Royalmount's new Italian dining hall Siamo Noi asks Montreal to think bigger

Montreal’s restaurant scene is one of many faces, and it has its share of battlegrounds for ambition. Having spent over three decades shaping how this city eats, drinks, and experiences hospitality his way, the co-owner of the Novantuno Hospitality group Massimo Lecas knows this all too well.  

Montrealers may remember the hedonistic heights found in Novantuno’s first restaurant Buonanotte, where it all started with socialites danced on tables. But the group’s latest restaurant Siamo Noi, by sharp contrast, represents more than an evolution since those early days. It’s a statement on how they feel restaurants and diners’ tastes have changed since then, made through a sweeping dining hall of refined elegance. 

But first, some supper club history

Lecas wasn’t always a restaurateur, but he was someone who traveled the world through the fashion industry and saw an opportunity. Supper clubs and their combination of dining and nightlife were taking off in cities like Milan and New York. Montreal didn’t have anything like it, so he and his partners built Buonanotte in 1991. It was an Italian restaurant with an edge, a place where Mick Jagger and Leonardo DiCaprio could rub elbows with late-night diners over a bottle of Barolo.

But Buonanotte wasn’t just about celebrities. The restaurant outlasted a lot of trends, scandals, and competitors in its time, and was a magnet for controversy. The police wanted him to keep out alleged mobsters, and the city’s liquor board slapped him with a 40-day suspension. The infamous ‘Pastagate’ scandal saw Quebec’s language police demand he remove words like ‘pasta’ and ‘antipasti’ from the menu; that didn’t last either.

As time passed, so did the relevance of the supper club model. The industry was changing, and so has the aims of Novantuno, evidenced by their restaurants like Fiorellino and Stellina since. 

“I get asked every week when I’m bringing Buonanotte back,” Lecas says. “But I’m not going to bed at 4:30 in the morning anymore.”

Go big and go home

Lecas knows Montreal is celebrated for its intimate, chef-driven restaurants—40-seaters where the food is meticulous, the vibe is personal, and the waiting list is sometimes long—but he doesn’t see this as the only game in town. 

“A beautiful thing about Montreal are these 40 seaters where you eat incredibly well; I travel all over the world and, even at the highest level of culinary cities that we can think of, Montreal goes toe to toe with any of those cities,” Lecas says.

“The only thing—and there's always the asterisk—is that, in my opinion, our best chefs shouldn't be afraid to take a crack at a bigger restaurant, the 100 seater.”

So for Lecas, Montreal deserves restaurants that can compete on a global stage, and Siamo Noi is his answer:

A 150-seat dining room in the high-end commercial development of Royalmount that has drawn comparisons to luxury hubs in Miami and Dubai. A kitchen designed around theatrical tableside service, from carving salt-crusted fish to assembling tiramisu à la minute. A bar that serves as an aperitivo destination on its own. 

It’s not just about size—it’s about ambition that the city's catching up to with spots like this and the likes of projects like Le 9e's restaurant Île-de-France.

The restaurant as experience

Oftentimes restaurateurs will talk about their place of business being treated like it was their home, and as they’re inviting you into it, they’ll treat you accordingly. For Lecas and Novantuno, it has to be more than that.

From the moment you’ve finished an aperitif in their downstairs cocktail lounge to when you step out of the elevator opening directly into the dining room, the scene is set. Designed by Toronto-based Kayla Pongrác, the space is modern but steeped in the aesthetic codes of la dolce vita. Guests are encouraged to start with a spritz at the bar, snack on Venetian cicchetti, then transition to a meal centred around handmade pasta, delicate seafood, and dishes that demand to be shared.

Lecas likens it to a transportive offering, a feeling you could get in Italy or New York. Even the details—uniforms, music, tableside presentations—are deliberate.

“I always say it's a dinner and a show, right? And the dinner and the show is the décor, what you eat, how you serve cocktails, the soundtrack, the uniforms—everything,” Lecas says.

While he’ll admit that some will say Siamo Noi is like “Buonanotte all grown up”, it’s not exactly a fair comparison. 

“There's a lot of evolution for us here, and it represents personal growth,” he adds.

Trial by fire

The name Siamo Noi translates to ‘It’s Us,’ a phrase chanted by soccer ultras in stadiums across Italy. For Lecas, it means something deeper. “It’s everything we are—our culture, our heritage, our childhood memories of our grandmothers in the kitchen, our passion for soccer, fashion, and the Italian way of life.”

Siamo Noi, then, is a distillation of everything he and Novantuno has learned in 34 years of hospitality. It’s a rejection of the idea that Montreal should only be defined by small, low-key restaurants, and a trial by fire to prove that restaurateurs who once built an empire on nightlife can create something just as exciting, but with a different kind of energy—and Novantuno isn’t slowing down.

Siamo Noi is just a stop along the way, as Novantuno’s next restaurant Mare will open in Old Montreal later in 2024 with a focus on coastal Italian cuisine.

“If we’re going to push the boundaries, we have to keep moving,” he says. “Every project is a lesson for the next one.”

As for Siamo Noi being such a bold statement? Montreal may not be ready to let go of its love affair with small, intimate dining—but at least there’s room for something bigger.

Siamo Noi is now open at Royalmount: 5060 De la Côte-de-Liesse Road.