The Current - Lesley Chesterman on how to cook like a Montrealer

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Montreal is the gourmet capital of Canada, and the cookbook author and former restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman is an evangelist for the food culture of her hometown. For decades, she has been writing about what makes Montreal food great, from the bagels and smoked meat to the restaurants, markets, patisseries and cheese shops. Now, she wants you to cook like a local.We talk to her about her new book, A Montreal Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections From My Kitchen.

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Montreal is the gourmet capital of Canada. Don't take my word for it. The cookbook author and former restaurant critic, Leslie Chesterman, is an evangelist for the food culture of her hometown. For decades, she has been writing about what makes Montreal food great, from the bagels and smoked meat to the restaurants, markets, patisseries, and cheese shops. Now she wants you to cook like a local. Her new book is a Montreal cookbook, recipes and reflections from my kitchen.

Leslie, Chesterman, is in our Montreal studio. Leslie, good morning. Hi, Matt. The first line of this book is, there is no way you can grow up in Montreal and not care about food. How would you describe what food means to the city of Montreal? You know, for me, this is going to sound strange, but it means everything. as a, you know, my parents weren't from Montreal. They moved to Montreal for work in the 60s.

And growing up here, all my Anglo friends, I'd say that 80% of them probably moved away. But for me, the thing that really kept me in Montreal was the food. I mean, I was, I don't want to say I was a foodie because I actually became a chef. But we, big part of our family life was going to restaurants, eating well, you know, shopping back then in the 70s to try to find something beyond romaine lettuce, you know, looking for coriander, which was all over Canada, not just. to Montreal. But for me, this city has always been tied to food. And when you hang out with Montrealers, you might end up talking about politics, maybe religion, but food is at the top of the list. I'm going to get shouted up because I said that it's the gourmet capital of Canada. But those are your words from this book. You know, I would think that I've spoken to chefs all across the country,

and I think a lot of chefs come to Montreal to see what's going on. As a restaurant critic, I wish that we're a city that kind of created trends more than followed them. And I say this, and then people could frown. But I'm also getting this from chefs. across the country. I think there's a lot of love for Montreal. You know, there can be, I think in the past there was a little bit of competitiveness, but Montreal, it's because it's a language. You know, we're a French city, and for a long time, we had a tie with France and French people and French chefs. And so that's why we got a little bit of a head start on gastronomy, but I'd say now the rest of Canada is fantastic. How did you want to reflect that in

this book? Because in many ways, it reads like a love letter to Montreal. Yeah, I do have a little bit of a love sick relationship with my city. Because I think what I wanted people to know is that there's Quebecois cuisine. So we talk about the cuisine of chefs like Martin Picard with, you know, a lot of foie gras and a lot of classical recipes like pudding chomer where people think of putteen. But really growing up here, there are so many influences. And I think everybody can look at the city and how their city influences the way they cook. So first of all, you look at, okay, well, you're always going to be affected by the way your parents ate because the first food you're going to eat is what comes from their families, really.

Or somebody like my mother, who was obsessed with Julia Child, so there was a lot of French food at home. Although my mother was Ukrainian, Polish from Winnipeg, but she still was very influenced by, you know, Julia Child, all these people in the 70s and 80s. But then you look at how your city reflects the way you eat, you know, so I grew up eating a ton of smoked meat. I mean, I'm surprised I don't glow in the dark because they're so, I grew up eating these little coarse smoke meat packages that you boil in the bag, kind of. thing. And then you'd put it and all this water would go and you'd eat that. I had so much smoked meat that for a long time I couldn't eat smoked meat. So this is part of growing up in

Montreal or just things like puteen. I'd go skiing and we'd get a putteen. And I'd never thought twice about putine being something beyond snack bar food. And you know, now people call it the national dish of Canada, which is kind of ridiculous, a little bit of cultural appropriation there by the rest of Canada. And so along the way, you're affected by the things that you eat. You know, I go to a lot of bistro. in Montreal. So I like a lot of bistro food. So there's bistro food in the book. I really like having English tea. And it's something that Montrealers really love is tea. And then there are things like muffins that you don't find in France, but muffins are really big in North America. So you'll get the

influence of a North American dish in very French Montreal. So as much as we can say, you know, we're torture and things like that, we're a little bit of everything. Well, and much more so even than past. The city has changed a lot. I spent a lot of time in Montreal. The city's changed a lot in the last 10, 20 years, and you can get incredible Vietnamese food. You can get incredible Syrian food. Moroccan food. Not such great Thai food, though. You know, that has changed a little bit. There's a, there are some young chefs who are doing great Thai food here now. And it's funny because for a long time, I even just got back from France from the city of Avignon. And I remember I went there 20 years ago and I said, you guys have sushi here and they laughed at me. And then today there's sushi all over

that city. So what we're seeing in. in our cities, the things that there's such a multicultural influence, but still here in Montreal will get a very strong base of not French restaurants. French restaurants are kind of dead in Montreal, but then you have a restaurant like Lixpress, which is a very bistro-centered restaurant or a restaurant like Joe Beef, where the food is actually very French. So you see the kind of trickle down of all these years of these chefs working all over the world, but also sticking true to what sells and what people like. And what people really like here is bistro food and hearty, food and, you know, we're not L.A. We're not having a lot of salads here in Montreal. It tends to be

a little bit heavy with the sauces and the foie gras, but that has also changed too. You know, there's some people who are doing lighter food. And chefs now are doing kind of signature food, what they like. And I think at home, we're all cooking what we like, what we want to eat. And that today can be a curry dish. It can be a French dish. It can be something like there's a borsh in my book because, you know, my mother didn't make a lot of borsh. My grandmother did. But But Borshta's fantastic. It's not even about, is it part of your culture anymore? I think it's, is it delicious and is it what you want to eat for dinner?

What was the food that you grew up with? You've hinted at some of it. And there's a chicken curry that I've cooked from from the book, which is excellent. But there's also a little bit of shake and bake in the house. I ate a lot of shake and bake. And it's funny, I made shake and bake for my kids one day. I'm like, I'm going to see what they think. They loved it.

You know, it's funny to think that anybody was kind of a, like having been a restaurant critic for a long time. I remember there was a St. Hubert car that came to my friend, where for people who don't know, St. Hubert is the barbecue chicken of Quebec for the people. It's all delivery chicken. And somebody said, you know, you're a restaurant critic. And I saw the St. Hubert truck. And I said, I love St. Hubert.

I said, I drink the sauce directly from the container, you know. So I think growing up here, you know, in the book I mentioned that there's a chicken curry, which is something you wouldn't think of being Kibbe Kua. It's not Kibbikwa. The reason we ate a lot of curry is my dad came from London, England. And, you know, like so many Brits, he loved a good curry. And whenever we went out, his first choice was this great restaurant here in Montreal called La Taj, which has amazing Indian food. So he always wanted Indian. And my mother, influenced by Julia Child, was trying to make cheese souffle. And I was affected by being a pastry chef that I would always kind of kick in with a great dessert. So the way that we eat in the city really reflected all of that in the book. And at first I'm thinking, you know, what can this, what angle can this book have? And I thought, how do I cook? And I thought, I cook. And I thought, I cook. like a Montrealer, according to my city and my background.

Your background's fascinating, because you have all of these different parts of your life. I mean, you could have been a ballet dancer. You end up working in a kitchen. You end up working in other kitchens. You end up teaching. And then, as you mentioned, you became a restaurant critic for the Montreal Gazette. Why did you want that critic job? I think because I'd done so much ballet.

And I realized that, you know, it's funny. The whole topic of criticism, people, you know, don't like being criticized. They say here in Quebec that Quebecers really don't like criticism. I really believe in constructive criticism, and I knew from doing so much ballet that you don't naturally become great at what you do. You need a lot of people along the way to say yes, no, yes, no, good, bad, good bad. And I think what really was fun about being a restaurant critic

is I grew up reading in the Montreal Gazette, a woman by the name of Helen Rochester, who was the first restaurant critic in Canada. And, you know, very little reading the Montreal Gazette thinking, wow, you can really just go into a restaurant and say that the baked potato was underbaked. You know, I thought it was great that she was analyzing and she analyzing her food. And the thing is that we always think that restaurant critics are negative, but actually there's a lot of positive there.

So that by the end of a positive restaurant criticism as a kid, I'm like, I really want to go to that restaurant. And I thought all kids were like this, but actually they weren't. My friends weren't talking about going to restaurants. They were talking about going out maybe to bars. but I've always had this love of restaurants. And being a restaurant critic was great in a city where there were so many restaurants. People said that you were either admired or feared as a critic.

Right. Well, I think feared is a little bit. If you have a restaurant and you're scared that the restaurant critic's going to walk in, you're scared that there's something that's going to go wrong. And also people can be overly confident that think, oh, I don't care if the restaurant critic comes in. I think when a restaurant critic goes into a restaurant, be super careful because that person's going to write up your dishes. But you should, if you have

enough confidence, you shouldn't be necessarily scared. You should say, oh, okay, I'm going to be written up in the paper. And that can, and I'd say, you know, it can be negative, but negative reviews are really about that something is terribly wrong. But most of the time we really want to tell people about the restaurants in our city and we want to send readers to that restaurant and say, you've got to try this. In your good bye column, you said that there was a chef whose restaurant you just liked. And he said he would burn down your house, blow up your car and kill your dog.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I remember it well. That was early on in my career. And I remember he called me up. I think he'd had a couple of, you know, recards before he called me. And he said, if people don't know, recards are pastis because he was quite a French chef.

And I think he had a couple too many before he called me. A little courage before he picked up the phone. Oh, he had some courage going on there. And then at the end, he said, I'd kill your dog. I thought, how does he know I have a dog? You know, I started to think, is he a neighbor? But yeah, I mean, there was quite a bit of that. I'd get some emails at 4 o'clock in the morning from some angry chefs. But it's funny because now that there's so few restaurant critics, I mean, I know you guys in Toronto have, there's no critic at the Globe and Mail, there's no

critic anymore at the Montreal Gazette. There's just influencers now for the most part. There are tons of influencers. And I hear from a lot of chefs who said, you know, you really scared the pants off us, but there was nothing like going to pick up the paper at 6 o'clock in the and opening up and seeing your picture and reading a long detailed review about your restaurant and the work you do instead of just a real saying, this place is so cool, and I totally love the putine, and this lobster is amazing. It's not very deep. And they miss having a little bit of a deep analysis of their restaurant. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson and I host the Daily News Podcast, Front Burner. And lately, I'll see a story about, I don't know, political corruption or something and think during a normal time, we'd be talking. about this for weeks. But then it's almost immediately overwhelmed by something else. On Front Burner, we are trying to pull lots of story threads together so that you don't lose the plot. So you can learn

how all these threads fit together. Follow Front Burner wherever you get your podcasts. You know what I miss these days, aside from restaurant critics, and part of it is just about the world that we're living in right now. You met Anthony Bourdain. Yeah, right. At Lexpress. And he, He was somebody who was curious about the world, right? Was interested in the world and wanted people to meet each other. Yes, through food, but also just to meet each other. You said after you met him, you'll never forget him. You know what I'll never forget is that his enthusiasm,

I was lucky enough to meet him right when Kitchen Confidential came out. So he was still really excited about everything. And I think over years of working in food, sometimes you get a little, I don't want to say blazé, but maybe you get a little tired. I think at the end he started to look a little bit tired of what he was doing. doing, and then we all know how sadly it ended. But he was so excited.

We met him at Lixpress, and he was so excited. He loved L'Express. That's your favorite restaurant. You know, for me, it's my favorite restaurant, especially because it's been around for so long. I used to go there when I was in cooking school, and I remember there was a very intimidating matriety there, and I remember I'd, you know, have the steak fried, and I thought it was so cutting edge, you know, steak and french fries. But what I like, Anthony Bourdain taught me something very interesting about restaurants.

He said he went to many restaurants. I spent the weekend with him when he can. in Montreal. And then he went to Opier de Couchon. He loved Martin Picard. He loved O'Pier de Couchon. He loved the guys at Joe Beef. He had so much love for the city. And, you know, there's nothing like having somebody come from, unfortunately, as Canadians, we love people to love our city if they're New Yorkers or if they're from outside. You know, we're not so confident ourselves, but we love when New Yorkers love our city. And his enthusiasm was great, but there was one gastronomic restaurant. And I said, what did you think? It was kind of our top restaurant at the time.

And he said, that restaurant was great, but it could be anywhere. It didn't tell me a lot about your city. And I thought that really happened with restaurants. At one point, kind of in the 2000s, they all were quite similar. The same kind of gastronomy, tasting menu, foie gras, wine pairings, etc. But now we're seeing restaurants that, you know, if you look at a restaurant like, Opie et caichon, you really would only find that in Quebec. I mean, if you found that in the middle of Saskatoon, it would be very weird.

So now a restaurant really has to talk about its place, its ingredients. And that is really something he pointed out early that it wasn't just great food. It had to tell you something about the city. This book is, I mean, there are a long list of recommendations at the end where you could go out and eat in and restaurants. But it's obviously about staying home and cooking for yourself. And there are tips on how to be a great host. If you're not just cooking for yourself, but you have people who are coming over.

Yeah. For people who are outside of Quebec, what is an apero? Ah, the aperro is the time before dinner where you have a drink and some little, munchies. And the aperro is very, very French, but we definitely do it here in Quebec, that you meet people. It could even be at somebody else's house before you go for dinner. You say, oh, let's have the aperro at my house. So it means that you're either going to have something like a pastis, like I was saying before, which would be very French or an aperitif, or here now we're all into cocktails. So is the rest of Canada. So is the rest of the world. Cocktails are the big hot thing now.

And then you'll have some little snacky snacks. And then this is all before dinner. So it's kind of the pre-dinner moment. What are the snacky snacks that I know? need for a great apero. Oh, well, the snacky snacks, you would like to have a very nice mousse de foie de valet, which is kind of paté, as we would say in English, and I have a great recipe from a very famous chef here called James Maguire, who had a restaurant called Le Passe Pactout, which sadly is closed, but was really an iconic French restaurant run by a man who's actually American. And so you could have that, you could have some, even if you want to go very basically, if you have champagne, put out a bowl of potato chips. It's one of the greatest

pairings you will ever try. Champagne and potato chips. And, you know, there are all these designer potato chips now. So I'll always have a bowl of potato chips. I'll always have a bowl of olives. And if I have time, I'll make a spread. Like, I have a green goddess dip there, which you can put cruditates in. And so I like the, this, although you've got to be careful, don't fill up people too much with the apereau before dinner. Why, if you're cooking at a dinner party or hosting a dinner party, should you stop cooking an hour before the guests arrive? Because you'll end up answering the door with a towel on your head and in a bathrobe. I mean, there's a big problem, which is that when we have a dinner party is that we get, you know, I actually, this is very funny, but I have a

dinner party because it gives me a chance to clean up my house because otherwise. So, you know, you clean up the house, you make a fancy dinner. And then, you know, it's people are coming at seven and it's 10 to 7 and you look like the dog's breakfast because you spend all day cooking and you're exhausted. And you've given it your all for this great cooking, this great party. So I think you should really stop an hour before and take care of yourself and prepare yourself the way you prepared that dip. You know, you put all your, just take a little time to relax.

And a lot of times when we invite people for a dinner party, we don't have fun at our own dinner parties. So I give a lot of hints of, you know, doing things in advance, which is kind of an obvious tip. But I just think a big word of advice is to take a breather before people come. And if you invite couples

and they ask to be seated next to each other, you'll never invite them over again. Yeah, I say, okay, the couples. So you shouldn't put couples next to each other, especially, I had one couple. who the woman got up and sat on the husband's lap during the dinner party. They've never been back to my house. Behave when you go to a dinner party.

You know what I mean? It's not a moment to smooch at the table. But I put man, woman, man, woman, just or I don't like having couples together because I don't want them. They talk to each other all the time. This is a time to talk to other people, have a good time. And, you know, I think if they say, oh, we like being together, you're like, fine, that's great. And then they're not back, they're not coming back to my house. But, yeah, I think it's a good time to mix it up, meet other people, talk about other things.

And the seating of a dinner party is make it or break it. So always put the most interesting people who tell the best stories in the middle of the table. Don't isolate them where nobody can hear. Put the people who are shy at the ends of the table and the talkers in the middle. Also, clean out your personal stuff from the bathroom cabinet because you should never assume that friends don't snoop. They do. Yeah, you know, I once said that on a French radio show years ago and they were shocked. And I like, don't you guys, don't think that people don't open.

This is what you do? Well, I'm not saying I do that mad. But do you remember there was a movie called After Hours? And Griffin Dunn looks in the medicine cabinet. I think it's Terry Gard and he finds an antifungal cream. And then I just thought this is so funny because so I say to people, look, get rid of the Viagra. Get rid of the antifungal fungal creep. You know, maybe somebody's just looking for a toothpick or something and they naively open up your medicine cabinet.

You know, that really is the moment to get rid of some of these. Just assume people snoop. And I really do think they do. Do you hate potlucks? Okay. This is a whole big thing. Potlux is that you really need a potluck coordinator. Like you need a potluck coach who's going to determine what everybody's going to bring.

And the worst thing you could have kind of with the dinner is like something like, I don't know, like a carpachio followed by. Somebody brings a carpachio. Somebody brings a tar tar. You really like, or somebody brings a massive delicious soup and you have three bowls of the soup and then nobody wants the rest of the meal. Somebody brings, you know, nine kinds of cheese that nobody. likes that they all end up, cheese is expensive. Somebody brings a terrible dessert because they really don't know how to cook and you always have to finish with a good dessert. So I like something that's really coordinated and has a little bit of a theme. Like if I start Italian, I'd like to

finish Italian. You know what I mean? So I think that the potluck can be, if you're a great coordinator for potlucks and you can really be bossy and tell everybody what to bring, that's the only way it can work. This is a strange thing to ask somebody who has written a cookbook, but how people will follow a recipe to the tea. But what you really want is for somebody to be able to feel comfortable enough that they can cook with their senses. How do you teach people to do that? Yeah, I think that is something that really hit me. I mean, I've been cooking for close to 40 years now, and I'll tell you, it only really came up recently that I realize that there are so many things about cooking when you do it for a long time that have to do with your senses.

For instance, when a cake is cooked, when a cake is really baked, you smell it. And until you smell that cake, it's not done. Or cookies. Once you start to smell the cookies, they're done. If you're stirring spaghetti and you want to know when it's really al dente, you can, after years of doing it, you can just sense that wooden spoon touching the pasta, and you will feel that. There are all these things along the way, like if you're rolling dough,

if it's not cold enough, you'll touch it and you'll see it sticking to the counter. When you cook for a long time, you do develop this kind of, this whole panoply of senses that really tells you if you're doing things properly or not. And chefs have this in spades. You know, a chef only has to push on a steak to know if it's, you know, medium rare, rare or whatever. So this is something from, but if you're not aware that you can have, that you can develop this, it won't happen. So I have a text in the book about cooking with your senses so that people start to, start to pick up on this. And if you cook a lot, you will.

And it's really, I'd say it's really rewarding thing about cooking is starting to be at one with the food. Now, that sounds very zen. And it sounds very new age. No, but it's true. There's a meditative quality to cooking. Yes, there is bad. And I, you know, I really do feel that I, you know, I said this on radio once and people started laughing, but I say, become the tart.

You know, if the tart's in the oven and it's in there for two hours, of course, it's going to burn, or it's not going to be cooked all the way through. You have to start really sensing the food that you're cooking with and you just become it, or feel responsible. It's almost like a, I don't want to say it's like a pet, but, you know, it's something, you have to put a lot of love into your cooking. And when you don't, you see it. When I'm tired and I'm just throwing dinner together, it's obvious.

And when I'm doing something with a lot of love and care, it really comes out a lot better. This is the lightning round. A series of questions with very short answers. I love a lightning round. What's the best thing about sitting at the bar at a restaurant? Ah, sometimes is meeting weird people at the bar and kicking up some conversations that you never knew. And also having the server for yourself. And you can end up getting a little freebie if you bond with the waiter.

What is your favorite cheese? Oh, I love, there's one called Alfred. I love the Mignon Chalue. I love Megan Markle's favorite Grey Owl, which is here from the Eastern Townships. Rio Pell is also fantastic. Baluchin is another one. As you can see, I don't have one. I have many, but they're all from Quebec.

Can Poutine be fancy if it's done up with lobster, et cetera, and still be Poutine? Yeah, well, that is a really divisive question. I am for the pure Poutine. I say, make the Poutine the way it should be. And if you start putting lobster tails, The only thing I'd like on Poutin is Portuguese horserite chicken from Montreal. That is sublime. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my God. Who makes the best bagels in Montreal? Oh, this is really controversial, Matt. I know. I know. I'm putting me into a very difficult situation. I don't want to get you canceled. I'm going to be canceled.

I always say my favorite bagel is the one that there's a parking spot in front of. I really love Fairmount. And you know, it's funny because years ago I interviewed Nigella Lawson in Toronto. and she asked me to bring bagels, and she was very specific that she wanted fair amount bagels. And I thought, wow, she really knows her bagels. But I love St. Vieter, too.

You know, my whole base of my car is covered in sesame seeds, which I say, that is the sign of a real Montrealer when there is sesame seeds, bagel sesame seeds, all over the bottom of your car. What is chomere? This is the unemployment pudding. Ah, unemployment pudding. That is a great dessert, which was kind of,

that was very Quebequois, very Quebec families. I didn't grow up eating pudding shomero, But Martin Picard at Opier de Caution got a recipe from a wonderful woman called Caroline Zuma. And what it is is a very, very basic cake, which is like a pudding cake. And originally it was made with brown sugar because brown sugar was so cheap. And she, this woman, Caroline Zuma, has a family that comes from the boats, which is a big maple syrup-producing region. And she made a sauce with equal amounts of whipping cream, 35% cream and maple syrup.

and it is the most sublime thing ever, and I could eat tons of this. And Martin Picard actually serves it at Opiate Couchon with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. He does it in a wood-burning oven. And I thought if there's one recipe of pudding chomeric, I have to share in this book. It is Carolin's.

It is delicious. Pages of this book are already in my house splattered with oil and food and things like that, which is great. I have enjoyed cooking from it, and I will continue to do so. Leslie, thank you very much. That's so much.

Thank you, Matt. Leslie Chesterman is the author of Amundra. cookbook recipes and reflections from my kitchen. She was in our Montreal studio. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.