This is the best restaurant ever.
We've come to Montreal twice, eaten here twice on both visits, and wherever we travel, we compare every good restaurant to L'Express.
I don't want to hype your expectations, but if you come here, simply expecting a nice meal with good service at a not-so-high price, you will have a good time. You may want to come back again, and you should. Because when you leave Montreal, maybe not the first week after, maybe not the first year after, you may very well find yourself comparing restaurants in your home town - or in other cities you travel - to L'Express.
There are fancier / hipper / I don't know what. If ever a restaurant could make you want to move to a city, L'Express is that restaurant. Because you could afford to eat here regularly, you would want to become a regular, and just the thought makes me want to pack up my life and learn to speak Quebecois! But, like you, I have a real life far off in another city.
So make L'Express your home base while in Montreal. Come for brunch one day, dinner another. If you are so lucky as to have a third meal here . . . TMI alert: I was driving to work a few days ago, steaming about being in traffic, and I remembered that there was the day when I walked up Rue St Denis to L'Express and had lunch. #goodtimes