Have you ever heard of tarte au sucre? Or fish n’ brewis? Have you ever tried them? Unfortunately, dishes like these are forgotten by most Canadians.
I’m no ‘foodie.’ I don’t blog about everything I eat or stand on chairs at restaurants to capture a bird’s eye view of some overpriced plate of spaghetti. But I can speak to how undervalued Canadian cuisine is. I’ve been told many times that Canada has no culinary identity, but our country has developed a cuisine around its unique history and land, which deserves recognition and appreciation.
We are lucky to live in a place where the land has provided us so many unique flavors to play with — BC is home to the world’s finest salmon, Nova Scotia brought us lobster, Saskatchewan gave us Saskatoon berry pies, and Quebec gave us rich dishes such as Tourtière. It’s crazy to argue that Canada has no cuisine to call its own.
We certainly have a lot more to offer than just deep-fried beaver tails. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, we have truly unique flavors that have led to some remarkable home-cooked dishes and tasty treats. Take a step back and look at what’s around you; think about how lucky we are to have these foods at our fingertips. All too often we forget that Ontario grows us purple garlic, PEI provides some of the world’s best Russet potatoes, and B.C is famous for juicy blueberries — our culinary identity has grown around foods such as these, all of which grow here naturally.
This being said, Canadian cuisine undoubtedly includes a lot of ‘foreign’ food. After all, we are a country built off of a diverse collection of families who have come here from all over the globe. Personally, I can’t imagine my life without sushi or nachos.
Nevertheless, the presence of their foods hasn’t hurt the growth of Canadian cuisine. If anything, it has helped our culinary identity establish itself as one entirely different than other nations. Have you ever had butter chicken poutine? Or maple curry? Foods such as these create a cultural hybrid — a blending flavors from here at home and from abroad.
This should be considered the apogee of Canadian cuisine, as it plays off of traditional Canadian flavors and incorporates international zest. And this, if you ask me, is Canada in its essence. Simply put, the argument that ethnic food dominates our local foods is cop-out that fails to see the larger picture.
We need to appreciate the food our land and history gives us, and how those foods have fused with foreign flavors over the years. We are the home of the Nanaimo bar and the Montreal smoke meat sandwich. These foods are not inaccessible; they are all around us. I implore all of you to try a Canadian dish you haven’t before — you may just learn something about Canada’s history in the process.
