Giving Northern Cuisine Its Due

I live in St. John's, Newfoundland, where Jeremy Charles' restaurant Raymond is. I'll admit I haven't been there - it's just not really in my price range, though I have been to Baccalao, another delightful local-cuisine place in the city.

I'd say the reason "northern" cuisine doesn't get a lot of attention - and I mean really northern, not Boston or Michigan! - is that very little grows in places like Newfoundland. If we had to eat local, we'd get a little bit of very pricey seafood, cabbages, root vegetables, and wild berries. A small part of the island can support a dairy industry, and an equally small part permits growing garden veggies during perhaps a three-month growing season. The rest of the year there's not much on offer. Historically rural Newfoundlanders lived on imported flour, beans, salt, molasses, and some fat source, plus wild berries, hunted game, capelin, and not a lot else. (The famous cod were too expensive for them - they were cleaned, salted, and exchanged for the imported foods.)

Not the best growing conditions for developing a cuisine with the sophistication of, say, Vietnamese or Indian food!

I have to say I agree with the comments about this article not really having much to do with the actual food of New England and Maritime Canada -it's just taking a few vaguely regional ideas and internationalizing them with goofy fusion garbage like Japanese seaweed and Korean chili paste that appeals only to tourists from New York. It would be ridiculous to say we are exploring a regional cuisine of, say, Italy or France while actually not talking about that cuisine at all, but combining facets of it with Mexican street food, but that is really what this article is about. You are ignoring the actual regional cuisine by transforming it utterly.
It would great to see an article on "Northern" foods. I grew up in New England and there is so much great local food there, it's just "peasanty" -much like the actual regional foods of Europe. I remember tourtiere on Christmas eve, pea soup, wild leeks in spring, morels and other wild mushrooms, "mountain turnips" (which are actually rutabagas), anadama bread and brown bread, Maine-style clam chowder with steamers and melted butter in it, clams cooked every way! Lobster pie, the list goes on...

New England food is my favorite food:
apple cider doughnuts
the best apples
berry pies, pumpkin pie, pecan pie
the sweetest corn in the U.S.
biscuits and peaches
the freshest seafood
maple syrup
wild turkeys
fiddlehead ferns
cranberry bogs
New Haven pizza
pumpkin patches
lentil soup, split pea soup,
local cheese

Hey, the upper Midwest is Northern, too! Those interested should take a gander at the James Beard Award winner The New Midwestern Table, by Minnesotan Amy Thielen. Red current jelly and headcheese and potato doughnuts, my friends.

I'm not sure if I completely understand the animosity towards the experimental nature of the cuisine this chef is embarking in. I also wouldn't dive into a plate of raw elk, but there is a serious selection of unique ingredients that can be caught and foraged. NOMA won awards around the world for being experimental. The potential is there, so why should people hold back?

Ten minutes from where I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I can run to the top of a hill and find wild blueberries ready for the picking. Oh look: I think I just helped "define" northern regional cuisine. The down-to-earth, hard-working folks of Atlantic Canada would rather have a lobster boil (no pine needle ash involved) than sit down to a meal of raw elk and squid ink crackers. Northern regional cuisine already exists and it's far less complicated than coming up with faux-evocative names for restaurants, such as "Birch," that cater to a clientele that equates "regional" and "wild" with exotic.

Anadama bread.
Poached salmon on July 4th
Nantucket scallops
Fiddlehead ferns
Hermits

What about fishcakes? Served traditionally with baked beans.

There's a great book about Maine farm cooking as it was in the early 20th century: "Maine Cooking, Old Time Secrets" by Robert P. Tristram Coffin. (Coffin was a professor at Bowdoin College who wrote a number of other books as well). It's a loving and highly opinionated portrait of Coffin's own youth on a Maine saltwater farm on Casco Bay, what they grew and fished and hunted, and how they cooked and ate it. The book (Northern Lights Press, Orono, Maine 1991) is probably out of print, but worth tracking down. A real gem.

No vegetarians up north, huh. Enjoyable read anyway. But you can have your bone marrow treats..

Yes! Thanks for the wonder tale.
While I'm an Upper Left Coastie, the available fares are not all that different. and (perhaps) even better. I've yet to meet a salt water shell-living critter that I did not enjoy eating. Even after applying the medico's-ordered, "No raw and *all parts* >140F at least a few seconds..." I do not suffer.
Even Left-Coasties who *suffer* through a handful of shellfish-related maladies do not suffer in the slightest. I'll take what I can find, usually bought at the dock ('pier' for Righties?) and cook/eat the best that I can find. Is the additional searching/shopping really worth the effort? Foolish question. Ha! a couple of much-favored fishers call me once within cell range and I've yet to be disappointed. The 52-mile trip (each way) is *always* worth the effort. *Most* shellfish are sustainable and some are considered 'by-catch,' that has a tiny market. Why not?

I'll take a traditional PEI lobster bake with all the trimmings any day of the week!

Try Arborvine in Blue Hill, ME. Food fabuloso in a very nice town. I was in Charleston, SC today, where the food is very good, but no better than Arborvine.

Oh send me. I'm ready to live like that. Fished since I was 4. Miss it. Too much cubicle. *Sigh*

A wonderful enterprise, to be heartily supported! The Northern cuisine is primarily sea food in its great variety. Therefore I would add the lobster and some endemic species of fish, but stay away from such dishes as marrow, elk and hare.

Good food up North? Take it from one who lived in New England for quite a few years, there's plenty there. But only foodies or competitive yuppies go for those precious fancied-up preparations that sound like they're from a 'reality' TV show contest (and probably are). It's really all about good, fresh food, especially seafood, simply prepared. Whether fried, broiled or scrodded (soaked in milk before quickly broiling, often with some bread crumbs and butter on top to keep it moist), the idea is to let fresh fish taste like fresh fish. (And there's no such thing as a fish called 'scrod'; it's really scrodded young codfish.) You do the same with meats and poultry; if it's really fresh, it doesn't need to be overwhelmed by rich sauces, just seasoned enough to bring out the flavour and moistened enough to keep it from drying out. And lobster? Best boiled in sea water so the taste doesn't leech out. And even if ends up in a pie (really a casserole) or gets some saucing and broiling after being stuffed back into the shell, it's never to be overcooked. Unless you like rubber.
In Boston, you'll find the real thing at Durgin-Park, which remains as plain and unsnobbish as ever. (As in No Reservations. If the Queen of Denmark can stand in line, so can you. It's worth it.) It's one place where even if you don't drink wine or booze you'll get the same service as everyone else. I'm already hungry!

Poached bluefish with homemade mustard-garlic-olive-oil sauce! Mmmm. Can't wait for it to be back in the fish store.

It's "chow-dah"!

A few years back, I was on my way home to California from my native
Boston. My seat mate was a Chinese man whose tour group had just finished a two-week tour of New England and was on their way back to
China.

I asked him how he'd liked New England food.

He said the tour guide was Chinese and liked Chinese food, so they'd eaten in
Chinese restaurants - but "In Boston we eat dragon".

Hmmm. Dragon.

I thought, maybe octopus? I took a piece of paper and did my best drawing.
He shook his head, absolutely not, and altered my drawing slightly.

Oh - lobster! "In Boston we eat lobster!"

I saw George Carlin on a talk show a long time ago. He was talking about constructing the worst dating profile (personal ad) in history. One part of the profile was saying he likes "Canadian food."

Northern 'cuisine' is just a fantasy, for chefs. People here can't even come to agreement on New England cuisine. Only people on the immediate coast regularly eat or appreciate seafood. The English and the Irish knew what to do with a good piece of fish, top it with mashed potatoes, white sauce and other stuff and call it Fish Pie, the ultimate healthy comfort food. Few people south of NH probably even know what an Elk is.

My father was from St Johns Newfoundland, and he brought we kids up on tales of eating seal flippers and cod tongues as if they were luxury foods. Anyone cooking those these days? I have to say one of my strongest memories of childhood was finally confronting eating seal flippers around 1966 or 1968 when my family visited Newfoundland. What a shock! They looked like dog paws and "gamey" (not to mention sinewy) was an understatement. But the memory lasted far longer and more sharply than most from my childhood.

I love scallops, cod, lobster, etc. But Northern cuisine has nothing on a shrimp and grits, smoked brisket and a good BBQ sandwich. Those are universal, whereas raw elk will always be niche no matter how it's gussied up.

What I think of as New England food...
Lobster Rolls
Maple anything
Blueberries

You didn't go far enough west: too bad you left out Winnipeg, Manitoba. A
province doesn't have to be by the ocean to have exciting cuisine!
We'll be going there in July for the incredible ingredients - fresh saskatoons, Berkshire pork, new Manitoba potatoes, and more, as well as the restaurants:
French in St. Boniface, the French section, and innovative all over town.

Not only did the writer leave out Jasper White, who has been focussing on "northern" cuisine for many decades, but what about Sam Hayward in Portland, Maine, who continues to instruct and inspire at his restaurant Fore Street? In fact, what about Maine? I guess I should be grateful--otherwise we could expect the descent of madly trendy hordes anytime this summah. Hope they read this and stay in Rhode Island.

A Hunter friend in Nevada supplies me elk and it is certainly delicious raw, but I've had to stop because I think the risk isn't trivial:

http://www.livescience.com/20856-organic-meat-toxoplasmosis-parasite-ris...

https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/madcow/cr11102.php

Doesn't sound like this cuisine has much to offer vegetarians.

I've lived in New England (Maine and Massachusetts) and the South (North Carolina and Texas). Call me simple minded, but the best regional food is unadorned: good food cooked well, in moderate proportion (not too much, or too little). It does not need to be dressed up or "branded." The best northern cuisine I've had, if you can call it that, is broiled Atlantic mackerel with butter, for breakfast. That's it. Could not be more simple, or flavorful. But it feeds my soul.

You lost me at "raw elk".

For some really great food with a northern flair, I recommend the FISH in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Executive Chef Matthew MacCartney was born in New York City and worked at several restaurants in NYC before starting this exciting new venture in Rhode Island. He has won numerous awards. Worth the trip just to check this out!

The very best food in the north can be found on idyllic Prince Edward Island. The best cooking is at home (restaurants are mediocre). The best mussels (of course), Colville Bay oysters (they don't make them south and they are the best in the world); PEI potatoes, sea scallops, clams (soft shell and hard); lobsters (plucked from the sea in front of my summer home);hake, haddock, cod, sole. Cheese, greens, seasonal vegetable from the twice a week Charlottetown Farmers Market. Beer, ale, gin, pastis, whiskey from local distilleries. Superb lamb, pork, beef, chicken and eggs from local farmers. Summer strawberries and blueberries. St. Peters is my nearby town and the culinary institutions are the By The Bay Fish Mart (very fresh fish and lobsters cooked to perfection)) and Rick's Fish and Chips (the name says it all). Our home cooking is simple but gets an Asiatic lift when my Japanese daughter in law, Maiko Sakamoto, is in residence. A talented chef, she regales us with tempura, sushi and much else. Summer approaches. I can hardly wait.

Northern Cuisine, Southern cooking, Mediterranean specialties, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Moroccan, South East Asian, Brazilian, Argentinian, Mexican, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Scandinavian, Icelandic, North American Indian, Australian, around from the vast Antartic are all innate to the people, their traditions, customs and above all what is available naturally and or cultivated. National and Individual people and national tastes are all relative. What matters is simplicity , gastronomic pleasure plus nourishment, associated with few traditions and above all what is edible and taste. Not to mention that culinary enhancement using spices, herbs and preparation techniques and presentment, that adds to the appeal and appetite. All making it worth while for a pleasant experience.
What matters is that when in Rome ...... I for one is keep an open mind and as a result have cultivate my own style, preference rather then sticking to any particular, regional, national style etc. Live, let live enjoy and appreciate what mother nature can provide.

Of course there are wonderful foods in the northern climes. Our greater emphasis on southern food has a lot to do with diversity of ingredients. This works around the world. Would you rather have Chinese food or Mongolian? Spanish food or Swedish? French food or Russian? Italian food or Finnish?

The author really needs to pay a little respect to Jasper White, who started this fresh New England cuisine direction in Boston more than 30 years ago!

I grew up in New England. Eating was not a pleasant event. Except for a brief period in the summer, everything came from cans, or from so far away, that by the time it got to CT, it was "fresh" only to a marketer but not to a human being.

Then, there is "New England Boiled Dinner"; which should be subject to a Geneva convention on prisoners of war (and cuisine).

I went off to college in California and could not face going back. Sorry, Mom and Dad. I've had incredible meals in NYC, so it's not strictly the geography.

It's not the latitude, it's the attitude. Apologies for the pun, but it is apt. I think the New England psyche has problems with food being , well, "fun". I go back to visit my parents, and the food (at high end restaurants) is improving, but I don't think NE is anywhere close to having a "cuisine".

It's most unlikely that the average person anywhere cooks or eats such precious and recondite receipts as the ones presented in this piece.

Arguably, you should go further north. Like, really, really north. North of 60, we call in country foods. http://findingtruenorth.ca/country-food-photos/

"Regional cuisine" in the Northeast does not include raw elk meat, blonde cucumbers, pine needle ash, squid ink crackers, or Korean soybean paste known as doenjang. It's broiled cod, fried clams and steamers, lobster, corned beef and cabbage, brown bread, baked beans, chowder made with milk instead of cream and corn starch (ugh!!) and, God almighty, no tomatoes , baked stuffed haddock, baking powder biscuits, maple syrup, native tomatoes and corn, blueberries in anything (cake, pancakes, pie...), ad nauseum. We don't need chefs de cuisine defining what is traditional food in the Northeast. We already know what it is.

How well I remember--fresh lobster cooked live, fresh sea scallops, not those dinky western ones, tuna caught on lines in Maine, wild blueberries, good crispy apples, real cider that isn't just sweet apple juice. I avoided clam chowder as I didn't like the cream, but you can get a very nice clam chowder just a bit south of New England, but not in the deep South. Venison, elk, etc. Finally, real cheese: cheddar that has some flavor to it, not that stuff called cheddar that is a far from the real thing as cottage cheese is from blue cheese.
The next time I have to go to the south I want to travel like the British raj--pack my own food and a good cook so that I don't have to eat hominy, grits and gravy on biscuits for breakfast.

Correct, but the subsequent article should be about northern cuisine from the northwest coast. The northwest is NOT all about salmon and I would take northwest scallops over maritime scallops. Sea scallops versus bay scallops? Nova Scotia mussels? of course. PEI oysters versus say Qualicum Beach, BC or Hood Canal, WA? A matter of preference. Sea cucumber from the west coast? Of course. No matter where we have lived, my wife and I have always been wild game, fish and fowl harvesters. It is always better fresh.

Maple syrup on pancakes with sweet melted butter.
Leaves of maple sugar.
Lingonberry syrup.
Smoked bacon.
Pickled Herring in sourcream sauce.
Venison chili.
Pickled beets and boiled pink eggs.
Stuffed pickled peppers from a heavy crock.
Now I am hungry!