Montreal Best
Montreal Best was a curated city guide for Montreal. Each category held exactly five handpicked spots, no more, no less. No ads, no sponsored listings, no affiliate links. Honest recommendations from someone who lives here. The archive keeps the front page in English and French.
What problem does it solve?
City guides are either bloated listicles stuffed with SEO keywords or sponsored directories where the best spots are the ones that paid the most. Montreal Best took the opposite approach. Five spots per category, chosen by someone who lives here, with no financial incentive behind any of them.
How it works
Each category presented exactly five spots. No honourable mentions, no runners-up. The constraint forced every entry to justify its place. Categories covered food, coffee, parks, and other parts of daily life in Montreal, in English and French.
What survives here is the front page, in both languages. The category names, the neighbourhoods, and the guides it once pointed to are all still listed. None of them lead anywhere now. Reading it back, the shape of the thing is the point. It was a map of what someone thought was worth your time.
Whom it’s for
Visitors looking for honest recommendations from a local, and Montrealers who wanted to discover something new without wading through ad-supported directories. Now it’s for anyone curious about what the guide covered.
Tech
Built with Astro. Now a static archive hosted under ozgur.ca.
Frequently asked questions
What is Montreal Best?
A curated city guide for Montreal. Each category held exactly five handpicked spots, with no ads or sponsored listings. This is its archive.
Why only five spots per category?
Constraints force honesty. Five spots meant every entry had to earn its place. No filler, no padding.
Are the listings sponsored?
No. There were no ads, affiliate links, or paid placements. Every recommendation was personal.
Is it still updated?
No. The project is archived. The front page remains here to read in both English and French, with its onward links retired.