Page 30 - 2025-2026 Travel Guide to Canada

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LONG TABLE DINNER, PEMBERTON, B.C. •
© MAURICE LI/DESTINATION CANADA
Food: A Taste
of Canada
BY MARGARET SWAINE
The culinary travel scene in Canada boasts delicious
taste trails and unique regional dishes from coast to
coast. Creative young chefs reinterpret Canada’s
regional dishes, showcase ethnic influences and play
with exotic spicing. Heirloom produce from local farms,
indigenous wild foods foraged from the forests, organic
meats and fresh seafood fished from the oceans and
lakes are among their cherished ingredients.
BRITISH COLUMBIA
BOUNTY FROM THE OCEAN,
FORESTS & LAND
Specialties on the menu in British Columbia
include wild salmon, golden honey mussels,
spot prawns, geoduck, BC bison, Fraser
Valley duck and Salt Spring Island lamb.
There is a wide range of guided culinary
tours—sometimes led by chefs—in southern
B.C., particularly near the Okanagan Valley,
Cowichan Valley and Fraser Valley. City
tasting tours in Victoria, Vancouver and
Whistler visit restaurants and culinary
neighbourhoods (www.hellobc.com).
Cornucopia Whistler is an annual 11-day
indulgence of local food and drink that pairs
homegrown chefs with top B.C. producers,
breweries, distilleries and wineries
(www.whistlercornucopia.com).
In Victoria, Off the Eaten Track offers
foodie tours such as the Hip & Hidden
Chinatown and Old Town Tour (www.off
theeatentracktours.ca). On the wild foraging
tours in spring and summer, offered by Swallow
Tail Culinary Tours, participants discover native
B.C. ingredients in the forest: fiddleheads,
licorice fern, big leaf maple flowers, nettles,
oyster mushrooms and wild chamomile, to
name a few (www.swallowtail.ca).
THE PRAIRIES
GRASSLAND GRAINS AND
RANCHLAND MEATS
Manitoba’s Parkland region has a self-guided
Cinnamon Bun Trail with eight trail stops
along the way (www.parklandtourism.com/
attraction-category/cinnamon-bun-trail/).
In season, Winnipeg’s Exchange District
BIZ offers tours to some of their more than
50 delectable one-of-a-kind restaurants
(www.exchangedistrict.org/food-tours).
West End BIZ covers the eateries in the west
end of the city (www.westendbiz.ca/west-
end-restaurant-tours).
Saskatchewan has more than 40 percent of
Canada’s cultivated farmland and Saskatoon’s
culinary scene takes full advantage of it.
Hearth Restaurant features refined prairie
classics (www.hearth.restaurant). The
Night Oven Bakery mills the flour in-house
and bakes in a wood-fired brick oven. The
bakery puts out the best breads and pastries
imaginable (www.thenightoven.ca).
In Alberta, as Canada’s ranch heartland,
many refer to as Canadian Rocky Mountain
Cuisine, wild game is plentiful. Canadian
Rocky Mountain Resorts has its own game
ranch to provide for its lodges in Banff, Lake
Louise and Emerald Lake (www.crmr.com/
culinary).
ONTARIO
COUNTLESS TASTE TRAILS AND
FOOD FESTIVALS
Stratford, famous for the Stratford Festival,
boasts a Bacon & Ale Trail along with a