11 • SLOW FOOD NATIONS
Late JuneNorth of the border, in Petite Italie, where everyone speaks French, it can
be hard to remember where you are exactly. This was Montreal, outer-
most point on our elliptical vacation. Our Canadian relatives gamely
asked what we wanted to see in their city, and we answered: Food! We
wondered what was available locally here at the threshold (to our south-
erly way of thinking) of the frozen tundra. We lit out for Chinatown and
Little Italy. Here, as in the United States, the best shot at fi nding locally
based cuisine seems to involve seeking out the people who recently
moved here from someplace else.
We passed a few restaurants that advertised “Canadian food” along
with the principal ethnic fare. Our hosts explained this meant something
like “American” food, more an absence than a presence of specifi c char-
acter: not Chinese, not Italian. Is it true that “American food” means
“nothing?” I pondered this as we walked down a street of Chinese shops
where butchers pinned up limp, plucked ducks like socks on clotheslines
(if your mind’s eye can handle socks with feet and bills). It’s easy enough
to say what’s not American cuisine: anything with its feet still on, for start-
ers. A sight like this on Main Street USA would send customers running
the other way, possibly provoking lawsuits over psychological damage to
children. As a concept, our national cuisine seems to be food without ob-
vious biological origins, chosen for the color and shape of the sign out