I say Québec, and you would think French, and you would be right to think so. But to think of Québec as only French, or to think of Québec as just like France, would be two dimensional and an error. Québec is all of that and more, a melting pot with a fusion of cultures and cuisines from all over the world.
Québec is one of Canada’s largest provinces with a long coastline, arable land and rich native forest. Traditionally you would experience food like tourtiere meat pie and smoked meat, and in terms of produce Québec is home to many of Canada’s best cheeses and ice cider made from apples left to freeze in the orchards in the depths of the intense Québécois winter. Famously Québec is home to poutine, that miraculous trifecta of hot chips, squeaky cold cheese curds and gravy. You will also know Québec for its maple syrup; it produces seventy percent of the world’s total and a trip to a sugar shack in season is a perfect food lover’s adventure. All food is made with fresh seasonal maple syrup at a sugar shack including tire sur la neige, maple taffy made from pouring molten hot syrup directly onto snow where it solidifies.
In terms of food and culture, in Québec you will experience myriad European and international influences alongside confident and exciting modern Canadian cooking, expressing the local terroir and the terrific produce available. Québec is bubbling with creative culture and they have lots to play with. On my last visit I discovered Radoune gin made with four types of local wild mushrooms. The fun and delicious thing about a food trip to Québec is everything that is local combined with all of the points of difference and the passion with which they are expressed. Some of the best are even more local though – the restaurants expressing the food and culture of the First Nations.