Gastronomically speaking, Quebec is different. One of the most striking things about La Belle Province – at least to this Brit living in France – is how French it feels. Wherever you go, the cafés and restaurants are full of people who seem to be taking a frank, uncomplicated, unhurried delight in the pleasures of the table.

There is also, as Anne Desjardins points out in her new book Québec, Capitale Gastronomique, a unique and delicious complicity between chefs and food producers. “In Montreal, cooking is multi-ethnic, more influenced by New York or even California,” she notes, adding that the chefs have to work with big distribution systems. “Here in Quebec you see producers at the back door of the kitchen nursing a box of special beans or a new variety of potato grown to order by the chef – it’s much more like in France.”