Nice people better food

Canada boasts plenty of world-class restaurants, but you don’t need to splash out to try unique cuisine. Vic Naughton, general manager of Air Canada for New Zealand/Australia, says there are tasty treats everywhere.

If there is one item people associate with Canada it is maple syrup. While we generally pour it over a stack of pancakes, Canadians have found many more creative ways to enjoy it – from maple-flavoured popcorn to maple-roasted sweet potatoes.

Quebec produces the majority of the world’s maple syrup, and if you are there in winter make sure you try some maple taffy, created by pouring boiling hot syrup straight into clean snow.

Another famous Canadian ‘‘delicacy’’ is poutine, which is simply chips drenched in brown gravy and cheese curds. I am originally from the north of England so, for me, anything with chips and gravy has instant appeal, and after trying it an ice hockey match in Vancouver, I fell in love with it.

Canada is enormous and, as you would imagine, different provinces have created their own specialties such as Montreal’s wood-fired bagels, Nova Scotia’s chive-lime lobster roll, Saskatchewan’s beloved Saskatoon berry pie, and British Columbia’s Nanaimo bar.

One sweet treat you will find everywhere is the beaver tail. It is a fried dough pastry stretched to resemble a beaver’s tail and topped with something sweet (such as cinnamon sugar) or savoury (such as, yes, poutine).

Canada also has some wonderful drinks to experience, from sophisticated ice wines to the slightly less cultured Newfoundland Screech, a dark and delicious rum.

One drink I would recommend trying is the Caesar, considered Canada’s national cocktail, created by mixing vodka with a savoury concoction called Mott’s Clamato juice. The latter – as the name suggests – consists of tomato juice mixed with clam broth, which sounds repulsive, but is quite addictive.