CANADA - QUEBEC - QUEBEC CITY : A FEAST OF SENSATIONS
by Sylvie Walter



Quebecers love fine food – and it shows. Every meal in Québec City(QUEBEC CITY HOTELS) is truly a taste sensation. Although Québec City and its surrounding region are often referred to as North America's fine dining capital, they could also be called its casual dining capital, its sidewalk café capital, its bistro capital, its wine & cheese capital .… In fact, food in Québec City is one of the great pleasures of life – and one of the best reasons for traveling to the city and area time and again.

Québec City features a bewildering choice of restaurants. Old Québec alone has over 100, enticing diners at every turn. French and Québec cooking enjoy top billing, but a tempting variety of cuisines from around the world is also featured.

Typical Québec cuisine takes its inspiration from the hearty country dishes our grandmothers used to cook, recipes handed down from generation to generation. A big favorite is tourtière with its tender, flaky crust and perfectly seasoned meat filling. Stews lovingly simmered over the stove entice diners with their garden-fresh vegetables and flavorful, meaty broth. Cretons – a pork spread unique to Québec – have always been a special treat and are especially good on toast in the morning. Who could resist mom's very own sugar pie – astute visitors sample several pieces while in town to see which version they like best.

Anytime is fine for enjoying Québec cuisine, but it's a special thrill in sugar season when the sap starts to run and the maple syrup harvest begins. That's when Quebecers head to the cabane à sucre (sugar shack) to feast and celebrate at a traditional "sugaring off" party.

Sugar shacks are typically cabins in a maple grove where sap is slowly boiled in big vats until it turns an enticing liquid gold. The maple syrup is then served up on everything from fèves au lard, sausage, and eggs to heaping helpings of crêpes. Visitors can enjoy a taste of tire d'érable, a maple taffy obtained by pouring hot syrup into wooden troughs packed with fresh, white snow. Once it hardens, simply roll it around a wooden popsicle stick for a sweet and delicious treat. Then to work it all off, join in the fun of a country jig or two!

Québec cuisine is a perennial favorite during the holiday season when families get together; you can enjoy it other times of the year at many of the sugar shacks in the Québec City area and at restaurants like Aux Anciens Canadiens in Old Québec, with its quaint and cozy 18th century decor.

Today, however, Québec cuisine has branched out in new directions. Over the past decades – in fact, starting way back in the 1930s – Québec City's culinary scene underwent a startling transformation. Young, ambitious chefs arrived from France and Italy and opened exciting new restaurants. Soon the city was dotted with upscale dining establishments, each striving to outdo the next.

Quebecers took an immediate liking to the refined cuisine these restaurants offered and patronized them in growing numbers. Still today, statistics show that there are more independent dining establishments in Québec than anywhere else in Canada – i.e., fewer chains and more variety.

With local demand on the rise, the restaurant and agrifood industries were quick to adjust. Community colleges began offering new courses for budding chefs. Local farm producers diversified their output. Knowledgeable and inquisitive local diners spurred restaurants on to new levels of creative achievement.

As a result, agrotourism is on the rise in the Québec City region as new producers add their talents to the local culinary scene. Dairy farmers produce gourmet cheeses to rival the best of France. Wine and cider producers sell their products directly to the public. Breeders feature new offerings like duck, wild boar, pheasant, caribou, emu, ostrich, guinea fowl, and wildly popular saltwater-meadow sheep. Farmers offer organically grown fruit and produce and unusual items like fiddleheads. And new bakers, pastry chefs, chocolate makers and other innovators abound. The resulting symphony of local taste sensations has inspired a new type of cooking in much the same way that California cuisine has taken West Coast restaurants by storm.

Local chef and multiple-award-winner Daniel Vézina typifies this new movement with his subtle blending of flavors and ingredients that follows the ebb and flow of the growing season. His restaurant, Le Laurie-Raphaël, is one of the top rated in all of Québec.

The Fairmont Château Frontenac's Jean Soulard was the gold medal winner in Cuisine Canada's annual cookbook competition with his book Naturellement Québec (Naturally Québec). He has walked off with countless awards for his sumptuous fare served up in the hotel's remarkable turn-of-the-century surroundings.

Chef Jean-Luc Boulay at Le Saint-Amour was named Chef of the Year by Québec’s Société des chefs, cuisiniers et pâtissiers three years in a row.

Le 47e Parallèle Restaurant, near Grande Allée, enjoys a co-owner who is also the Pastry Chef. Jean-Luc Piquemal is the only Québec chef to be a member of the celebrated Canadian Culinary Team which represents Canada in all the great world culinary competitions. At the 2004 Culinary Olympic Games held in Germany, he earned a gold medal for pastry making, a unique feat in the annals of Quebec.

A good opportunity for visitors to sample and purchase local fare is the Québec City’s Festival of gastronomy – Cup of the Nations, an annual food fair held in conjunction with the Québec City Exhibition every summer. It features a cooking competition pitting local chefs against each other. Visitors can also stop by the Farmer's Market in Québec City's Old Port, open year round, and at many delicatessens and fine food shops around town and throughout the region.


QUEBEC CITY HOTELS

QUEBEC HOTELS


Photo courtesy Yves Tessier, Tessima.
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