Dining on modern Huron cuisine in Quebec City

If the journals of French explorer Samuel de Champlain are anything to go by, aboriginal cuisine has come a long way since 1608. Back then, when Champlain first arrived in North America and founded the settlement that today is Quebec City, he wrote of local First Nations people dining on a new-world fondue of elk, bear and beaver meat cooked in big vats of boiling water. On really special occasions, the feast would be accompanied by dancers with the heads of their enemies slung over their shoulders.

What a difference a few centuries can make in fine First Nations dining.

This year, as Quebec City celebrates its 400th birthday, a neighbouring Huron community of Wendake is celebrating the debut of a unique new restaurant that blends First Nations culinary traditions with a contemporary dining experience. La Traite's original take on aboriginal cuisine is fast making it one of the hottest tables in the region.

The restaurant is part of the Hôtel-Musée Premières Nations, a 4-star resort and museum complex on the bank of the St. Charles River (or Akiawenrahk River in the Huron language) that opened in March 2008.

Wendake was first settled by the Huron-Wendat people in the mid-1600s after the Iroquois drove them from their original homelands near the Great Lakes. The Huron-Wendat arrived in the Quebec City area around the same time as the first French settlers. The two groups of newcomers formed an alliance that helped the French successfully adapt to their new home. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, Wendake is a tidy, thriving town of about 1,500 people. Its new restaurant, hotel and museum complex was conceived and created by the Huron-Wendat Nation Council and other Quebec First Nations groups with government support. Huron-Wendat Grand Chief Max Gros-Louis says the goal of the resort is to reflect Huron culture past and present and provide visitors with an authentic experience. But anyone looking for aboriginal kitsch will not find it on the menu here.

In design, the Hôtel-Musée Premières Nations is part ancient Huron longhouse, part urban boutique hotel. The sleek lobby offers a decidedly modern take on Huron Wendat mythology and traditions with its cool stone floor, tree-trunk pillars and an ultra-chic fire pit around which guests can relax on leather chairs draped with coyote skins. Floor-to-ceiling window overlooks a stand of maple and birch trees. On the walls hangs a stunning collection of contemporary artwork, much of it created by First Nations artisans, including a rare pair of paintings by the renowned Canadian Ojibwa painter Norval Morrisseau which Grand Chief Gros-Louis acquired directly from the artist.

Off the lobby is a small but thoughtful museum housed in a cone-shaped building mimicking a traditional Algonquin smoke house. It contains rare Huron artifacts, carvings, delicate beadwork samples and dioramas depicting the Nation’s history, culture, society and beliefs.

The lobby’s modern aboriginal design theme is carried down a wood and glass stairway and into La Traite. The restaurant features a small bar with a canopy of interlocked antlers and a comfortable dining room leading to a walk-out stone patio where, in warmer months, diners can eat al fresco overlooking the forest and fast-flowing river.

Like most Eastern woodland tribes, the Huron were farmers during the summer and hunters during the winter. Staple crops were corn, squash, pumpkin, beans and tobacco. Game was mainly bison, deer, bear and other small animals. Fishing was also a major source of food.

La Traite’s gourmet menu incorporates many of these traditional foodstuffs as well as other regional ingredients fresh from the farm, forest or river. The hotel's executive chef, Martin Gagné also sources herbs, edible flowers and roots, in season, such as lavender, fennel and wasabi, that grow wild in northern Quebec.

La Traite’s summer 2008 lunch menu includes a rich squash soup, delicate seasonal vegetables in wapiti broth, a rabbit casserole with mushrooms, black pudding with maple mustard and a marinated deer flank steak with rosemary sauce. Many of the mains are accompanied by crisp, seasonal vegetables and an intense puree of pumpkin.

The more extensive dinner menu includes goat cheese with wildflower honey, apple salad with wild mint, smoked sturgeon and trout, venison, pheasant and pike. You may even find some Indian bannock or the ubiquitous Quebec maple sugar pie on offer some nights. Prices for dishes range from $7-$30 and there are several prix-fixe tasting menus available.

The dishes here are flavourful, attractively plated and presented by a team of friendly, young servers knowledgeable about the menu. Grand Chief Gros-Louis explains that the resort’s 70 employees are a 50/50 mix of Aboriginals and Canadians, creating a dynamic professional team.

A perfect end to your First Nations dining experience might include a cup of Inuit herbal tea, or a walk along the forest path just outside the restaurant. On colder nights though, you might prefer to go back to one of the hotel's 55 luxurious riverfront guest rooms upstairs, complete with plasma TVs, wireless Internet, spa bathrooms and bear-skin rugs, and snuggle up to the handmade beaver-fur pillows on the beds. That beats a big vat of boiled elk meat any day!

Visiting Wendake and the Hotel-Musée Premières Nations

Wendake is 20 minutes drive north of downtown Quebec City, a 2 and 1/2 hour drive from Montreal and a 5-6 hour drive from Ottawa.

This summer the Huron-Wendat Nation is holding special events to mark Quebec City’s 400th birthday including a new evening musical show, called Kiugwe, being presented in an outdoor amphitheatre. The show tells the story of how the world was created according to Aboriginal legends. It runs until September 7.