Petit Socco
Stafford Street
Petit Socco may be the smallest serious restaurant in Winnipeg — a dozen seats, two seatings a night, run by a couple who are rarely more than a few feet from you. Adam Donnelly, formerly of Segovia, cooks a seasonal set menu that leans Mediterranean, while his partner Courtney Molaro handles the room and the bar, the kitchen and the bar quite literally the same counter. The result feels less like a night out than an invitation into someone's home, if that home happened to turn out precise, ingredient-driven small plates. Reservations are hard-won and the format is fixed, but that discipline is exactly what lets two people cook and serve at this level.
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Peacock
Grant Avenue
Peacock is the second act of a well-regarded Winnipeg room: in early 2026 the sushi restaurant Yujiro reopened under this new name and a wider remit. Chef Edward Lam still turns out sushi classics, but the menu now ranges freely across pan-Asian and European ideas — charcoal-grilled sea bass in a garlic black-bean marinara, a cucumber boat of shima-aji and octopus, poached halibut with beurre blanc. The flavours are layered, clean and technically assured, and the rebrand reads as a kitchen giving itself room to cook everything it wants to. It is an elevated-casual room doing more interesting things than its unassuming stretch of Grant Avenue would suggest.
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Nola
St. Boniface
Nola looks out onto the streets of St. Boniface through windows that run the length of the room, and inside, chef Emily Butcher cooks like the self-described maximalist she is. Her share plates layer texture on texture and lean on sauces shot through with acidity — smoked-goldeye lo bak go with seared scallops, grilled cabbage with a fermented-radish beurre blanc — drawing on her Chinese heritage, a Vancouver upbringing and years spent with Mandel Hitzer at Deer + Almond. The room is lively and the cooking is generous and precise at once. It is the kind of restaurant that makes the case for Winnipeg to anyone still surprised the city has one this good.
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