Melora Koepke

Everybody knows that Montreal is the place with the most beautiful women and the best foie gras this side of the Atlantic, but we excel in the vegetable department as well. Let it be known, from this point on, that Montreal has the best beets on the planet…

Technically, the many varieties of red, yellow and candy-cane beets are grown in the farmland outside of town. But it’s the restaurants that perform the alchemy of transforming them into the innovative and delicious dishes described below. Read post

Here in Quebec, our growing season is relatively short, but there are certain vegetables, tubers mostly, that can survive and even thrive in the root cellar. Greatest among these is the mighty beet, a.k.a beta vulgaris, aka awesome. Beets are not only grown for their leafy goodness and as an industrial food-colouring (beet powder puts the red in traditional red-velvet cake recipes), but also as a source of sugar. We love them so much, in fact, that we almost believe they might beat (or “beet”) winter: in 2010, a pilot project was launched to see if pre-wetting road salt with beet juice would help reduce the salt’s harmful effect on the water table. Turns out, it works really well!

But the main reason we grow beets is because we like to eat them. Sometimes nothing beats a good old beet, walnut and feta salad, but Montreal chefs are also inspired to get really creative with them. Below, a rundown of the city’s best beet eats…Read post