Slick New East Asian Tapas Bar Starts Cooking in Old Montreal

Trendy new small plates spot Bulma Bar has opened on Notre-Dame in Old Montreal, and appears to be aiming to be the hot new thing in the neighbourhood.

Open just a few days now, Bulma has earned write-ups from Le Journal de Montréal (calling it “hyper design”) and miscellaneous consumer stuff website Ton Barbier, bringing great enthusiasm about some cocktails that are “TRÈS bien dosées”.

Bulma is billing itself as serving “Oriental street food”, which in practice is mostly east Asian-tinged dishes — a noodle dish, wakame (seaweed) laced salmon tartare, pork pot stickers, and the “Kim Park bao”, which appears to be a hybrid between a steamed bao bun and a hotdog.

On the drinks side, Bulma is focusing more on cocktails, but playing fast and loose with the already broadly pan-Asian theme — cocktail names run the gamut from the “Harajuku Girl” to “Los Tres Bandidos”.

The bar’s space is perhaps the most impressive element — with design from Atelier Lovasi, it takes a minimalist approach with plenty of concrete and wood used to carve out a range of nooks and crannies for drinkers to occupy.

While it might come across as somewhat of a hip, to-be-seen-at place rather than a gastronomic destination, there’s one promising sign for the food at Bulma — there appears to be a family connection between bar owner David Yeh and very good Chinatown noodle spot Nudo. It’s also not the first place in the area to try out the loosely-pan-Asian small plates and cocktails format: Dim sum bar Jiao, open since the summer, takes a roughly similar approach.

STATUS — Bulma Bar is open at 686 Notre-Dame W from 5 p.m. to midnight Tuesday to Thursday, and 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

• Bulma Bar [Official]
• Un tout nouveau resto hyper design va bientôt ouvrir dans le Vieux-Montréal [Journal de Montréal]
• Bulma Bar: le nouvel arrêt cocktail incontournable du Vieux-Port de Montréal [Ton Barbier]
• Old Montreal Gets a Dim Sum Bar With a $100 Dumpling Next Week [EMTL]