Canada

Poutine

Fries under gravy and fresh cheese curds that squeak if they are fresh enough.

Butter tart

Gooey, buttery pastry tarts with a caramelized sugary filling and flaky crust.

Tourtière

Québec meat pie of spiced pork and beef, baked for réveillon on Christmas Eve.

Montreal smoked meat

Brisket cured ten days, smoked and steamed, cut by hand onto rye with mustard.

Montreal bagel

Thinner and sweeter than New York's, boiled in honey water and baked in a wood oven.

Nanaimo bar

No-bake layers of coconut crumb, custard buttercream and set chocolate.

Peameal bacon

Brined pork loin rolled in cornmeal, griddled and stacked in a bun at St. Lawrence Market.

Maple syrup

Sap boiled forty to one, graded by colour, poured on snow at the sugar shack.

Bannock

Pan-fried or baked flatbread, Indigenous-adapted and still made at every gathering.

Atlantic lobster

Cold-water lobster boiled in seawater and eaten with drawn butter on the wharf.

Malpeque oysters

World-famous, buttery oysters harvested from the pristine Malpeque Bay estuary.

Fish chowder

Hearty, creamy chowder loaded with local fish, potatoes, and briny seafood chunks.

Split pea soup

Yellow pea soup with salt pork, the habitant kitchen's winter default.

Ketchup chips

Tomato-red crisps unavailable south of the border and demanded by expatriates.

BeaverTails

Stretched fried dough with cinnamon sugar, eaten skating on the Rideau Canal.

Saskatoon berry pie

Prairie berries with an almond note, baked into a pie darker than blueberry.

Caesar

Vodka with clam-and-tomato juice, celery salt rim, invented in Calgary in 1969.

Ice wine

Grapes pressed while frozen on the vine, concentrated to syrup, mostly from Niagara.

Rye whisky

Blended whisky still called rye out of habit, drunk neat or in a Manhattan.

Cretons

Coarse pork and onion spread eaten cold on toast at a Québec breakfast.