Notes from the back roads of Quebec

No recipe this week—just a few thoughts about a road trip we’re on, driving the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]W[/su_dropcap]e are at Land’s End, in the town of Gaspé at the easternmost tip of the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. We are on another of our patented road trips, but this one is unlike the others. We are not visiting any museums. We are spending little time in urban areas.

Instead, we’ve visited an 1800s Vermont farmhouse, the home of our friends Dennis and Becky, sleeping in Becky’s artist studio, a new, barn red post and beam construction building near the old farmhouse that feels very much like it belongs there, that it has always been there. They took us kayaking on a small lake there, our first time in kayaks. There were loons on the lake, and an osprey soared overhead.

We’ve driven along a good, long stretch of the St. Lawrence River, following it as it opens into the Atlantic, watching whales, dolphins and seals from a boat in Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec, and from high on a cliff at Land’s End. We’ve seen many ducks and assorted seabirds, including the highly entertaining gannet, which glides over the water, then suddenly dives—cigar-shaped, as Marion put it—into the water after some poor, unsuspecting fish.

We haven’t seen moose, although many road signs have warned of them. No black bears either, even though we received detailed instructions for how to respond if we did at a national park. But we did see a porcupine wandering across the road in that park. Did you know the French word for porcupine is porcupine? Yes, we’ve been dusting off our long-forgotten French, sometimes at 100km/h as we attempt to decipher road signs on twisty, mountainous roads.

And yes, there has been food (that’s why you’re here, right?). In Vermont, Becky served tender, delicious ribs and probably the freshest salad we’ve ever eaten, from greens and tomatoes she, Marion and our daughter Laurel had picked from her garden moments before we ate it. In Quebec City, we ate at the charming Lapin Sauté, with at least one dish in fact containing locally sourced rabbit. In a cool little restaurant on a busy road in Lévis, we ate steak tartare, salmon tartare and Wagyu beef hanger steak, all perfectly prepared.

There have been surprisingly good fried clams at a roadside cantine and too many perfunctory but expeditious breakfasts from Tim Horton’s—meals meant to be eaten one-handed while driving 100km/h.

Interestingly, though, the best restaurant food we’ve had on this trip has been at a Best Western Plus Hotel in Rivière-du-Loup. Executive chef Létécia Bossé runs the kitchen for both the bar, Le 171, and the more formal dining room, La Griffe. We ate there two nights, ordering from both menus, and everything was amazing—duck leg confit, lamb shank with mushroom risotto, duck ravioli…

All this said, we are ready for some home cooking. Cooked in our home, by us. We have a couple of relentless days of driving ahead of us before we can make that happen. With any luck, there’ll be a new recipe here next week.