Opened in 1995 by sisters Chahla and Tania Frangié, right next to their father's restaurant. The kitchen never left their mother's hands.
In 1995, buoyed by the success of Restaurant Alep, which their father Georges had run since 1976, Chahla Frangié and her partner, architect Jean-François Potvin, decided to open next door “a restaurant for artists, students, for people who would like to eat on the go at reasonable prices.” Tania, the youngest—then studying criminology and not yet imagining a life in restaurants—joined them. Le Petit Alep offered the same Syrian-Armenian classics as the original room, in a smaller format and at more accessible prices.
In the kitchen since the beginning: Jacqueline Frangié, the mother, born Saroukhan, Armenian raised in Syria, who had never worked before her husband's health forced her to do so. When Georges died in 2005, it was Tania who unwillingly became “the face” of the company: “The first time I had to fire someone, I cried for two days,” she confided to La Presse in 2020, while her mother, aged 76, still refused to leave the kitchen in the middle of a pandemic. The cellar, set up with sommelier Jeanno Gingras then taken over by Alain Paillassard, is among the best in Montréal for natural wine - Le Petit Alep was the first restaurant to serve natural imports from the Rezin agency, more than twenty years ago. In 2025, the Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand.