Canadian Food That is Hard to Find in the U.S.
Canadian food is about simple pleasures. This tends to lean on the “high calorie” side with chips, chocolate bars and gravy-topped fries, which hardly count as “traditional cuisine,” but they are flavours that are uniquely Canadian and you will surely miss when you leave the country. Favourites like ketchup chips and “pure” maple syrup can be quite hard for expats to find when living stateside, so before you leave the Great White North, here’s a few Canadian foods you will be giving up:
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Coffee Crisp
For almost 100 years, this popular decaf chocolate bar has been a favourite of Canucks of all ages. It consists of a layers of vanilla wafer and foamed coffee-flavoured soft candy, dipped in chocolate. Coffee Crips is virtually impossible to find in the U.S. and by “virtually” I mean you can only find it at specialty shops and are usually only available in cities close to the U.S.-Canadian border. However, the bar is available in Australia for some reason.
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Poutine
This basic dish made from a layer of fries, cheese curds and gravy is the most quintessential of Canadian food. Poutine, a Quebecois slang word for “mess,” originated in Drummondville, Que. in 1964 and has since taken many forms, from being a fixture at fast food chains to rural hockey arenas across Canada. Although poutine can be found in some northern U.S. states, they often don’t get it right. Whether it be using American processed cheese instead of proper cheese curds or dumping watery gravy on it that makes the fries too soggy. You can only trust a Canadian to serve you a REAL poutine.
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Lay’s Ketchup Chips
It just makes sense to have ketchup-flavoured chips: French fries and ketchup. Unfortunately, most of our neighbours down south have yet to experience the wonders of an old-fashioned ketchup potato chip. However, they are available regional in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland) where Herr’s Heinz ketchup potato chips are sold in some grocery store chains. The reason why ketchup chips are not available nationwide is because they just weren’t selling after Lay’s and Pringles introduced the flavour on multiple occasions.
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Jos Louis
Introduced in 1930, this decadent bite-size chocolate cake has been the jewel of every Canadian kid’s lunchbox ever since. It’s basically two chocolate-flavoured sponge cakes with a cream filling, then dipped in milk chocolate. Some American groceries stores have Jos Louis on the shelf next to Twinkies and Little Debbie snack cakes, but only in states along the Canadian border. Luckily, there’s always Amazon.
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‘Pure’ Maple Syrup
I’m not talking about Aunt Jemima’s sugar water, I mean the good stuff you would get at a Quebec sugar shack. You can find maple syrup farms across Canada, which are essentially a forest with taps attached to trees that release that sweet sap we love to pour on our pancakes or simply dump on a pile of snow and roll it up on a stick. Maple syrup sold in the U.S. is watered down, so it tastes like what we in Canada call “table syrup.” It’s just not the same.
If you’re planning on moving to the U.S. and leaving all this great Canadian food behind, you will surely need some American currency to kick off your new life. Knightsbridge FX has great exchange rates for Canadian to U.S. currency at a rate that’s lower than the big banks. Give us a call today at 1.877.355.5239 or fill out a form here for a free non-obligation quote.
By Admin | April 17, 2017 | Daily Update |
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