These recommendations are highly biased (what on this blog isn’t?), and all the hotels are located in Old Montréal. If you want to stay elsewhere, feel free to point your Google at downtown hotels or hotels on Sherbrooke, but here’s my list of recommendations if you want the charm of the Old City, and you want to avoid the most heavily “touristed” area of rue St Paul E. Prices range from about $170 a night to around $300.

Auberge-style hotels

• Auberge Les Passants du Sans Soucy: we stay here every holiday. Nine rooms, each quite beautiful, friendly and helpful staff, with a great breakfast included.
• Bonaparte: This place has 30 rooms; the best are Terrace rooms, facing the gardens of Notre Dame Basilica. They’re a little more expensive compared to other rooms in the hotel, but the view is wonderful.

Boutique hotels

• St Paul Hotel: an old bank building, I think. Beautiful, high-ceilinged rooms. Extremely cool space. This hotel makes a statement and feels regal, but comfortable.
• Hotel Gault: another hotel that’s extremely cool, although the rooms don’t make the same vaulting architectural statement as the St Paul. But if you don’t need a 15-foot ceiling, and you want a sleek, modern aesthetic, you’ll enjoy the Gault.

Recommended tourist hotels

• Le Saint-Sulpice: We’ve not stayed in this hotel but it comes highly recommended by all kinds of people. Its look is more conventional, but very tasteful.
• Hotel Nelligan: Same situation – we’ve not stayed here but we know people who have and they like it, although I’ve seen a couple reviews say the rooms are small.

Chain hotels

• W Hotel: You either love the W or like it, or hate it. We love it. Last I knew (December 2008; I’ll check again next week), this hotel hasn’t been converted to the new white look of the W, so the rooms and hallways are dark and shadowy. The bars are cool and there are always beautiful people to look at.
• Le Westin Montréal: The new Westin opened in 2009, located at the edge of the Old City. For the past two winters, we’ve walked by the old Gazette printing press facility and watched its transformation into a huge atrium for the hotel. It’s new, and yes, it has the Heavenly Bed. Enough said.

And, based on the word of Montreal Foodie, which we’ve come to trust over the years, it might be worth a free look around, but perhaps not for lunch.

Demers and Jetté will move to the kitchen at Newtown on May 17th. We don’t know a lot about Newtown, but its reputation (if you read the Chowhound boards) seems to stand on its current bar/club/dining atmosphere, more so than the food.

Whatever the case, it looks like we can wipe the slate clean because there are likely to be some cosmetic changes to the restaurant, perhaps a name change, and most important, Demers and Jetté will overhaul the menu.

This brings upheaval to Laloux, which has a long history in the neighborhood. The restaurant languished a few years before the arrival of the duo in 2007. Demers and Jetté are young, but have a list of accomplishments that belies their age, and we look forward to what they plan for Newtown.

Actually, it’s worth mentioning a few other shifts because they impact another restaurant we’ve blogged about here.

Le Local is losing Alexandre Gosselin and Éric Dupuis. Gosselin is moving to the new Bar et Bouef, soon to open in Old Montreal. Dupuis is going to Leméac. Charles-Antoine Pariseau of Leméac? He’s going to Le Local.

Got that? Bottom line, everything we’ve said about Le Local and Laloux is no longer applicable.

One final note about Laloux: a restaurant is an experience that includes more than just the chefs and the meals. It’s the ambience, the waitstaff, the sommelier David Vincent, too, and all were exceptional at Laloux. We’re also looking forward to what happens there.