Main Meals
Largely swamped by the more fashionable regional-European and ethnic cuisines, traditional Canadian cooking relies mainly on local game and fish, with less emphasis on vegetables and salads. In terms of price, meals for two without wine average between $25 and $50. Newfoundland 's staple food is the cod, usually in the form of fish and chips, supplemented by salmon, halibut and hake and more bizarre dishes like cod tongues and cheeks, scruncheons (fried cubes of pork fat), smoked or pickled caplin and seal flipper pie. The island's restaurants are not usually permitted to sell moose or seal meat, but many islanders join in the annual licensed shoot and, if you befriend a hunter, you may end up across the table from a hunk of either animal. In the Maritimes , lobster is popular everywhere, whether it's boiled or broiled, chopped up or whole, as are oysters, clams, scallops and herrings either on their own or in a fish stew or clam chowder. Nova Scotia is famous for its blueberries, Solomon Gundy (marinated herring), Annapolis Valley apple pie, fat archies (a Cape Breton molasses cookie) and rappie pie (an Acadian dish of meat or fish and potatoes). New Brunswick is known for its fiddleheads (fern shoots) and dulse (edible seaweed). Fish are Ontario 's most distinctive offering - though the pollution of the Great Lakes has badly affected the freshwater catch. Try the whitefish, lake trout, pike and smelt, but bear in mind that these are easier to come by in the north of the province than in the south. Pork forms a major part of the Quebec diet, both as a spicy pork pate known as creton, and in tourtiere, a minced pork pie. There are also splendid thick pea and cabbage soups, beef pies (cipate), and all sorts of ways to soak up maple syrup - trempette is bread drenched with it and topped with fresh cream. And, of course, Quebec is renowned for its outstanding French-style food. Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba are the places to try fish like the goldeye, pickerel and Arctic char, as well as pemmican (a mixture of dried meat, berries and fat) and fruit pies containing the Saskatoon berry. The Arctic regions feature caribou steak, and Alberta is also noted for its beef steaks. Finally, British Columbia cuisine features Pacific fish and shellfish of many different types, from cod, haddock and salmon to king crab, oysters and shrimp. Here and there, there's also the odd native people's restaurant, most conspicuously at the Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the restaurant serves venison, buffalo and black-husked wild rice. Although there are exceptions, like the Ukrainian establishments spread across central Manitoba, the bulk of Canada's ethnic restaurants are confined to the cities. Here, amongst dozens of others, Japanese restaurants are fashionable and fairly expensive; Italian food is popular and generally cheap, providing you stick to pizzas and basic pasta dishes; and there's the occasional Indian restaurant, mostly catering for the inexpensive end of the market. East European food is a good, filling standby, especially in central Canada, and cheap Chinese restaurants are common throughout the country. French food, of course, is widely available - though, except in Quebec, it's nearly always expensive.
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