GASPÉ, QUEBEC—When they were newcomers to Canada, the Italian couple had discovered, on Quebec’s country roads, the joys of the casse-croûtes, the food shacks that lie dormant in the frozen landscape during winter, then burst to life during the all-too-short warm months. And so on a recent afternoon, Marta Grasso and Andrea La Monaca, sat side by side at a picnic table at one of these shacks, La Mollière, a lobster roll before him and a shrimp roll for her. A large blue sky spread out behind the casse-croûte, built on a promontory over the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. “You can taste the sea,” Grasso said. “We are from Sicily, so we are used to good, fresh seafood.
” The most famous menu item of Quebec’s casse-croûtes, poutine, has become known far beyond Quebec, with restaurants as far afield as Seoul, South Korea, specializing in the dish. But what about the funny-sounding pogo? Or a pinceau, sometimes spelled pinso? And the guédille, whose etymology remains obscure, even though it’s a staple of casse-croûtes? Grasso, who now calls Montreal home, was mystified when she first encountered a guédille, a sandwich consisting of a split-top hot-dog bun stuffed with seafood salad, meat or whatever is handy, on a trip three years ago. She was immediately hooked.
Her mother also became a fan during a visit from Italy last year. “She wanted to go eat a guédille every day,” Grasso said. can be found everywhere across Quebec, many open year round.
But in fa.