Melora Koepke

It’s almost like the farms and markets have been waiting all year to give us the meal we’ve been waiting for. There’s so much bounty in the harvest here, that a great meal can be made from fall in Montreal every day… Us Montrealers are busy pickling the bejeezus out of the fall harvest—recipes for dills, […]

Locals know that a summer stroll around Montreal’s markets is not only a chance to connect local farms to your table, it’s also a chance for us to check each other out in the long-awaited sunshine… Though Marché Jean-Talon is Montreal’s go-to Farmer’s Market all year round, I always look forward to summer as the season […]

Swine and Dine: Our writer hams it up at a Charcuterie course in France. “Squeeze the sausage tightly so that the meat cures evenly,” says cook and food writer Kate Hill, showing me how to churn the manual meat grinder with one hand while managing the growing coil of saucisse de Toulouse with the other. […]

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 […]

A comprehensive online guide to Montreal written for National Geographic Traveller’s Places of a Lifetime franchise: “Je me souviens” (I remember) is Quebec’s provincial motto, and history is present everywhere in Montreal, a city teeming with architecture and culture from the past three centuries. Canada’s second largest, third oldest, and most cosmopolitan city is also a […]

New York’s master of pork buns visits Montreal to hawk cookbook, Banh mi By the time I get to meet David Chang, the interview has been put off twice because of what a good time he’s having in Montreal. Chang, whose four Manhattan restaurants – Momofuku, Ssäm Bar, Milk Bar and the new-ish, two-Michelin-starred Ko […]

I arrive at Price Canyon Ranch just as the sun is setting behind the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. Half a dozen riders are ravenously tucking into ranch-raised flatiron steaks as I sit down across from the head wrangler, Randy Barnhart. I expect questions about my riding experience, but he just grins and asks if […]

I’ve been missing Mexico lately, maybe it’s the winter in the air in Montreal. Here’s an article about museums in the D.F. I wrote for onAir, Air Canada’s newsletter. A few stolen moments contemplating Rivera’s splendid four-part Carnaval de la Vida Mexicana – a riot of colour and emotion that stretches across a north wall […]

Five stops on my crustacean vacation in Sydney, written for onAir, Air Canada’s monthly newsletter. 1. To get myself in an aquatic frame of mind, I start by heading to the venerable Sydney Fish Market, the city’s source for all things fishy since 1945. It’s also the largest fish market in the southern hemisphere and […]

“They don’t give you much in terms of nutrition,” shrugs Noland Johnson as he pulls down a tall frond of ocotillo and hands me its small scarlet buds. “But if you’re out walking in the desert and it’s really hot, they’re nice and refreshing.” Sure enough, when I put the bud on my tongue, I […]