Sports Bars: Champs In The League

Though I don’t have a problem with a visit to The Sports Centre Café or a trip to Hoops, I’m not a huge fan of their ESPN meets family restaurant aesthetic. Sure the food’s tasty and the waitresses are hot, but half the TVs in the place are tuned to golf or NASCAR. I prefer a bar that features real sports; hockey, football, boxing… even baseball will do. Sports that people have been watching in bars for years, back to the days when your only choices were bottle or draft, pretzels or nuts. It’s not that I want to watch the Leafs on a vintage 13 inch B&W with a bowl of unshelled peanuts, but I’d appreciate it if the atmosphere was a little closer to the type of joint I drink in every other night of the week; dark, worn in and comfortable with a unique local charm.


Over the years I’ve settled on a few spots that deftly balance the ratio of flat screen plasmas, chesty broads and beer promos with a great wing recipe, dim lighting and a clientele that loves sports and serious drinking in equal measure. Toronto’s Main Event is good, as is Tiff’s in Barrie, but my favourite by far is Champs in Montreal. Believe it or not the ladies discovered this one. We boys were off in Ottawa watching the US get trounced by Slovakia at the World Juniors. Imagine our pleasant surprise when les filles texted us their location midway through the 3rd period, a franco tavern, tucked away on the second floor of a building on St. Laurent. We met them there later in the evening for the start of the Flyers game and immediately fell in love with the place. It’s difficult to quantify the experience, but I’ll begin by saying there is a living room lounge by the front window that has couches, recliners and more than a dozen TVs, each tuned to a game of your choice. If that’s not enough to sell you on the place, there’s an off track bookie upstairs and enough Habs memorabilia to fill a museum. Don’t even consider showing up sporting a Leafs jersey though; us anglos have historically handed the frogs their asses but these guys clearly weren’t on the battle lines. They were too busy putting away quarts of Cinquante and plates of poutine.