We work in two directions – to show the original taste of fish and seafood with minimal processing. And in combination with different sauces, products and recipes from different cuisines of the world.
The main and indisputable principle of the restaurant is to maintain impeccable quality for each product.
Canada’s culinary heritage spans nearly 8,000 kilometers (“from sea to sea”) and its centuries-long history. Since the seventeenth century, immigrants from Britain, France and the rest of Europe have adapted their favorite recipes to the foods they found in their new homeland. In the recent past, a combination of increased incomes, growing numbers of foreign tourists and an influx of immigrants from all over the world has shaped a generation with more demanding tastes than ever before.
Canadian cuisine is interesting and varied, from Pacific salmon to Atlantic lobster, from Alberta beef to Yukon elk, from Ontario pheasant to Quebec bison. The cities have a rich selection of ethnic restaurants and other establishments serving Italian, Russian, Brazilian, Chinese and many other national recipes.
Of course, you’ll also find examples of the fresh Anglo-Saxon food of the old days, usually in the average roadside restaurant. From one end of the Trans-Canada Highway to the other there are still simple vegetable soups with a suspicious tang of canned goods, the usual green salads, steaks and potatoes, fruit pies and ice cream. But there are many other more original and delicious dishes. Québec’s French-Canadian cuisine, for example, is very rich, ranging from traditional dishes such as tortiera with generous spice and maple syrup pie, to modern delicacies based on regional ingredients, from foie gras to excellent local cheeses.
On the other side of the country, in British Columbia, many restaurants are setting trends and reinventing everything from edible flowers to fusion cooking with an ever-changing mix of Asian flavors and local ingredients.
When you sit down to breakfast (breakfast is served from 7 to 11 a.m.), you will see a waitress approaching you with a cup of coffee. In Canada, this is a way of greeting you, so if you don’t want coffee at the moment or prefer tea in general, be tactful and don’t turn it down. By European standards, coffee in Canadian hotels is often not strong enough, but your cup will be refilled several times.
Typically, guests have a choice of continental breakfast – with toast and various pastries, croissants or scones, plus fruit juice and coffee or tea – and an American-British breakfast, which, in addition to the above, includes cereal, eggs, waffles or pancakes with maple syrup, and sausages or lean Canadian bacon. The latter looks best in a “Benedictine egg” (a fried egg between two toasts with cheese and ham) or on an English bun with boiled egg and hollandaise sauce. In the hinterland and coastal villages, fish and steak may also be served for breakfast.
While sightseeing, take advantage of the Canadian habit of eating a regular sandwich for lunch. We recommend, for example, a French bun sandwich with meatballs, sausage and ham, cheese, salami, onions, bell peppers, lettuce, and tomatoes. A popular alternative to the sandwich is salad or cheese soup.
The evening meal starts quite early, at 6:30 and 7:00 p.m., but service continues until 10:30 p.m. Salad may be served before the main course, which is unusual for someone accustomed to European cuisine. The salad dressings can be surprising and not everyone will taste it.
If you prefer a simple vinaigrette dressing, you can always ask the waiter to bring vegetable oil, vinegar and some mustard and make it yourself.
The attitude of Canadians to dress at the table is very relaxed, only in the most chic establishments are men asked to come in a tie and women to avoid jeans.
Canada’s popular land-based casinos come in all shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common – they offer visitors a chance to escape their everyday lives and enjoy the gambling, the atmosphere, the food and a host of other pleasures. Whether you’re looking for the excitement of the slot machines or the thrill of the tables, there’s a casino in Canada that’s perfect for you. If you’re looking for the best Canadian casinos for cuisine, you should check out one of these top establishments.
Casa Loma in Niagara Falls is one of the Top Canadian Casinos for visitors looking for an upscale restaurant. Casa Loma has an upscale restaurant overlooking the Falls as well as a pub for a quick bite to eat. If you’re visiting Toronto, be sure to check out the Ritz-Carlton Casino, where you’ll find an award-winning chef specializing in Canadian cuisine. For those visiting Vancouver, River Rock Casino Resort has a world-renowned buffet with something for everyone. Regardless of your taste, you’re sure to find something to satisfy your appetite at one of these top Canadian casinos.
The new environmental movement has reminded Canadians of the vast natural treasures they possess, not just in national and provincial parks, but also on the dinner table. If you’re traveling around the country, don’t settle for the standard food, but look for local delicacies.
Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick are all proud of their lobsters, and we suggest keeping it simple: boiled or steamed, or grilled with a dash of lemon butter. Canadians rightly consider this meat too good to be seasoned with fancy tomato or cream sauces. In culinary competition, Prince Edward Island offers Malpeck oysters (fresh, stewed or in cream soup), Nova Scotia responds with fried scallops and spicy milk soup with seafood, onions and potatoes, and New Brunswick offers fried salmon and herring amandine (with chopped almonds). Newfoundland works little wonders with its cod, using everything from caviar and milk to cheeks and tongue.
Potato fritters from Prince Edward Island enrich the picture of this traditional dish.
For more exotic regional delicacies, try fern stewed with roasted lamb and a chewy mixture of dried red seaweed in New Brunswick and salmagundi, a mixture of minced meat and marinated cod with vegetable oil, vinegar, pepper and onion, in Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island produces the original version of gouda cheese and delicious handmade chocolates. For dessert, try blueberries, rhubarb pie and fresh strawberries from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In Newfoundland, choose amazing, amber-colored cloudberries rich in vitamin C.
In Quebec, be sure to try the hearty soup (soupe aux pois) of yellow peas, especially made with pork ham broth. Good onion soup (soupe a l’oignon) is harder to find. Quebec cuisine, based on the Norman and Breton traditions, is predominantly rural and unpretentious.
Its main elements are pork and maple syrup. Among the most common dishes are creations (pork pâté), andouillette aux fines herbes (sausages made of pork liver) and feves ai lard (pork with fried bacon and beans). Maple syrup is used for smoking hams, as a condiment for omelets, and in sauces for game dishes, especially partridge, grouse, and Canada goose. Very popular are tourtiere, a pie filled with venison, partridge or hare with finely chopped potatoes, and ripaille, a dish of game and potatoes arranged in six layers of dough. Typical appetizers include poutine, French potatoes with melted cheese and meat gravy, and guille, a salad in a hot dog bun. The best cheeses include blue Ermite and Italian-style ricotta, made by the Benedictine monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac in eastern Quebec.
Smoked meat sandwiches served on rye bread with pickles and shredded cabbage are very popular in Montreal. Toronto and Vancouver are trying to replicate this dish, but members of the English-speaking diaspora who came to these cities from Montreal in the 1970s are still willing to go there for the smoked meat on Boulevard Saint-Laurent.
Ontario’s countless lakes make freshwater fish – trout, whitefish and pike – the pride of the local table. On the Niagara Peninsula, fish is often baked and drizzled with wine. In this hunting region, roasted pheasant with maple syrup is considered a real delicacy. Around the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Loyalist traditions persist in such dishes as pumpkin pie, which is considered better than any of its counterparts south of the U.S. border. Toronto has many quality and diverse restaurants, thanks to the arrival of immigrants from countries such as Italy, Greece and China, and more recently from India and Thailand.
Corn-fed game and poultry are amazingly delicious in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Try the roast turkey served with red cabbage and local cranberry sauce. Roasted partridge and roast wild duck are also excellent. A cob of delicious buttered boiled corn is a great local lunch.
Freshwater fish dishes include baked lake trout, fried young pike, and caviar – incidentally, in Manitoba they serve it with sour cream, which confuses many. Smoked bream and baked stuffed whitefish, caught in Lake Winnipeg, are recommended.
Alberta beef deserves praise: excellent on the grill, it’s also good in a traditional stew. Calgary has excellent steakhouses, but European tourists may be surprised to see steak and lobster on the same plate, a combination called “land and sea”. A more common combination is barbecued chicken and ribs. Buffalo steaks are unusually juicy; other local favorites are lamb fillet on the bone and pork shank.
For desserts made with wild berries, don’t miss the sour Saskatchewan pie. Hot honey biscuits from Dauphin would be a great breakfast treat.
British Columbia. The pride and joy of this province in general and Vancouver in particular is Pacific salmon. Always simply cooked, it is equally excellent whether grilled or baked.
Local shrimp, crab, black cod and halibut are among the best in North America.
The freshness and variety of seafood makes this province’s Japanese restaurants especially appealing: they make the best sushi and sashimi outside of Japan. For the same reason, Vancouver’s excellent Chinese restaurants consistently have fish at the top of their menus.
Salt Spring Island’s lamb meat is exquisite, roasted in a mint sauce, and British Columbia chefs cook it in a variety of ways, combining it with other fresh local produce.
The culinary boom hasn’t yet reached the Far North, yet foodies and hunters-often in the same person-say the best elk steaks in Canada are made in the Yukon (they’re medium-rare and served with baked potatoes).
If you can’t make it to the Yukon, keep in mind: elk are sometimes served in the outback of British Columbia, as well as in Northern Ontario and Quebec. Try to try this dish.
The best desserts in B.C. restaurants are fresh fruit from the Okanagan Valley: peaches, apricots and apples (we recommend eating the latter English style, with slices of local cheddar cheese).
Be sure to try the Canadian fruitcakes: shells of creamy pastry with a sticky mixture of sugar, butter and maple syrup, sometimes with raisins or pecans.
Maple sugar and syrup are made only in North America, and the forests of the “maple belt” stretch from the American Midwest to the coastal provinces of Canada. The largest amount (90%) is produced in Quebec. In the fall, maple sugar concentrates in “beams” of cylindrical cells under the bark, and sugar sap begins to flow with the first warm days of spring. Traditionally, holes are drilled in the trunk to drain the sap through a tube into a receiving canister. The alternation of cold nighttime and warm daytime temperatures turns on the maple “pump,” which fills the containers for four to six weeks. Then the sap is boiled in burnt wooden vats, turning it into syrup. It takes about 150 liters of sap to make four liters of maple syrup.
Although the old methods have been replaced by modern industrial methods (a more hygienic system of vacuum tubes directs the juice directly into the vats), the vats are still used as part of the ritual at parties that celebrate the end of a long, difficult Quebec winter and the arrival of spring.
Canada’s national drink can safely be called beer. “It’s our rivers and lakes that make it so delicious,” Canadians say. Served heavily chilled, it is closer in strength and flavor to German and Belgian beers than the milder American versions. On the other hand, the cider here is considerably less strong than the European drink of the same name.
Canada’s two major wine-producing regions-the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario and the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia-produce many wines which have earned international recognition. Grapes here are grown cold-resistant, able to withstand frosty winters and occasional frosts until the end of May. French, Italian, German, and American wines are sold in city restaurants, but are quite expensive; only in tax-exempt Alberta can you easily afford a steak with a bottle of decent Bordeaux.
In Quebec, you also have to put up with high prices. To keep warm on long winter evenings, Quebecers mix red wine with spirits, a cocktail they call caribou. Local gourmets appreciate Canadian rye whiskey, which they say should be drunk undiluted and without ice.