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).

Fox and Monocle, a café serving modern European cuisine in North Saanich, was in the top ten Canada’s Best New Restaurants 2022 by Air Canada’s enRoute magazine (enroute.aircanada.com/en/restaurants). 

In Victoria, Off the Eaten Track offers foodie tours such as the the Eat Like a Canadian and Modern Chinatown Food and History tours  (www.offtheeatentracktours.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, on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list in 2022 and 2020, features refined prairie classics (www.hearth.restaurant). The Night Oven Bakery which uses local, organic and heirloom grains such as red fife, mills the flour in-house and bakes in a wood-fired brick oven, puts out the best breads and pastries imaginable (www.thenightoven.ca).

In Alberta, as Canada’s ranch heartland, elk, bison, wild boar, caribou and beef—which many refer to as Canadian Rocky Mountain Cuisine—are plentiful. Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts has its own 540 acre game ranch to provide for its lodges in Banff, Lake Louise and Emerald Lake (www.crmr.com/culinary). Chuck’s Steakhouse in Banff offers a full-on taste of Alberta raised beef with a platter containing wagyu, Benchmark striploin and 45-day dry-aged steaks (www.chuckssteakhouse.ca).

ONTARIO – Countless Taste Trails And Food Festivals

Home to the Ontario Pork Council, Stratford, famous for the Stratford Festival, boasts a Bacon & Ale Trail along with a Chocolate Trail and seasonal trails such as Foraging for Wild Edibles with Puck’s Plenty Foraging (www.visitstratford.ca).

In Prince Edward County, pop into a cidery, brewery, or ice cream shop for a cold treat or sample fine pinots and chardonnays at wineries in this picturesque area on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Check out the cool cocktail and food scene at the Drake Devonshire (www.thedrake.ca/drakedevonshire), enjoy fresh laid eggs for breakfast at one of the bucolic B&Bs such as Wilfrid Boutique Farmhouse (www.thewilfrid.com) or sign up for a cooking class to learn the tools of the trade at The Waring House (www.waringhouse.com). 

Butter tarts were a staple of pioneer cooking in both Upper and Lower Canada (now Ontario and Québec). The Kawarthas Northumberland Butter Tart Tour has grown to over 50 locations throughout the area (www.buttertarttour.ca). The townships of  Minto, Southgate, Wellington North and West Grey’s have a self-guided Butter Tarts Trail (www.wellington.ca/en/business/tr-buttertart.aspx). 

Ottawa is home to the only Canadian campus of the renowned Le Cordon Bleu French cooking school (www.cordonbleu.edu/ottawa). C’est Bon’s gourmet walking tours are an ideal introduction to the National Capital Region’s vibrant food scene (www.cestbonottawa.ca/food-tours).

Ontario has several hundred annual culinary-themed festivals and events many of which are listed in their on-line calendar (www.ontarioculinary.com/events). 

QUÉBEC – A Goldmine Of French-Canadian Specialties

New France’s first inhabitants ate hearty meals to cope with the rigours of everyday life and the cold winter climate—evolving a distinct home-cooking style over the centuries that became Québec classics, such as: tourtière, meat and pork pie; cipaille, a layered wild meat pie; fèves au lard, baked beans; cretons, a fatty pork spread; tarte au sucre, sugar pie; and soupe aux gourganes, broad bean soup (www.bonjourquebec.com/en-ca/to-see-and-do/delicious-discoveries).

Maple syrup plays a big role in traditional food with some 13,300 producers in the province. In spring, Québécois gather at around 90 cabanes à sucre (sugar shacks) to enjoy baked beans, oreilles des crisse (crispy pork rinds), and pancakes all drenched in maple syrup (www.bonjourquebec.com/en-ca/to-see-and-do/delicious-discoveries/sugar-shacks).

From Petite-Rivière-Saint-François to La Malbaie, epicureans treat themselves to a gastronomic adventure on the Charlevoix Flavour Trail which features some 20 specialty producers and 16 restaurants (www.tourisme-charlevoix.com/en/what-to-do/routes-and-circuits/flavour-trail). 

The Eastern Townships, renowned for its gourmet cuisine, has dozens of local producers and agritourism locations (www.easterntownships.org/tag/296/createurs-de-saveurs-local-producers) as well as a good number of restaurants with a history and tea stops (www.easterntownships.org/taste-the-townships). 

Montréal counts several hundred chefs including many top names. But it is also famous for bagels (St-Viateur and Fairmount) and smoked meat (Schwartz’s and Main Deli). The city is host to many annual food festivals and events, from the most famous Montréal Highlights Festival to La Poutine Week (www.lapoutineweek.com). 

In the Laurentians, the Chemin du Terroir is a signposted trail that takes travellers through more than 226 km (140 mi.) of country backroads and byways, with delicious food and drink discoveries at every turn (www.laurentides.com/en/chemin-du-terroir-0). 

THE MARITIMES  – The Glory Of Seafood

The culinary scene has exploded in Nova Scotia. The two seafood trails—the Nova Scotia Chowder Trail and the Nova Scotia Lobster Trail—offer a collection of restaurant, retail and fisheries experiences that highlight the province’s incredible seafood products (www.novascotiaculinarytrails.com).

In New Brunswick, travellers can build their own trail to farmers’ markets, restaurants and sites via the website (www.tourismnewbrunswick.ca/food-and-drink). There are tasty snacks hard to find anywhere else, like dulse—a salty sea treat—and hearty Acadian dishes. Visitors to Acadian Sturgeon and Caviar will meet owner Dr. Cornel Ceapa (a PhD in sturgeon biology) who raises sturgeon to sell around the world.

Canada’s Food Island Culinary Trail and Dining Guide in PEI directs people to the Island’s distinct regions, each with its own culinary traditions, as well as to restaurants, farmers, fishers and local markets (www.canadasfoodisland.ca/culinary-trail). In Fortune Bay, visit long-time Islander and Food Network Chef Michael Smith’s FireWorks at The Inn at Bay Fortune, where a 25-foot brick-lined, wood-burning fireplace in the centre of the restaurant is the anchor for the “Fire Kitchen”—every dish is cooked over fire (www.innatbayfortune.com). The four-day International Shellfish Festival includes shucking competitions using local Malpeque, one of the world’s finest oysters; about ten million are harvested every year (www.peishellfish.com).

Newfoundland is known for its seafood and traditional dishes such as salt fish and brewis (made with hard tack or dry bread) and Jiggs’ dinner (boiled salted beef and vegetables). At remote and gorgeous Fogo Island Inn, ingredients that most often find their way onto guests’ plates are those that are fished, farmed, and foraged right on the Island (www.fogoislandinn.ca).

THE NORTH – Wild Harvests Under The Midnight Sun

In the Yukon, Michele Genest and Beverley Gray are authors of the books The Boreal Gourmet and The Boreal Herbal, respectively. They explain what you can harvest in the “Land of the Midnight Sun.” At Gray’s Aroma Borealis Herb Shop in Whitehorse, visitors can arrange to join her on a seasonal foraging outing (www.aromaborealis.com). Michele Genest offers workshops and events, along with her latest cookbook, The Boreal Feast (www.borealgourmet.com). Also in Whitehorse is Wayfarer Oyster House, where local produce anchors each dish. 

Whatever their fancy, wherever travellers go in Canada, they are sure to find their taste nirvana.