Dispatch from Montreal
Food writer Meredith Erickson shares her favorites that have us planning a weekend pilgrimage
We first got to know Meredith Erickson through her amazing book, Alpine Cooking, which demystified that part of the world and its rustic-elegant cuisine, and is packed with great travel intel. So when we learned that she considers Montreal her hometown, having spent nearly 20 years in the city and immersed in its food scene, we begged her for her restaurant list! (We’re also excited to hear that she’s been chipping away at a definitive book on Canada coming in 2024.)
Dispatch from Montreal
Although I now spend most of the year in Milano, Montreal has been my main HQ, for better or for worse, since 2004.
Relative to North American standards, Montreal is an old city. It’s been battered by countless annual snowstorms and bruised by endless political debate. Through it all, there are two things you can count on: first, that the cross atop Mont-Royal (our beautiful and somewhat wild mountainous central park) will always be lit, and second, that you will always eat tremendously well. It is for me, still, one of the best food cities in the world. Just thinking of home, I feel my appetite surge.
Quebecois cuisine is both refined and savagely hearty. Think perfect choux pastry doused with fresh local maple syrup and caramel. Think maritime scallops, each served with a heaping spoonful of pulled pork and hollandaise. Think Gaspésie lobster, summer’s best corn on the cob with fresh whipped aioli, and jeroboams of rosé in grand brasserie Champagne buckets. That’s our energy.
But Montreal isn’t an obvious city for tourists, by which I mean, there are not singular big attractions. Sure, we have a couple of substantial museums, and the old port has its old-world cobbled French charm…but really those are just the things you visit in between meals.