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Tags: Active Travel / Mont Tremblant / Quebec / Canada / Skiing / → All Tags

Active Travel: Skiing in French

Ski (and snowboard!) season is just around the corner and we can't wait to get out and suss down some powder chutes. What's that? You never got around to learning how to carve your way into the hearts of fellow snow bunnies? Sacre bleu! There's only one remedy: get thee to Quebec and Mont Tremblant, a medium-sized mountain a mere hour and a half from Montreal.

Class Time:
Because Tremblant has slopes down two sides of the same peak, you don't run the risk of getting the bunny hill blues, sliding down the same hill all day. Instructors at the Snow School will get you on up on your feet in only a couple hours, or you can spring for the Ski Week--a week-long program with three and a half hours of class a day. It's not as lazy as a week on the beach, but start on a Sunday and it will have you carving up the blue runs by Saturday.

Play Time:
After turning your muscles to jelly on the slopes, you'll want to hit the outdoor hot tub at your hotel, Ermitage du Lac. It's got a swanky boutique feel and they'll ferry your skis or board up to the ski school for you in the morning. With that taken care of, you can hit Tremblant's pedestrian village and get rowdy at Le P'tit Caribou: Ski Canada magazine ranked it best bar in eastern half of the nation.

[Photo: condormx]

Tags: Quebec / Canada / Cheese / Food / → All Tags

Canada is So Cheesey!

If you should find yourself taking a drive between the Eastern Provinces' Lac Brome area in Canada and Quebec City, and are in the mood for some cheese gluttony (and who isn't?), stop in at the Fromagerie Lemaire.

We found this place over the summer after some serious wine-tasting in Lac Brome. When we first heard of it, we expected an adorably quaint little place--maybe a cafe where you could order an extensive cheese plate that you could nibble from as you sat at marble-topped wrought-iron tables.

However, Fromagerie Lemaire looks more like a big hot dog stand, decked out in yellow and red, with the plastic booths of a fast-food restaurant.

No matter. We made our own cheese plate, purchasing an ungodly amount of brie, some cheese curds and a big baguette. Then we sat outside with our paper plates and plastic forks on the picnic benches in the decidedly un-quaint parking lot.

But who cares about ambiance when your face is full of fresh cheese and bread? Bonus: the curds were a treat for the mouth AND ears, as they inexplicably made loud squeaking noises against our teeth as we chewed them.

You'd be silly to stop at Fromagerie Lemaire in hopes of a charming French Canadian dining experience. But you'd be sillier not to stop at all.

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Tags: 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]

Tags: Quebec / North Hatley / → All Tags

Cantons de L'Est: North Hatley's English-Québecois Twofer

The Eastern Townships of Québec, or, if you prefer (as we do) Cantons de L'Est, are a kind of ur-New England, or New Old England. Nestled above Vermont and New Hampshire and west of Maine, they were settled in large number by Loyalists unwilling to become Americans. The Cantons de L'Est's rolling hills, lakes, and gentle mountains are reminiscent of New England, but their Loyalist heritage makes them seem even more Englandish than New England.

The confusing thing is that Cantons de L'Est are overwhelmingly Francophone today. One could be forgiven for assuming that a lakeside town named North Hatley would be an English-speaking enclave, but even it is largely francophone. North Hatley is the vacation home of Québec's current Premier, Jean Charest. North Hatley epitomizes cute lake town. It sits on a lake named Massawippi and occupies an extremely quiet spot in the Eastern Townships.

Le Coeur D'Or, a bed and breakfast in North Hatley with a top-notch kitchen, run by big city transplants Carole Doyon and Dominique Freminet, recently hosted Charest. Le Coeur D'Or offers double rooms starting at CAN$85/night. It is a good low-key place to sample North Hatley.

[Photo: farfalina]

Tags: 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.

Tags: 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.