Melora Koepke

When Zelda Abramson contacted me on a housing-swap website for academics on sabbatical to inquire about subletting my apartment, I gave her a list of its ups and downs. On the pro side, it’s a typical century-old triplex on Waverly St., which means original fixtures, Mile End cachet and a great quartier. On the con […]

In September, I went to a friend’s farm in Aquitaine, France, and the first thing I saw when I entered the converted pigeonnier, on the big French farmhouse table, was an advance copy of The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts. Then, in October in San Francisco, a cookbook store […]

The first time I went downstairs to find the facilities at Le Comptoir charcuteries et vins, chef Ségué Lepage’s wine bar in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood, I opened the wrong door and ran straight into that week’s pig. He was hanging out (or rather hanging up) in a cold room. Across the hall – still not […]

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 […]

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 […]