What to eat Canada? culinary specialties and gastronomy

Canada is a major producer of cereals - wheat, oats, barley - concentrated in the central Great Plains (Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba), with the exception of corn, which is grown mainly in Ontario and Quebec. In August, during the harvest of sweet corn, or corn, the "corn roast" is held in Quebec. The guests taste the corn directly on the cob, boiled or grilled, simply spread with butter and salt, accompanied by a good cold beer. Beyond Quebec, corn is widely appreciated in the rest of the country.
With its 243,042 km of coastline - the world record - and nearly 900,000 lakes, Canada has no shortage of fish, shellfish and mollusks. Cod, halibut, herring, mackerel, sturgeon, trout, pike and several species of salmon are mainly caught. As for seafood, we note crabs, lobsters, shrimps, mussels, scallops and of course the Malpeque oysters, coming from Prince Edward Island and renowned throughout Canada. Restaurants and fish shops are increasingly seeking to select species local to each province in a perspective of sustainable development and protection of biodiversity, with species such as whelk, Arctic surf clams, spider crabs, surf clams, green sea urchins, certain species of algae, etc.
Canadians are obviously big meat eaters: beef, pork, chicken in particular, as well as game and, to a lesser extent, lamb or duck. The central-western part of the country is famous for its cattle breeding. Steak, whether in burger form or simply grilled, is served in many restaurants. If you shop around, you'll find that most of the products on offer come from Alberta, famous for its endless pastures.
There are a number of deli meats, many of them industrially prepared, but also some specialty pates, bacon and blood sausages. Canadian bacon is often prepared with pork loin, not pork belly, unlike in the United States. Peameal bacon is a type of unsmoked bacon from Ontario. In Quebec, we make crêtons, a variety of rillettes, and crisse ears, small pieces of fried pork rind, deliciously crispy.
Blue-veined, soft or semi-soft cheeses, made from raw cow's, sheep's or goat's milk: many cheeses can be found in Canada, mainly in Quebec. We can mention the Oka, produced in the abbey of the same name in the Laurentians, or the Paillasson de l'Isle d'Orléans, a semi-soft cheese without rind produced on the eponymous island. It is said to be the oldest cheese in North America, produced since the early ^17th century. In reality, these productions remain local, and throughout Canada, cheddar and other cheeses made from pasteurized milk are consumed.
The Canadian forests are full of delicious edible products. They were used in the past, especially by the natives who still use them today, and have been gaining in popularity in recent years among the country's restaurateurs and artisans: wild mushrooms, woodland vegetables and fruits, edible plants and flowers, northern nuts and other herbal teas, such as Labrador tea, a plant used as an infusion for its medicinal properties. Fiddleheads are young fern shoots, long consumed by Canadian natives and now often associated with the province of New Brunswick. Their taste is reminiscent of asparagus or green beans.
Wild or cultivated, the berries are very tasty in summer. Blueberries come to mind and are used in many desserts. They are also used to make blueberry wine, which is reminiscent of port wine. Another fruit of the same family, the atoca orcranberry, is the fruit of the American swamp cranberry, which is used to make a red, slightly acidic jelly that goes well with turkey and game. It grows in the bogs of cold regions, just like the cloudberry or chicoutai in Quebec, which looks like an orange raspberry.
Of course, it is impossible not to mention the sweetest of Canadian products: maple syrup. There are many products derived from the maple tree: syrup, sugar, butter, etc. In the spring, the maple trees emerge from their winter torpor to produce abundant maple water that is collected in buckets hung from spouts planted in the trunks. This maple water is then boiled to obtain the famous syrup. The sap, thus cleared of its water by evaporation, becomes increasingly sweet and syrupy. It can be caramelized so that the syrup becomes very thick before pouring it on snow to make lollipops called "maple taffy".
In Canada, we eat breakfast in the morning. Dinner is at noon. We have dinner in the evening, around 5-6pm, especially in the country, or a little later in the city. Breakfast is composed of toast or French toast drizzled with maple syrup, accompanied by eggs, bacon, sausages, fried potatoes and coffee. Some restaurants make this their specialty. Note that, as in the United States, restaurant prices are almost always tax-free. You must therefore include taxes (between 5 and 15%) as well as a tip which is almost automatic (between 10 and 15%).

One of the most common Canadian dishes is the must-try poutine, which originated in Quebec. This hearty snack of French fries topped with cheese curds, topped with gravy (regular poutine) or tomato meat sauce (Italian poutine), is the very emblem of the province. In recent years, poutine has been revisited with surprising variations: foie gras, turkey, ham and pineapple. You can also enjoy a bagel, a brioche ring with sesame or poppy seeds, cooked briefly in water before being baked. In Montreal, it is traditionally baked over a wood fire. This Ashkenazi Jewish specialty originated in Central Europe and has become popular in North America. It is filled with smoked salmon, sour cream with chives, sweet pickles, roast beef, fried onions or honey mustard, unless you prefer smoked meat with dill pickles.
Touton is a lightly fried bun from Newfoundland, often served for breakfast with fried eggs, bacon and white beans in tomato sauce. In another genre, the lobster roll is a hot dog bun filled with a generous portion of lobster salad and topped with an herb and caper mayonnaise. This dish is only available in the summer (lobster season is in May and June), mainly in canteens and restaurants in the maritime regions. For those who hesitate between meat and seafood, the surf and turf is ideal. This mixed dish - a symbol of the affluent middle classes from the 1960s onwards in North America - most often consists of steak accompanied by shellfish, usually lobster or shrimp.
There are also traditional dishes, especially in Quebec, often reserved for family tables and certain specialized restaurants: gourganes (large beans) soup with bacon, duck with maple syrup, rabbit gibelotte with cider (fricassee), cipaille or cipâte (game pie), meat pie with potatoes, etc. Various tourtières, originally made with game, now made with mixed pork and veal, are emblematic of Quebec's rural cuisine. The most famous is certainly the tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean, stuffed with minced meat and potatoes.
Canada has large Asian communities in the country's major cities, especially in British Columbia, a region that is largely open to the Pacific. Until the Second World War, Vancouver's Japanese quarter was one of the largest in North America. There are small restaurants everywhere, not necessarily charming but efficient, to enjoy sushi, ramen oronigri, not to mention the multiplication of izakaya (Japanese taverns), a little more trendy. Vancouver would even be the birthplace of the california rolls, a paternity that Los Angeles disputes. It is also in Vancouver that the japadog was born, a Japanese-style hot dog with various toppings: nori seaweed, teriyaki sauce, noodles, wasabi, etc. The most daring stomachs will also be able to try the sushi pizzas. It should be noted that the very controversial Hawaiian pineapple pizza was invented in Windsor, Ontario, in 1962, and not in Hawaii as is often thought.
Also worth discovering are the Chinatowns in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, which are among the largest and oldest in North America. You will find a multitude of Chinese or more widely Asian restaurants, serving more or less authentic or revisited specialties. One of them is the ginger beef, a Chinese-Canadian speciality from Calgary, made of fried beef strips, covered with a hot ginger sauce. Thunder Bay bon bon is a recipe from Ontario, consisting of porkribs flavoured with soy sauce and five spices and then breaded. But there is a wide variety of establishments offering Korean, Indian, Filipino, Thai or Vietnamese cuisine.

Beyond the traditional Canadian cuisine influenced by European settlers, the northernmost provinces such as the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have wide open spaces that have partially preserved ancestral traditions. Canada's Aboriginal cuisine is made up of products from hunting, fishing, gathering (berries, mushrooms, herbs) and agricultural products. Each population in Canada has used the resources of the area and established its own cuisine, with its own unique food preparation techniques.
Traditionally hunted game includes a wide range of animals that vary by region, such as bison, elk and elk in the prairies and forests. Further north, in the Arctic steppes, reindeer and muskoxen are prized. Dried meat products, such as pânsâwân and pemmican, are central to the consumption of plains indigenous peoples. Especially the former, which is a predecessor of jerky beef. Throughout much of the Canadian Pacific coast, salmon was an important food resource for First Nations people, as were certain marine mammals. Salmon was eaten fresh at spawning time, or dry smoked to create a food that could be stored year round.
In the Arctic, Inuit traditionally survived on a diet of land and sea animal meat, fish and a few plant foods. Meat could be eaten fresh but was often prepared, cached and fermented in the form ofigunaq (walrus meat) or kiviak (seal and seabird meat). Snacks such as muktuk, which is made of whale skin and blubber, are eaten plain.
The amazing berries of the buffalo berry are unique in that they produce a compact foam similar to egg whites, which is mixed with red fruit puree to make sxusem (pronounced "sk-HOO-shum"). It is then consumed in the same way as ice cream. It is known to be a kidney tonic. Other plants are used in infusion like white cedar. Finally, maple syrup holds an important place in this rich palette of native foods. Although it originated in Eastern Canada, it has spread rapidly to the rest of the country. The origins of maple syrup production are unclear, although the first syrups were made by repeatedly freezing collected maple sap. Finally, foods such as bannock (bannique in French), popular with First Nations and Inuit, reflect the exchanges that may have taken place with French fur traders, who brought with them new ingredients and foods, such as wheat.

On the sweet side, Canada has many typically North American specialties: cupcakes, muffins, cheesecakes, cookies, donuts, brownies, etc. You can't miss the cinnamon buns or cinnamon rolls, these cinnamon-flavored buns covered with a thick glaze: a treat with a cup of tea or coffee. Carrot cake, richly seasoned with orange zest, nutmeg, cinnamon and ground ginger, is another treat. Date squares are small square cookies filled with date puree in a crumbly oatmeal batter. Nanaimo bars are named after the city of the same name in British Columbia, on Vancouver Island. They are made up of three layers: a thick coconut wafer and a layer of custard, then topped with chocolate ganache. Nova Scotia oatcakes are oatmeal cookies from Nova Scotia.
Beavers tails or elephants ears are large, flat doughnuts topped with melted chocolate or caramelized apples. The ploye is a type of pancake with a lot of honeycombing that originated in New Brunswick. Sourdough donuts are ring-shaped, vanilla-flavoured donuts that have been found in Quebec recipe books since the ^mid-19th century. Otherwise, we can enjoy pastries with funny names, like the "pets-de-sœur", buns rolled in brown sugar, or the "grand-père au syrup d'érable", a kind of small soft cake soaked in syrup, without forgetting the "pouding-chômeur", whose name is a sad reference to the 1929 crisis, made of a cake base covered with a thick brown sugar syrup.
Originally from Western Canada, the flapper pie is filled with custard and topped with a thick layer of meringue. Bumbleberry pie is filled with a mixture of apple, berries and rhubarb. The butter tart is one of Canada's oldest recipes. This pie is filled with sugar, butter and syrup that caramelizes to form a crispy crust. Unique to the Rocky Mountains, Saskatoon berry pie is a pie filled with saskatoon berries, a tree whose purple fruit is almost reminiscent of blueberries. In Quebec, you can enjoy the tarte à la ferlouche, filled with molasses and raisins, or the tarte au sucre - also eaten in Belgium and northern France - a kind of brioche pie covered with a crunchy brown sugar crust. There are also delicious apple pies, generously sprinkled with cinnamon, and blueberry pies, called blueberry pie in Quebec.
As in the Nordic countries, long, cold winters have encouraged coffee consumption in Canada, which is the tenth largest consumer in the world, with 6.5 kg of coffee per year per capita. Although not always as dense and full-bodied as in Europe, excellent cappuccinos and espressos can be enjoyed in most Canadian cities, which usually have a multitude of coffee shops. A British possession until the end of the ^19th century, Canada is also a tea consuming country.

In Canada, the sale of alcohol is only permitted in government-certified stores such as Liquor Stores. Its consumption is also regulated: outside of private spaces, alcohol can only be consumed in licensed places and businesses. Thus, the consumption of alcohol in public places is generally prohibited, although there is some flexibility regarding open spaces (beaches, parks, etc.), as the legislation varies from one part of the country to another. This is an important detail that can be quickly forgotten in the face of the general relaxation of Canadians.
Beer is the drink par excellence that accompanies all dishes. Canada is a major producer of beer. Several large companies dominate the market: Molson, founded by an Englishman in 1782, is the oldest in America, but there are also Labatt, Sleeman, etc. These beers are served by the bottle or on draught (we say "in cask" here) and are 5°. Microbreweries and other craft breweries are springing up all over the country. Canada also producesice beer , a lager whose final fermentation is slowed by the addition of ice before it is stored at very low temperatures (-4 to 0°C). It should be noted that this process has existed in Germany since the ^18th century and that Bavarian Eisbier has a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), which is not the case for Canadian ice beer.
Surprisingly, given its generally harsh climate, Canada also produces wine in small quantities. The Okanagan Valley, east of Vancouver, has a unique microclimate that is both mild and dry, especially in summer, not unlike California's Napa Valley. It is the second largest wine region in the country after the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario. In Quebec, the main wine region is in Brome-Missisquoi in the Eastern Townships. This region is also known for its production of fruit in general: table grapes of course, apples, peaches, berries, etc.. California wines, as well as South American (Chilean and Argentinean) and even Australian wines, are much less expensive than imported French wines.
Speciality to discover: ice wine, a pure delight! The grapes are harvested frozen, which makes them keep a high sugar content. It is drunk chilled with cheese or desserts. The same process is used to produce ice cider with an alcohol content of between 7 and 13%. On the other hand, the fire cider is simply produced by fermentation of apple must giving a sweet alcohol content up to 15%. Classiccider is also found in the country, but it should be noted that the term "apple cider" refers to unfiltered apple juice without sugar.
The country also produces whisky, often called rye whisky, because historically it was mainly flavored withrye . However, nowadays almost all Canadian whisky is multi-grain (rye, corn, barley and wheat), which is in contrast to the Scottish single malt which is only based on barley. The most famous distilleries are Canadian Club and Crown Royal, founded respectively in 1858 and 1939. The Yukon Jack is a liqueur mixing Canadian whisky and honey. Finally, there are several drinks based on whisky and maple syrup with or without cream, like Baileys. The moose milk is composed of milk, whisky, coffee liqueur, maple syrup and nutmeg, like White Russian, but without vodka. Finally, Ungava gin is distilled in Quebec.