the music with the different seasons. Alex Landry, the other sommelier takes care of  the music most of the time, and he really likes to play something like Thunderstruck by AC/DC if it's raining outside. At Christmas time we do love a little Christmas music and around Saint Jean-Baptiste Day we play all Quebecois music. We also like a little hip-hop when it gets busy late at night.
 
Is there a song you play to make everyone go home?  
Marco: That's funny.
Vanya: No it's kind of the opposite. We really encourage people to linger and hang out and have another drink.

Mon Lapin, Montreal, Quebec. Photography: Dominique Lafond

Do you get unusual requests from customers you have to accommodate? 
Marco: All the time, yeah. Vanya recently hand wrote a love letter to a woman who was eating in the restaurant, from her husband, who was also sitting with her but had forgotten to write the letter. 
Vanya: Our job is to make these magical things come to life for everybody. So we will always go that extra step. 
 
What’s different about Mon Lapin?
Vanya: I have to say that one thing that really differentiates us from other spots is that a la carte identity.
We do have a menu available if you'd like to just forgo any decision making and let the kitchen and front of house make all the decisions. But otherwise the menu is à la carte, and so that just in itself, requires the front of house to be versatile and very creative and on their toes, whether it's wine pairing or whatever it is that people are drinking along with their food. So there isn't just a one size fits all kind of situation, which is actually fun and stimulating for the team.  
 

Pommes Domino. Photography: Dominique Lafond

Can you describe the relationship between kitchen, dining room, and wine service?
Jess: I would call it telepathic. In the sense that we don't necessarily need to have long drawn out meetings, especially between front and back of house. There is a moment where we check in about the menu so that everyone in front of house is well versed, and then the rest is just very organic, and we riff from there.

Marco:  I think people would be surprised how casually we run Mon Lapin, and that comes from the five of us - the three of us that wrote the book, and Alex and Marc-Antoine. We’ve been working together now for almost nine years, and so we have a very solid core.

Kitchen-Ade. Photography: Dominique Lafond

How has the approach changed over the years, do you do things differently now? 
Marco: I'd like to say no, but at a certain level, yes, because I really do believe that a restaurant isn’t its best version in the first years. People can be nostalgic for the early years because maybe it was easier to get in, but restaurants evolve and get better with time. They're like humans. In the first few years you’re building your identity. You don’t know exactly who you are and you’re trying different things. And that's fun to be around. But then 5 years later, you have a bit more of an idea of what you want to do exactly. We're not big business plan type people. 
 
Of course, we had a business plan opening the restaurant, but not like a set vision. We knew it would evolve and we evolved in a way personally with the restaurant. So, there are things that we used to love back then that maybe we like a bit less now and things that we love now. So it's definitely changed for sure. We used to have no reservations at the beginning. Now we take reservations. 

Tomato Steak Choron. Photography: Dominique Lafond

What’s a typical day in the restaurant like?
Vanya: There's a little bit of decision making in terms of menu. If we went to the market and if we saw something new we'll brainstorm how we can adapt it for the day. And then it's just the regular restaurant life - setting up and having quick meetings with everybody, making sure everything is aligned and making sure that we will have a fun night altogether.
 
The book is kind of a waymarker in the life of the restaurant, how do you see things evolving from here?
Jess:  Well, the restaurant has already had so many lives. That's partially because there was an evolution in ownership, partially because of the pandemic, partially because we expanded the space and reopened it as a new space. So there was a bit of a rebirth there. It felt like a brand new restaurant. 
 
And we keep doing that to ourselves. This year, for example, we moved our outdoor space to a completely new place. We redesigned it completely and changed everything that it was before. I think part of our personal DNA, is to keep always constantly evolving. Whether it's a dish on the menu or something that is part of the actual place, we’re constantly changing it. I feel like it's interesting to have Mon Lapin be immortalised in its current iteration in a book, but that's not to say that it is going to keep being this iteration in the next few years. 
 
 

Oven-Baked Rabbit alla Marco. Photography: Dominique Lafond

There are interesting stories in the book about your local farmers and producers. What do you learn from them? 
Jess: There’s so much adaptation, I think that needs to be learned from chefs in general, and from the people that grow the food and everything that they go through. A summer can affect what we purchase now for winter, and how we adapt our menu as a consequence of what they have. Or maybe taking into account there was a hailstorm and it ruined all their tomatoes. It's so crazy for them. So I think being flexible is the best lesson.

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

Creating seasonal menus when the seasons are becoming so apocalyptic must be challenging.
Marco: Yeah, more and more, and especially Quebec being winter half of the year. We work super closely with them. We're currently fully planning fall and winter around the best produce they can keep for us at the moment. It's very humbling. It would be a lot easier if we liked parsnips! But we don’t.

Mon Lapin, Montreal, Quebec. Photography: Dominique Lafond

What was the first meal you made, or the first glass of wine you tasted?
Jess: It was seven or eight-year-old me making scrambled eggs in the morning for my parents.
Marco: The first thing I cooked was, bug wheat galettes with my grandmother, which was her go-to when we were kids, and which I still love eating. They’re actually an inspiration for the buckwheat cake we have in the cookbook and at the restaurant.

Vanya: I didn't like wine very much, even though my parents always had it and I got to travel to many wineries. I found it all super boring when I was a kid, but the first wine that I remember vividly tasting was when I was 11. It was a 1982 Chateauneuf-du-Pap from Le Vieux Telegraph. It was the opening night of a restaurant owned by one of godfathers of Quebec gastronomy, someone who really put a lot of these products and producers on the map for all of us. And I remember going there on opening night with my parents. I remember every dish that we ate, and I remember vividly that bottle of wine that we tasted, even though I was 11 and wasn't supposed to be having any. 

Leeks Like Mussels. Photography: Dominique Lafond

Who would you love to see in Mon Lapin?
Marco: I would love to have my healthy grandparents at the restaurant, maybe one last time. They didn't really get to understand what I do for a living, and I would love for them to come to Mon Lapin, the way it is now and cook for them. 
 
Jess: Me too. Same answer. My maternal grandparents that I cooked so much with when I was younger and they passed away before any of this adventure really started. That would be very touching for me. 
 
Vanya: I always dream of sharing wine with wine makers who are no longer with us so that I could have some exchanges that I never got to have. But also I love sharing wine with people who are having it for the first time or who think they don't like it. The people I learn the most from are people with an instinctive vocabulary, without a lot of decorum, people who just really give you their straight opinion. I'm very grateful to be serving wine to all kinds of people. 
 

Mille-Fleurs de Courgette. Photography: Dominique Lafond

What would you choose for your last meal on earth?
Marco: That's a hard one and it's weird because she's here right now. But it would be anything Jess would cook for my last day. 
Jess: I don't think if it was my last meal the food itself would be the most important thing, but the people I'd be able to share it with. So friends and family would be important for me.
Vanya: Mine would be just a bowl of perfectly shucked pomegranate seeds, with a spoon. 
 
Is there any food you'd never eat?
Vanya: I would pick a donut. I have this strong aversion to fried dough. I don't know why.
Jess: Marco mentioned it before, but for me, parsnips are one of my least favourite foods. 
Marco: The parsnip joke never ends. One thing I never eat, raw garlic before going on a date.

Sourdough Chicken. Photography: Dominique Lafond

Have you ever set a kitchen on fire? 
Marco: Oh God. Knock on wood it never happens again, but yes. For legal reasons, I have to say it wasn't me. But it was somebody that became a dear friend. When I was at our old restaurant Joe Beef back in the day, this new guy called Benji - now quite a known chef in Montreal - it was his first day and he was roasting lamb sausages or lamb bones in the oven, and he didn't put on a timer. The oven caught fire and we had to evacuate the restaurant, call the firefighters, the whole thing. But then we had a big cleanup and six hours later we were open again.
 
We also had something super Montreal that happened to us - we had our pipes freeze. I don't know what's worse, that or a fire. Because what happens when they thaw? They explode in the walls. So that's probably worse because you really don't know how to fix it. A fire is a nightmare, but like the pipes in the walls, man. That was brutal. 
 

Disco Desserts. Photography: Dominique Lafond

What's the bit about the book you're most happy with?
Marco: I'm super happy with all the head notes and the essays we wrote. Obviously, when people go through cookbooks, they only look at photos most of the time, but I'd love it if people read the things we wrote. They're really good at conveying what the restaurant is about. It's not only food, and that really finds itself in the head notes and the essays.
 
Vanya: The book really communicates our eccentricities and packages them all up in a neat little bow. Just to have this repertoire of recipes, honestly, is such a treat. Like I said, we're always changing, evolving, and it's nice to have this very grown up book with actual recipes that work, that people can make at home, and that can also be a great souvenir from your meal that you've had or that you're looking forward to having. I'm super happy that this book exists now. It's a lovely way to communicate our little universe. 
 
Jess: And since we rarely write recipes down, now it’s fun when we add dishes back onto the menu that we can tell the cooks they can just look in the book.

Get a copy of The Mon Lapin Cookbook: De Toute Beauté: From Montreal, With Love here.