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What It's Like at Quebec City's Wild and Wintery Carnaval

Thousands of people are snowsuiting up and heading to Quebec City for Winter Carnaval, held this year from Jan.29 through Feb.14.

Despite frigid temperatures (it plummeted to -4F on Saturday), locals didn’t seem to mind the weather, instead numbing the cold with the potent Port and brandy-infused Caribou liquor

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Eating Quebec / Food Travel / Chocolate / Eating-in-Quebec / → All Tags

The Chocolate Museum

It may be a little chilly right now, but Quebec offers as much culture as Europe for way less cash. And thanks to the resurgence of the dollar, there's never been a better time to head to Canada. Dana McMahan just got back and is dishing on the province's eats all this week.

You know how you feel obligated to visit museums when you travel? Well, I do, especially when it’s a country that speaks another language. But somehow, by day three of my visit to Quebec City, I still hadn’t visited the first museum. Happily, I was able to remedy my philistine status pain-free. With hot chocolate.

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Eating Quebec / Eating-In-Quebec / Food Travel / → All Tags

Where To Spend Every Last Loonie

It may be a little chilly right now, but Quebec offers as much culture as Europe for way less cash. And thanks to the resurgence of the dollar, there's never been a better time to head to Canada. Dana McMahan just got back and is dishing on the province's eats all this week.

It’s a tradition on my travels that the husband and I have one splurge dinner each trip. And everything I read in the foodie world pointed me to laurie raphaël--lowercase letters included!--for our obligatory spend-fest.

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Eating Quebec / Food Travel / Eating-in-Quebec / → All Tags

A Crepe Break In Quebec

It may be a little chilly right now, but Quebec offers as much culture as Europe for way less cash. And thanks to the resurgence of the dollar, there's never been a better time to head to Canada. Dana McMahan just got back and is dishing on the province's eats all this week.

Nothing says "French" quite like flipping crepes. Well, maybe the Eiffel Tower, but I was in Quebec City, not Paris, and wanted to feed the fantasy that I was, in fact, across the Atlantic. Casse-Crêpe Breton beckoned on a snowy day at lunchtime with low prices ($8 or less for crepes) and a warm, crowded interior.

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Back of the Envelope Travel Guide: Quebec City's 400th Birthday Celebration

If you've never celebrated a quadricentennial before, get thee to Quebec City this weekend, because QC is turning 400.

Quebec has actually been celebrating all year long, but the big blowout is this Thursday through Sunday. To be honest, give the line-up of events, a three-day event may not have been necessary, let alone a whole year. There's the opening night party, featuring a show from Van Halen, ending with fireworks over the St. Lawrence River. After that, the offerings get a little less blockbuster, so you'll surely have a few hours to kill.

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Winter Travel / Festivals / Hotels / Restaurants / Clubs / → All Tags

Back of the Envelope Travel Guide: Quebec's Winter Carnival

Any festival with a hybrid snowman-elf mascot is bound to get our attention. The creature, named "Bonhomme," shows up every year at Quebec's Winter Carnival, a 17-day celebration of all things cold. Don't let the name fool you, though. This isn't Mardi Gras; most activities are for the 12-and-under set, like a foam sword competition or the circus featuring Ketchup the Clown.

A few events, however, should keep the attention of all age groups, such as the dogsled races, a ski competition and performances by acrobats. So, if an hour spent attending a concert with a group called "Funkyzone" doesn't strike your fancy, we've found the best grown-up places to eat, drink and party--sans Ketchup the Clown--in Quebec City.

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Quebec / Food / → All Tags

Québec City: It's Not All Gravy in the QC

Poutine has its uses, especially if your goal is to grow a belly or engage in heavy lifting in the dead of a Canadian winter (Hugo Girard didn't come out of nowhere, after all) but it's not really a high-class foodstuff. Happily, there are many amazing gourmet-appropriate restaurants in Québec City.

Case in point: L'Initiale, a quite remarkable restaurant in Québec City. Its current prix-fixe lunch (for CAN$45) includes fluffy lobster with a rhubarb and sandwort cream, a bison filet, and spiced hot chocolate and saffron sorbet for dessert.

Chef Yvan Lebrun utilizes many foods sourced from Québec to produce menus that change with the seasons. In doing so, he cites the richness of the province's farmlands while maintaining a high level of sophistication.

Less expensive three-course lunch meals range between CAN$16 and CAN$23.

With a Relais and Chateaux designation, L'Initiale isn't really hurting for accolades. Nonetheless, it deserves all the attention in the world. L'Initiale is a gourmand's dream.

[Image via troy-lovegates/Flickr]

Quebec / Tourism / → All Tags

Québec City's Tourist Hordes and Delicious Jellies

Québec City is undeniably impressive, an old walled city with scads of ancient (fine, 17th century and 18th century) buildings. It's also swarmed with tourists in the summer and full of little shops oriented entirely toward said tourists. And don't forget the artists drawing those grotesque caricatures of children, giving them oversize and frankly demonic smiling faces that barely resemble the people they purport to represent. You know what we're talking about here.

Thankfully, there are tons of great things to see in Québec City beyond the throngs of tourists. Outside of the old city walls, Rue Saint-Jean becomes alternately hip and crunchy, with vegetarian restaurants, two upscale ice cream shops, gay bars, and, best of all, actual residents enjoying the city.  

Québec City's farmers market is another find. During the summer, fresh farm loot includes honey, cheese, flowers, pickled vegetables, jellies, and fresh vegetables. We were especially taken by black current jellies and wines by Bernard Monna of St-Pierre de I'Île D'Orléans, close to Québec City.

At the farmers market and at specialty shops throughout the province of Québec, one gets a sense of the high quality of local artisanal food products as well as the high esteem in which they are held.

Quebec / Food / → All Tags

Paillard: Not Just Pounded Beef Anymore

Every now and then we chance upon a well-branded retail concept that should expand, like Québec City's Paillard. Billed as a "café-boulangerie," Paillard operates a massive, inviting space on busy Rue Saint-Jean.

Recently opened, Paillard is a multipurpose food emporium, with a bakery, a patisserie, and an ice cream corner all selling goods created in house. Another area of the store, selling "produits fins," is devoted mostly to Québec delicacies, with a smattering of French products as well.

Paillard's branded font is a cursive one that calls to mind the 1950s, not so much in a cool modernist way than in a manner that calls to mind a bold, immediately familiar iconic brand. Above the sandwich/soup area, high-tech screens alternate menu choices. Long broad wooden communal tables are ideal for those using the café as a work space.

Paillard is a perfect expression of Québec. It transmits a distinctively European atmosphere with the open, ambitious scale of a New World retail space. Paillard could be a signature chain for the province, encapsulating a certain culture of Québec in an ambassadorial manner.  With this in mind, we think that Paillard should move toward an exclusively Québécois product base in order to function as a signature retail entity within Canada and beyond.