What to eat Montreal? culinary specialties and gastronomy

Wild or cultivated, berries are very tasty in summer. Blueberries, of course, are a popular ingredient in many desserts. Harvesting takes place in August (Festival du Bleuet). They are also used to make blueberry wine, reminiscent of port wine. Another fruit in the same family, theatoca orcranberry, is the fruit of the American swamp cranberry, used to make a red, slightly tart jelly that goes well with turkey and game. It grows in bogs in cold regions. Its cultivation remains very difficult, as it requires enormous quantities of water to protect the buds from frost in spring and autumn.

In August, during the corn harvest (sweet corn for humans, as opposed to corn fed to animals), the "épluchette de blé d'Inde" is held, a typically Québécois family gathering at which corn is shucked off the cob. Guests eat the corn directly off the cob, boiled or grilled, simply spread with butter and salt, accompanied by a cold beer.

Quebec's forests abound with succulent edibles. Used extensively in the past, particularly by Aboriginal peoples who still use them today, they have been gaining in popularity in recent years among the province's restaurateurs and artisans. Wild mushrooms, forest vegetables and berries, edible plants and flowers, northern nuts and herbal teas such as Labrador tea, a plant used in infusions for its medicinal virtues.

With some 9,000 km of coastline and over 500,000 lakes, Quebec has no shortage of fish, shellfish and molluscs. Fish species include cod, halibut, herring, mackerel, walleye, sturgeon, salmon, trout, seafood and shellfish (crab, lobster, shrimp, scallops). The province's restaurants and fishmongers are also turning their attention to little-known yet edible products from the St. Lawrence, with a primary concern for sustainable development and the protection of biodiversity: common whelk, Arctic surf clam, spider crab, Arctic surf clam, soft-shell clam, green sea urchin, grey seal, certain species of algae, and more.

Blue-veined, soft, semi-firm pasta, raw cow's, sheep's or goat's milk There are nearly a hundred cheese dairies in Quebec. Many of them offer you other products made from their herd's milk, such as cream, butter, yogurt, soaps and dishes prepared with cheese. Among the most common are 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 with no rind produced on the island of the same name. It is said to be the oldest cheese in North America, produced since the early 17th century. Without forgetting the Quebec charcuterie with the crêton, a kind of rillettes, as well as several pasta, bacon or blood sausage specialties.

Obviously, it is impossible not to talk about the sweetest of Quebec products, maple syrup. There are many products derived from sugar maple: syrup, sugar, butter, taffy, and so on. It is in spring that sugar maple trees come out of the winter torpor to produce abundant maple water that is collected in buckets suspended from spouts stuck in the trunks. The maple water is then boiled to obtain the famous maple syrup. The sap thus cleared of its water by evaporation becomes increasingly sweet and syrupy.

A bit of a cliché, but it's impossible in Quebec to pass up the famous poutine. This hearty snack of French fries topped with cheese curds, topped with gravy (regular poutine) or meaty tomato sauce (Italian poutine) is the emblem of Quebec. In recent years, poutine has been revisited with surprising variations: foie gras, turkey, ham and pineapple...

You can also enjoy a bagel, a ring-shaped brioche bun popular at brunch, not least for its firm texture. Made with natural sourdough dough, it is quickly poached in water before being baked. It can be made plain, with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, onions, etc. This Ashkenazi Jewish speciality originated in Central Europe and has acquired its letters of nobility in North America. It's stuffed with smoked salmon, sour cream with chives, sweet pickles, roast beef, fried onions or honey mustard. Smoked meat is smoked beef served on rye bread or in a bagel, with dill pickles. You can order it lean, medium-rare or fatty. Be sure to stop by Schwartz's in Montreal, the perfect place for quality smoked meat . In a different vein, the lobster guédille is a hot dog bun filled with a generous portion of lobster salad topped with an herb and caper mayonnaise. This dish is only available in summer (the lobster fishing season is in May and June), mainly in canteens and restaurants in maritime regions.

There are also traditional dishes, often reserved for family tables and in certain specialized restaurants: gourganes (large beans) soup with bacon, duck with maple syrup, rabbit gibelotte with cider (fricassée), cipaille or cipâte (game pie), meat and potato pâté, etc. A variety of tourtières, originally based on game but now made with a mix of pork and veal, are emblematic of Quebec's rural cuisine. The best known is certainly the tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean, stuffed with minced meat and potatoes.

In addition to the many modern desserts such as cupcakes, muffins and doughnuts found all over the country, Quebec is rich in sweet treats whose origins are sometimes very old, such as sourdough donuts, ring-shaped vanilla-flavored doughnuts that have been found in Quebec cookbooks since the ^mid-19th century. Otherwise, you can feast on pastries with rather comical names, such as pets-de-soeur, brioches rolled in brown sugar, or grands-pères au sirop d'érable, a kind of moist little cake soaked in maple syrup. And let's not forget the pouding-chômeur, sadly named after the Great Depression, a cake base topped with a thick brown sugar syrup. In addition to the classic blueberry tart, you can also try a tarte à la ferlouche, topped with molasses and raisins. Tarte au sucre - also common in Belgium and northern France - is a type of brioche tart covered with a crunchy brown sugar crust. Beaver tails are huge, flat, elongated doughnuts topped with melted chocolate, caramel or whipped cream.

And spring means sugar time ! A special time for family and friends, we enjoy all kinds of dishes cooked in maple syrup, drizzled over pancakes and poured over snow, which turns into a kind of caramel before being rolled up on a stick: this is maple taffy. The occasion is used to prepare a meal of ham, omelette, baked beans and "oreilles de crisse" (grilled bacon), all generously drizzled with maple syrup. There are sugar shacks all over Quebec, but the star regions are the Laurentians, Lanaudière, Montérégie, Centre-du-Québec and Chaudière-Appalaches.

To accompany all this, Quebecers don't skimp on coffee, Canada being one of the biggest coffee-consuming countries in the world. While we often speak of long, light coffees, Montrealers have a taste for fuller-bodied coffees: espresso, cappuccino, macchiato, etc. Tea consumption is less pronounced in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, more so than in the rest of the world. Tea consumption is less marked in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, which is more influenced by British culture.

Beer is THE beverage par excellence that accompanies all dishes, and Quebec is a major producer. In addition to the big companies dominating the market (Molson-Coors, AB InBev-Labatt...), microbreweries and craft breweries are multiplying in the region, producing many excellent beers. In Montreal alone, there are dozens, including Benelux, Brasserie Harricana, Le Cheval Blanc, Dieu du Ciel, Isle de Garde, MaBrasserie and more.

But - surprising as it may seem - Canada also produces wine. In Quebec, the main wine-producing region is Brome-Missisquoi in the Eastern Townships, but there are also vineyards in the Montérégie, Chaudière-Appalaches, Quebec City, Outaouais and Laurentides regions, for example. Californian wines, as well as South American (Chilean and Argentinean) and even Australian wines, are much less expensive than French wines. A speciality worth discovering: ice wine, a pure delight! The grapes are harvested frozen, preserving their high sugar content. It is drunk chilled as an accompaniment to cheeses or desserts.

The same process is used to produce ice cider with an alcohol content of between 7 and 13%. Fire cider, on the other hand, is simply produced by fermenting apple must to produce a syrupy alcohol content of up to 15%. Otherwise, the province also produces classic cider. Then there's pure maple syrup liqueur, not to be confused with the many strong spirits produced in Quebec, such as whisky, gin and vodka flavored with maple syrup. Not forgetting, of course, caribou, an explosive blend of hard liquor, red wine and maple syrup.