27 Canadian Foods to Try, From Poutine to Butter Tarts

Canadian food mixes Indigenous, French, British and immigrant influences into dishes found nowhere else, such as poutine, butter tarts and Nanaimo bars. Each region of Canada claims its own specialities too, from Montreal-style bagels to Nova Scotia lobster rolls, and several of the dishes below carry a documented origin story rather than just a name.

27 popular Canadian foods and where they come from

Canada’s most recognisable foods, numbered below from the most widely known, range from deep-fried snacks to a national cocktail with a documented inventor.

1. Poutine

Poutine is french fries topped with gravy and fresh cheese curds, and it is the dish most people associate with Canadian food outside the country. It emerged in Quebec‘s Centre-du-Québec region in the late 1950s, though which restaurant served it first is still disputed: Le Lutin qui rit in Warwick and Le Roy Jucep in Drummondville both claim the invention, and Le Roy Jucep still advertises itself as poutine’s birthplace. A good poutine depends on the gravy, typically a meat stock thickened with flour, butter and cornstarch, poured hot enough to soften the cheese curds without fully melting them.

2. Butter Tarts

A butter tart is a small flaky pastry shell filled with a set butter, sugar and egg filling, sometimes with raisins, pecans or walnuts added. The earliest published recipe comes from Barrie, Ontario, printed in 1900 in a cookbook produced by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Royal Victoria Hospital, which makes it one of the oldest documented Canadian recipes on this list.

3. Nanaimo Bars

A Nanaimo bar is a no-bake dessert built in three layers: a crumb base, a custard filling and a thin chocolate topping. The first known recipe appeared in 1952 in the Women’s Auxiliary of the Nanaimo Hospital’s own cookbook, published under the name “chocolate squares” rather than its current one, before the British Columbia city of Nanaimo gave it the name it carries today. In 2019, Canada Post put the Nanaimo bar on a stamp alongside four other Canadian desserts: the blueberry grunt, the butter tart, Saskatoon berry pie and tarte au sucre.

4. Tourtière

Tourtière is a spiced meat pie traditionally served at réveillon, the all-night Christmas Eve feast still kept in French-Canadian households. Quebec families have eaten tourtière at réveillon for roughly 200 years, and the filling originally leaned on rabbit, pheasant or moose rather than today’s more common pork and veal. The pie crust holds the meat, onions and spices together, and modern versions sometimes add potato or seafood such as clams or scallops to the filling.

5. Peameal Bacon

Peameal bacon is boneless, lean pork loin that is wet-cured and rolled in cornmeal rather than smoked, which gives it a yellow crust and sets it apart from the smoked back bacon most people think of as Canadian bacon. It was invented in Toronto in the early 1900s, when the coating was ground yellow peas rather than cornmeal, and the name stuck even after the recipe changed. St Lawrence Market in Toronto is the place most associated with the peameal bacon sandwich today.

6. Ketchup Chips

Ketchup chips are potato chips seasoned with a tangy, sweetened ketchup flavour rather than salt or vinegar, and they are rarely sold outside Canada. Hostess, a chip company founded in Cambridge, Ontario, in 1935, is generally credited with introducing them in the late 1970s. Hostess itself was later absorbed into Lay’s, which still sells Lay’s Ketchup Chips as one of Canada’s most distinctive snack flavours today, alongside the similarly Canadian All-Dressed flavour.

7. Montreal-Style Bagels

A Montreal-style bagel is thinner and sweeter than its New York counterpart, with a larger hole and a denser, chewier bite. Bakers shape each bagel by hand, boil it briefly in honey-sweetened water, then bake it in a wood-fired oven, which gives it a crisp, slightly caramelised crust that a steam-oven New York bagel does not have. Eastern European Jewish immigrants brought the style to Montreal in the early 1900s, and the city’s two oldest bakeries, Fairmount Bagel and St-Viateur Bagel, still turn out the dish that made the comparison famous.

8. Maple Syrup and Quebec’s Sugar Shacks

Maple syrup is the sap of the maple tree, boiled down until it thickens into syrup, and Quebec produces roughly 70% of the world’s supply, according to the province’s own maple syrup producers’ association. Quebec’s cabanes à sucre, or sugar shacks, open from around late February through April, when the sap is running and the snow is still on the ground, and many serve a set meal built around maple-glazed dishes. The classic sugar shack treat is maple taffy, called tire d’érable, made by pouring hot maple syrup directly onto packed snow so it hardens into a chewy candy that is rolled up on a stick while still warm.

9. Caesar Cocktail

The Caesar is a cocktail built from vodka, Clamato (a blend of tomato and clam juice), Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce, usually served with a celery stick and a salted rim. Walter Chell, a restaurant manager at Calgary’s Calgary Inn, now the Westin Calgary, invented the drink in 1969 while developing a signature cocktail for the hotel’s new Italian restaurant. Some bars have since turned the garnish into a meal of its own, piling burgers, onion rings or whole chicken wings onto the glass, a style Vancouver’s Checkmate Caesar is known for.

10. Timbits

Timbits are bite-sized doughnut balls sold by Tim Hortons, the coffee chain found on most Canadian street corners, and they take their name directly from the company. Canadians commonly order Timbits alongside a “double-double,” meaning a coffee with two creams and two sugars, and the combination is a fixture of Tim Hortons drive-throughs nationwide.

11. Persians

A Persian is an oval, doughnut-like pastry topped with a pink strawberry or raspberry glaze, and it comes specifically from Thunder Bay on Lake Superior in Ontario. One popular theory ties the name to General John J. Pershing, but no source confirms this, and bakeries in Thunder Bay still disagree on exactly how the pastry got its name or when it first appeared.

12. Swiss Chalet Roast Chicken

Swiss Chalet is a Canadian restaurant chain that opened in 1954 and built its reputation on rotisserie chicken marinated in paprika, tomato, ginger, thyme and garlic. The chain’s dipping sauce is sold separately for home cooking, and “Swiss Chalet-style” roast chicken has become a common homemade dinner across the country as a result.

13. Nova Scotia Lobster Roll

A Nova Scotia lobster roll is a toasted bun filled with lobster meat mixed with butter or mayonnaise, sometimes with lettuce added. The dish draws on southwest Nova Scotia’s lobster fishery, the largest in Canada by landings, and it is served at seafood shacks and upscale restaurants alike along the province’s coast.

14. Donairs

A donair is a Halifax invention built from spiced ground beef cooked on a vertical spit, sliced and wrapped in pita with a sweet garlic sauce, onions and tomato. The King of Donair restaurant chain, which opened in Halifax in 1973, is widely credited with creating the dish, and in December 2015 Halifax City Council named the donair the city’s official food. It has since become a popular late-night order across the city and beyond.

15. Bannock

Bannock is a simple, biscuit-like bread that arrived in Canada with Scottish fur traders in the 18th century and was absorbed into First Nations cooking, where it remains a staple today. Families vary the recipe, but the basic version is served alongside tea or used to soak up the broth from a stew or soup.

16. Blueberry Grunt

A blueberry grunt is a steamed dumpling dessert made by cooking dough on top of stewed wild blueberries, and it takes its name from the grunting sound the mixture makes while it cooks. Cooks in Atlantic Canada, where wild blueberries grow widely, usually serve it warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

17. Beavertails

A Beavertail is a flat, hand-stretched piece of fried dough shaped like the animal’s tail, then topped with butter, cinnamon and sugar or a modern topping such as chocolate or banana. Grant and Pam Hooker first sold the pastry at a community fair in Killaloe, Ontario, in 1978, using a family recipe, and it has since grown into a national chain with locations well beyond its home province.

18. Cold Plate

A Cold Plate is a Newfoundland dish of cold meats, salads and bread, descended from using up leftovers from a Sunday roast. Today’s version typically includes pasta salad, roast beef, turkey, ham, pickles and condiments, and it shows up as a lunch staple and as a catering option at larger events such as weddings.

19. Saskatoon Berry Pie

Saskatoon berry pie is a fruit pie made from Saskatoon berries, a native North American berry with a sweet, almond-like flavour, often paired with rhubarb. The Saskatchewan city of Saskatoon takes its name from the berry, not the other way round, and the pie remains a common dessert menu item across the prairies, usually served with ice cream or whipped cream.

20. Pierogies

Pierogies are dumplings that arrived in Canada with Eastern European immigrants and now appear on menus nationwide in sweet and savoury versions. A potato-and-cream-cheese filling is the most common savoury choice, typically served with a dollop of sour cream on top.

21. Ice Wine

Ice wine is a sweet dessert wine made by pressing grapes while they are still frozen on the vine, which concentrates their sugar. Canada, particularly Ontario’s Niagara region, is one of the world’s largest ice wine producers because its cold winters reliably freeze grapes on schedule.

22. Split Pea Soup

Split pea soup is a simple, filling soup made from dried yellow split peas, pork and herbs, and it is one of Quebec’s staple comfort foods. A commercial version, Habitant Pea Soup, is sold in most Canadian grocery stores alongside home recipes.

23. Montreal Smoked Meat

Montreal smoked meat is a salted, spice-cured beef brisket, similar to pastrami but cut leaner and stringier, typically piled into a rye bread sandwich with mustard. Delis across Montreal and the rest of Canada serve it as a sandwich on its own or, less traditionally, as a topping for poutine.

24. Fish and Brewis

Fish and brewis is a Newfoundland dish of dry ship’s biscuit soaked and served with salt cod, built for the long fishing trips the province’s fishermen once relied on. It remains a marker of traditional Newfoundland cooking, usually served with scrunchions, small pieces of fried salt pork, scattered on top.

25. Oreilles de Crisse

Oreilles de crisse are crisp pork rinds, deep-fried or baked, usually drizzled with maple syrup or served alongside stew or fried eggs. They are a fixture on the menu at Quebec’s sugar shacks in spring, alongside maple taffy.

26. Pouding Chômeur

Pouding chômeur, meaning “unemployment pudding,” was invented in Quebec during the Great Depression as a way to stretch cheap ingredients into dessert. A plain cake batter bakes inside a pool of maple syrup sauce, which sinks in as it cooks and leaves the cake sitting in a soft, syrupy base.

27. Garlic Fingers

Garlic fingers are pizza dough cut into strips and topped with garlic butter, melted cheese and parsley, popular on Canada’s East Coast as a side dish. They are typically dipped in a sweet, creamy garlic sauce called donair sauce, the same sauce served with Nova Scotia’s donairs.

Planning a food-focused trip to Canada

Trying most of these dishes in one trip usually means covering more than one province, since Nova Scotia’s lobster rolls, Quebec’s sugar shacks and Ontario’s butter tart towns sit hundreds of kilometres apart. Hotel prices vary a lot between Canadian cities, so comparing options across the country before booking is worth doing, and the same goes for flights, where checking current fares for your route can save a lot depending on the season. For getting between provinces once you land, a rental car makes it far easier to reach small-town bakeries and sugar shacks that public transport does not serve, and visiting Quebec City and the area around it is a practical way to work a sugar shack into a trip that also covers the city’s other sights.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh. The team covers Canada for independent travellers, including the food, road trips and places to stay worth booking, and updates this page when prices, names or recipes change.