When is a Cuisine a Canadian Cuisine?

[jamiemaw]

jbonne,

seafoodish overlap

We call that spawning down here.

Cheers,

Jamie

[Daddy-A]

Steve, et al,

I'm just wondering why this need to label our cuisine?

Other cuisines of the world (e.g. French, Italian, Indian, Chinese, etc.) developed under completely different circumstances than those in North America.

First, cultures of subsistence are often the catalysts for major cuisines. There is a school of thought that all great cuisines developed out of poverty, i.e. a need to utilize food supplies in new and resourceful ways. How else do you explain sweetbreads or fois gras (I'm sure food historians will pipe in here to correct me )?

Second, accessibility. Regionalized cuisines were bound to develop with specific geographic confines. The French couldn't have developed uses for truffles if truffles weren't found in France.

Today, societies have a much tougher time identifying their own uniqueness, not just in food, but in the arts and other cultural endeavors as well. Why? Because the two previously mentioned conditions are not being met.

First, our society has affluence like no other in history. Fast food (both McD's & Lean Cuisine varieties) are available and inexpensive. Time is short because we're working, so there is little time to cook, let alone be creative. We leave the creativity to those we pay. As Steve has said, the cuisine must come from the people ... and frankly we're just too busy (or lazy.)

Accessibility has the biggest impact. Even though local ingredients are available, its just as easy to pick up something grown across the country. Do you think someone in Vancouver in the 1900's was likely to have enjoyed lobster from NS, or mussels from PEI? I even have friends who fly in smoked meat from Montreal! (sepaking of which ... where IS that pastrami Neil promised me???) I find it particularly interesting that local ingredients are being sold like specialty items in local restaurants these days.

My point is this ... I don't think a Canadian cuisine can develop to the extent a French cuisine has simply because it can't. It's not good or bad ... just IS.

Arne

[intraining]

ok, i've read this thread, but i still need some food examples that make them canadian ????????

yes, i am completely ignorant here but am eager to learn something.

[jamiemaw]

Welcome intraining,

Here's a start, as painful as it is to quote this guy:

So Quebec foie gras, cheeses and summer micro greens are found next to BC coastal halibut and sable, Pemberton tomatoes, golden beets and fingerling potatoes, Okanagan stone fruits, Fraser Valley duck, Alberta beef, Okanagan wines and well . . . you get the point.

I realize these are ingredients rather than finished dishes, but it is they that, as unfettered as possible, when they collaborate on the plate define the notion.

If you want to really examine locality, and all its permutations, bend your palate towards Raincity Grill, Mission Hill, Fresco, Sobo, C, West, Chef Bernard's, Fifty Two 80, Feenie's, Lumiere, Diva at the Met, Parkside etc.

Cheers,

Jamie

Edited September 3, 2004 by jamiemaw (log)

[intraining]

oh damn,

i did read most of the thread and i did recall reading quebec foie gras, so my mistake. i'll make note of the suggestions too.

i did recently taste baby golden beets, i liked them raw.

i would like to get to know what native americans/canadians have been making forever. going to do some research.

and intraining is literal so excuse my slowness.

thx jamie

[beans]

Tofino is part of the Pacific Rim, Alberni vallely, Uclulet, Tofino, Barkely Sound, Ect

Over a hundred white man years of history, but 1000 years of native and others history.

steve

Great thread.

My grandfather has been credited as a well respected Tlingit elder and honorary U of Alaska professor. He's been published and works very hard to continue the cultural history, traditions and teachings. Interestingly, there is evidence of the native cultures dating as far back as 5,000 years ago.

Okay, enough anthrolpological history.

If we were to throw the State of Alaska into this mix, there are very distinct differences of cuisine as varied as region -- the Southeast, Aleutians, South Central, Matanuska Valley, Interior and North Slope. (did I forget one?!?)

These differences are entirely due to locale and what is able to be harvested (via fishing, hunting or foraging) which coincides with that particular native culture. Consider the gold rushers too.

However modern Alaska is quite influenced by those cultures that have moved in. Russian, Mexican, Japanese and Filipino influences much of the little town of Sitka where I have grown up and lived.

[Jensen]

I'm just wondering why this need to label our cuisine?

Because we are Canadian, of course! Isn't this in our nature, self-examination and fretting and more self-examination? Why shouldn't the same apply to our food?

[jamiemaw]

beans,

If we were to throw the State of Alaska into this mix, there are very distinct differences of cuisine as varied as region -- the Southeast, Aleutians, South Central, Matanuska Valley, Interior and North Slope. (did I forget one?!?)

Well, yes. I mean, c'mon. Cruise cuisine.

jbonne threw a great link up to the NYT earlier in the thread. It's about an Alaskan woman who, when she runs out of staple foods, takes a 600 mile round trip to Anchorage to go grocery shopping, in this case for flour and eggs. But I must share a guilty secret with you. A couple of weeks ago, when I first saw this article, I was lying in an extremely comfortable hotel bed, eating rather creamy room service shirred eggs, rashers of double-smoked bacon and croissants with broad smears of sweet butter and disturbingly good raspberry preserves. The coffee was strong, the company not unpleasant.

I felt it important to share with you that culinary journalism isn't always just the plain hard drudge that so many make it out to be.

Of course I damn near choked when I read she'd gone that distance just for some flour and eggs. What could she have been thinking? You see when we're confronted with 600-mile grocery expeditions, what we typically do around here is just ask the Domino's guy if he wouldn't mind picking the eggs up on the way. And then when he finally turns up the next day it's all free.

Cheers,

Jamie

Edited September 3, 2004 by jamiemaw (log)

[stovetop]

My point is this ... I don't think a Canadian cuisine can develop to the extent a French cuisine has simply because it can't. It's not good or bad ... just IS.

Our Cuisine can developed and is developing as we speak, new cooks are arriving everyday and there is a whole new breed of Canadian cooks coming through the ranks ready to interpret their own interpretation of Canadian cuisine.

It is hard to pigeonhole OUR style of food, there is no strict style of interpretation like in French Cuisine, it can be a freestyle movement of interpretation of the foods around us, taking out experiences and market demands and putting a menu together that can make us a living.

Art for Art sake, yes this can happen, but it is hard to survive on a interpretive style of restaurant in the Vancouver region, Restaurateurs are very conservative and stay very straight and narrow, the market is very small in the region and because of the spread out population in the region each market is relatively small, and not that amount of movement occurs from region to region.

The Tourism industry is very important to the region, it brings the people to the Cities and they are eating out, so are very important to the customer mix, the Chef- Artist restaurant relies heavily on this sector for their living without this business they would not exist.

The big City of New York has so much population that each market can exist on its own, very specialized styles of restaurants can always find a market niche for whatever extreme style that it is trying to interpret, this happening can not exist in the Van market, cause the population does not warrant the same effects population can have on the market.

Vancouver is just too small of a market to have very specialized restaurants without the assistance of the Tourist Market. It is the key to existence of every restaurant that competes in this marketplace.

[gus_tatory]

Canadian cuisine is:

--Brome Lake duck with maple syrup and partridgeberries

--Montreal smoked meat, bagels

--Nova Scotia smoked salmon (lox)

--wild pleurotte and morille mushroms from the forest

the tagline of the Montreal restaurant Les Chevres is "le bonheur est dans le potager", meaning "happiness is in your garden kitchen", and Canada is blessed--for at least 3-4 months out of the year hehe--with some of the world's most awesome ingredients.

but no truffles.

[stovetop]

Canadian Cuisne is when a Canadian chef uses local ingrediants and developes a menu that reflects their enviroment and cultures.

steve

[jamiemaw]

Canadian Cuisne is when a Canadian chef uses local ingrediants and developes a menu that reflects their enviroment and cultures.

steve

←

Hear, hear Steve. A short and concise definition. Although gus_tatory seems to feel that Quebec ingredients doth a Canadian Cuisine make. What's become very clear on this thread is that any definition is ingredient-driven and somewhat local, i.e. as gus_tatory says, Canada has a more clearly defined cuisine for three or four months of the year. In the opinion of one of Toronto's most senior food writers, Toronto does not have a regional cuisine that could be clearly identified with it and it alone--is that just to do with a unencouraging climate?

And not to create a red (tandoori) herring, so to speak, but what happens when, say, an Indo-Canadian chef uses mainly local ingredients to create a take on his mother cuisine that is specific to this region and not India--it couldn't be found there.

Just wondering,

Jamie

Edited September 7, 2004 by jamiemaw (log)

[stovetop]

And not to creat a red herring, so to speak, but what happens when, say, an Indo-Canadian chef uses mainly local ingredients to create a take on his mother cuisine that is specific to this region and not India--it couldn't be found there.

Ah!!....; Well it's Canadian food, what else would it be, Canadian born kids, born and raised in south Van, with kids from a ethnic variety as in a Gap commercial, a rainbow of sorts, who have been eating each others food their whole life, they are as Van as you can get, they open a funky place on main, cooking all the foods their friends and themselves eat, the music they like, and create a very funky and eclectic place, sometimes very retro and the food to go with it, fussed with a ethnic flare varied as the rainbow in the sky, using all the food in the valley, which is available, almost all year round. Then swing down to Chinatown, Granville island, or Main, or Normand’s on Commercial, there is no shortage of great food in van all year round, many places have local food, when it is feb and not much local fresh produce is around they source out some great ethnic vegies that would remind them of their food mom or family would make.

There is so many ethnic groups now in Vancouver and many start their lives in the food business sharing their cultural foods with the Canadian public, you can not get more Canadian then that.

Canada is not about Mother England any more, especially Vancouver.

That is just my view of things

steve

[Daddy-A]

And not to creat a red (tandoori) herring, so to speak, but what happens when, say, an Indo-Canadian chef uses mainly local ingredients to create a take on his mother cuisine that is specific to this region and not India--it couldn't be found there.

←

Ah!!....; Well it's Canadian food, what else would it be, Canadian born kids, born and raised in south Van

←

OK, let me get this straight ... all we need for Canadian cuisine is to have someone within the geographical confines of Canada cook anything just so long as it's with local Canadian ingredients?

It's taken us 43 posts to get to this? Sorry if I sound rude, but ...

YAWN!!!

That's what we're all doing every single day of the week! If Jamie's argument holds true, the cuisine cooked by the Indo-Canadian chef couldn't have come to exist without the chef's Indian background either! Which has NOTHNG to do with being Canadian.

I'd like to suggest this is regional and not national, and that as I mentioned earlier, the conditions no longer exist where a Canadian cuisine can emerge. I'm not saying we have bad food ... quite the opposite in fact. I would rather live in Vancouver that anywhere else in canada as far as eating goes. But, it's like the CRTC trying to legislate a Candian Cultural Identity. What is a Canadian? If we can't answer that, how can we have a cuisine? My question is, do we NEED to answer that?

Patrioticaly yours,

Arne

[tisch]

Hear, hear Steve. A short and concise definition. Although gus_tatory seems to feel that Quebec ingredients doth a Canadian Cuisine make.

Jamie

←

This bias is probably because a regional cuisine needs a critical mass of local artisanal cheese makers, bread bakers, purveyors etc. and if one province indeed has this critical mass, I think its Quebec.

I know Steve to be a longtime admirer of the Edmonton food scene, and if I might add one small detail..."Dine Alberta" is a government-sponsored program (how Canadian is that???) running in September that aims to strengthen the ties between restauraturs and local food producers. Participating restaurants must feature a la carte or table d'hote menus with dishes containing at least 70% locally-produced ingredients. Oddly enough, dozens of restaurants in Edmonton, Jasper and the north and central towns of Alberta are participating, Calgary and Banff not.

[stovetop]

YAWN!!!

OK, let me get this straight ... all we need for Canadian cuisine is to have someone within the geographical confines of Canada cook anything just so long as it's with local Canadian ingredients?

What the hell were you looking for?...; I am getting tired myself of Medias stereotypical View of the Canadian psyche, it is so white bread and out of date, the RCMP mascot is so tired, the beaver is so tired, White bread is so tired, look around what is going, we are more the sum of our parts and way more of a Country then we want to let on, we just have our head up our ass so far that we suffering from affixation, all we want to be is not American, to me that is boring; Yawn!!!!

Quebec has passion, the French have passion, they are not so white bread, not a diet of wonder bread and Twinkies; passion breeds good food, good food leads to a good cuisine; thus Culture, but they are passionate about, proud!! Not boring!!!

I say stand up and be counted and look around the West Coast environment, how many generations do you need before you can call something Canadian, I am also sick of the Ghost of Escoffier; I am not from France, I was born in Canada and trained by Chefs born in Canada, they worked for CP and CN, their food was diverse as the landscape they traveled, they worked in Hotels and Ships and were the beginning to the Modern Canadian Cuisine.

West Coast food culture is like what happened in Vietnam and Indonesia; Both these countries were colonies, over time the colonist left but they left behind there culture which was integrated into there cuisine, Vietnamese food is heavily influenced by French cuisine, but they call it Vietnamese cooking and are proud and have taken on the imperialist cooking as there own, so what the hell is your problem??

Vancouver is a Jambalaya, a masala, and a blend of spices from every where, in time you will not be able to judge the food, let alone guess the point in the line where it starts and stops, let go of Escoffier and embrace the New West Coast cuisine.

What do you get when kids from varying Cultural background marry, start their own families, two very different cultural influences mixed with a Canadian Identity, and proud to be Canadian, to me that is more Canadian then white Bread.

And their food is as Canadian as you get, not fish and chips from England.

steve

[Daddy-A]

My understanding of this thread was that we were trying to discover if there was a "Canadian" cuisine. I took this to mean the same thing as "French" or "Chinese" cuisines, i.e. cuisines that have evolved and are deeply rooted in the culture.

we are more the sum of our parts and way more of a Country then we want to let on

Quebec has passion, the French have passion <EDIT> they are passionate about, proud!!  Not boring!!!

Vancouver is a Jambalaya, a masala, and a blend of spices from every where, in time you will not be able to judge the food, let alone guess the point in the line where it starts and stops, let go of Escoffier and embrace the New West Coast cuisine.

If I truly understood the importance of Escoffier, I would let him go.

It seems this discussion has turned to regional cuisine within Canada, or more specifically, Vancouver cuisine. And I agree 100% with you Steve, in places like Vancouver, Quebec, the Maritimes (amongst others) there is definitely a distinct cuisine emerging. Where else but in Vancouver can you find Vij? And believe me, I am proud of that!

But is it Canadian in the same way that Coq au Vin is French? It may be in Vancouver, but in terms of Canadian cultural significance, I don't believe this can happen.

GREAT discussion!

Arne

[stovetop]

CPR CUISINE

1925 Menu for the Princess steam ships service between Victoria- Vancouver-Seattle

Leave daily in each direction throughout the year

Dinner

Hors D’oeuvres Varies

Cheese Straws

Oyster Cocktail

Ripe olives

Celery en Branche

Puree of Asparagus

Consommé royal

Steamed Salmon with Cucumber Sauce Brevette

Crimped halibut with Potatoes Parisienne

Calves’ Head a la Poulette Cumberland Ham with fried sweet potatoes

Golden Buck pineapple fritter with custard sauce

To order –10 minutes “Marguerite” Mixed Grill

Prime ribs Beef, Yorkshire Pudding

Roast Island turkey with cranberry sauce

Stuffed tomatoes Demidoff Salad

Mashed and brown Potatoes Macedoine of vegetables

Apple pie

Boston Pudding with Maple Sauce

strawberry tartlets

French Pancake

Compote of Peaches

Princess Ice cream

MacLaren’s Imperial,

Roquefort and Stilton cheese

Fresh Fruit walnuts Assorted cake

Demi Tasse

Edited September 9, 2004 by stovetop (log)

[jamiemaw]

Great post, Steve, and not unlike many pre-Depression/WWII menus that we've uncovered. By the way, do you have a copy of the actual menu? Look as though it may have been from the Princess Marguerite and it certainly compares favourably to BC Ferries attempt to feed us. They should put a warning on their menus, "The Surgeon-General Warns That Fish Don't Actually Have Fingers."

Jamie

Edited September 9, 2004 by jamiemaw (log)

[jbonne]

They should put a warning on their menus, "The Surgeon-General Warns That Fish Don't Actually Have Fingers."

not to indulge in too much it-could-be-worseism from south of the border, but at least you get fed on your ferries:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/commuter_u..._release_id=226

though i'm beginning to view this as i do JetBlue: better to starve us with dignity than insult us with a bad facsimile of actual food.

[jamiemaw]

I note the press release was dated June 7th, Merlin. Does that mean they've been starving you with dignity all summer?

Jamie

[jbonne]

mercifully, there's ways to avoid eating on the ferry, vs. starving. and to avoid the ferry altogether.

myself, i say they should hand out fishing poles when folks come aboard.

[canadianintexas]

I don't know about what a Canadian Cusine would be typified as, but there is a small Canadian contingent down here in Dallas. The first thing that comes to mind when "Canadian Cuisine" is mentioned is poutine. I know it isn't as sexy as Chicago deep dish pizza or Southern BBQ or Tex/Mex cuisine, but it is usually the first thing that pops up here anyway. There is a place down here that serves cheese fries called Snuffer's, but they have bacon & jalapenos on top with the chees instead of gravy. In highschool in Prince George BC, fries w/ gravy was probably the most popular item in the cafeteria. I then moved out to Edmonton where there is a big Ukranian influence. Perogies are something I consider a Canadian Cusine; or at least Northen Albertan. I'm sure there is a much bigger perogy following in the Ukraine or Russia, but when diner type restaurants of the area have perogies on the menu - I consider that a regional meal. The same way Chicken Fried Steak is a Texas type of reginal cusine. They even have a rating system. One pick-up truck in the parking lot = not very good CFS. Three pick-up trucks = pretty good CFS. Five + pick-up trucks = very good CFS; stop here to eat.

[Daddy-A]

CPR CUISINE

1925 Menu for the Princess steam ships service between Victoria- Vancouver-Seattle

Leave daily in each direction throughout the year

←

Cool menu Steve. Too bad there's no way we could get BC Ferries to replace the Pacific Buffet with that spread.

Maybe I'm a little slow today, but I was just wondering if that menu had anything to do with the topic? Something about the Potatoes Parisienne or the Boston Pudding perhaps?

Arne

[canadianintexas]

.... and what could be more Canadian than Saskatoon berries?