Quebec City and surroundings tempt food lovers

QUEBEC CITY, Quebec -- It should be no surprise that this quaint city on the St. Lawrence River is a food lover's paradise. It is, after all, the cradle of French culture in North America, and everyone knows the French practically invented gastronomy.

With more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in Canada, Quebec is known as the country's fine-dining capital. The bottom line: Food is one of the best reasons to visit Quebec.

The rustic cuisine of the region's early settlers has been transformed over the centuries by the influx of European chefs. Chefs from every continent descended on Montreal for the World's Fair in 1967. Many stayed to open restaurants in the province, revolutionizing local dining tastes. Their need for quality ingredients led to local production of organic fruits and vegetables, artisan cheeses, chocolates, breads and pastries, as well as breeders who raise duck, wild boar, pheasant, caribou, emu, ostrich and salt-water pastured sheep.

Quebec restaurant menus follow the ebb and flow of local growing seasons. There are food shops selling exclusively products made in Quebec province. The range is impressive.

A sampling is available at the Marche du Vieux Port, a covered farmers market in the lower town near the St. Lawrence River that's open every day. There's a vendor with a selection of more than 70 locally made cheeses (cow, sheep or goat milk, raw or pasteurized, soft rind or hard, waxed skin or flora). The boulangerie or bakery sold seven sizes and shapes of crusty, chewy pain au levain as well as quiches, tartes and gateaux. The smoked-meat purveyor had cases filled with duck, ostrich, goose, caribou, bison and pork. Other stands sold fresh asparagus, lettuce, maple syrup, fruit preserves, cider, chocolates and preserved duck and goose preparations.

Walking around the upper city inside the fortification walls, I discovered what might be the oldest grocery store in North America. Maison Jean-Alfred Moisan opened in 1871, specializing in fine imports for the affluent Upper Town clientele. The store also has an entire section of "made in Quebec" products. It would have been easy to spend an entire morning just browsing through this world-class food tourism site, which stands head and shoulders with Paris's Fauchon or Hediard and Harrod's Food Halls in London.

Just down the Rue St.-Jean is the bakery Le Paingruel. It specializes in sourdough bread baked with natural yeast in wood-burning ovens. Its fougasse with bacon and cheddar was an interesting retooling of the traditional Provencal loaf with olives and lard. Its batard, a fat baguette, reminded me of many French country picnics.

A perfect day trip is to the Ile d'Orleans, an island in the St. Lawrence River, just a few miles downstream from Quebec City. Originally inhabited by American Indians, the island was named by French explorer Jacques Cartier, who landed there in 1536.

Most settlers who colonized it came from Normandy, so the churches and houses they built mirror that area of rural France. Houses are built of local stone with either mansard or steeply sloping roofs. The metal roofs are often painted blood red or bright yellow, which Quebecers say is to help farmers find their homes in a blizzard. Six hundred of these early structures have been declared historical monuments by the provincial government.

The island, 20 miles long and 5 miles wide, is linked to the mainland by a bridge and circled by a narrow road that follows the jagged shore. Before 1935, the only way to get there was by boat in summer or sleigh across the frozen river in winter. This inaccessibility likely is why it has remained the primary market garden for Quebec City.

The 7,000 inhabitants maintain the island's long-standing agricultural traditions. The first cheese produced in North America reputedly came from the island, and Les Fromages de l' Ile d'Orleans in the village of Sainte Famille still makes cheese from the same recipe brought from France nearly 400 years ago.

In theory, it takes 90 minutes to circle the Ile d'Orleans by car. But many of its 200 farms and food producers are open to visitors, which make for taste-tempting diversions. One can sample duck and goose products, taste cider or ice-cider (an ice wine-type dessert wine made from frozen cider apples), creme de cassis made from estate-grown black currants, micro-brews, vinegars, honeys, fruit preserves and fresh-from-the-oven bread. In summer, you can pick your own raspberries, strawberries, black currants, blueberries, apples or tomatoes.

At the Vignoble Isle de Bacchus, you can meet a winemaking family on the farm it has inhabited since 1710. In the village of Saint-Pierre at Poissonnerie Jos Paquet, you can taste spit-roasted sturgeon and smoked eel cured in maple syrup. At Erabliere Richard Boily, where you can learn about maple syrup, Nicole Gosselin explains that it takes 50 liters of maple sap to make 1 liter of syrup. Quebec producers supply 80 percent of the world's maple syrup.

Restaurant offerings on the Ile d'Orleans range from simple meals served at the micro-brewery Le Pub to fine dining overlooking the river at Manoir Mauvide-Genest in St.-Jean.

Wherever one goes in the region, it's evident that Quebec, la nouvelle France, is as devoted to gastronomy as la vieille France.

Long live both.

(E-mail Elizabeth Downer at edowner(at)post-gazette.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)