Foods you need to try on your Canada working holiday

With its French heritage, amazing fresh produce and fancy field-to-fork culinary culture, Canada has one of the best food scenes in the world.

However, this article isn’t about that. It’s about when you’ve been skiing all day and want to face plant into a polystyrene tray of poutine. Or eat Nutella BeaverTails until your sticky-out rodent teeth fall out.

Poutine

Canada’s greatest export since Ryan Reynolds’ face, thanks to food trucks and festivals –poutine is now known the world over. On a personal note, we’ve just never been happier that – thanks to the chic French name – it’s now socially acceptable to eat fries, cheese curds and gravy without judgment.

Caesars

All hail Canada’s favourite cocktail! The fishy cousin to the Bloody Mary, Caesars are made with clamato juice (clam and tomato) instead of your everyday tomato juice. If you can get past your drink being part mollusc, they’re genuinely delicious. And just like Bloody Marys, are acceptable to drink at airports, brunches and on almost all other occasions whilst living in Canada. Happy as clam.

BeaverTails

Plant, animal or mineral? None. It’s a doughnut. Stretched into a beaver-shaped tail, these much-loved deep fried pastry treats are then covered in sweet toppings and sauces. True tale: in 2009, there was an ObamaTail created to celebrate the President’s visit. He was a classic cinnamon and sugar guy, with a whipped cream, maple syrup and chocolate ‘O’ piped on top. The O standing for Oh-my-mother-fudging-god-these-are-good.

Bagged milk

We mean, it’s milk. So that part shouldn’t be surprising. The fact that milk in Canada comes in bags, more so.

Butter tarts

These small pasty cases are filled with whisked egg, butter, syrup and sugar. Gone in a couple of bites, they’re delicious with a cuppa. Or when your folks fly over to stay and you bring out the best china. (We’re eating on the floor, aren’t we?).

Maple syrup

In case you missed the massive sign at the airport where you had to pledge your allegiance to checked flannel shirts, maple syrup and Nickelback* – Canadians are obsessed with maple syrup. Although it comes in numerous forms, our favourite is syrup on a stick. This is where you pour hot maple syrup into the snow, stick a wooden stick in it, wait for it to harden and then eat it like a lollypop. It’s perhaps the only time when the warning ‘never eat yellow snow’ shouldn’t be strictly observed.

*We’re joking, you can also wear striped shirts.

Tourtiere

This French-Canadian classic meat and potato pie is often flavoured with cloves and other Christmassy spices for the holidays. For those who like to celebrate Christmas every day, you’ll find it year-round in most Canadian bakeries – especially in Québec.

Nanaimo Bar

Our favourite kind of baking (no baking) this tray bake is made of layers of wafer, nuts, crushed biscuit, coconut, custard and chocolate. And originates from Nanaimo – a city on Vancouver Island.

If you’ve got an appetite to live and work abroad, JENZA Work Canada includes visa support, a ski or summer season job before you go, 5 nights’ accommodation, and a complimentary box of indigestion tables on arrival.