Background on Quebec Restaurants

As part of my trip to Quebec City, I did much research via chowhound, Fodor's, Frommer's, Yahoo travel, and other web sites on good restaurants nearby. Frankly, there wasn't much about the city of Quebec. Judging by the reviews, Quebec's restaurant scene seems geared toward the ultra-expensive, four star restaurants serving haute cuisine. Still, I managed to sift through the reviews to find a number of cheaper, more locally distinctive joints at which to eat.

Context for this Particular Restaurant

Around lunchtime we were in a part of Quebec for which I never found any restaurant recommendations. I knew it would happen, but I was not willing to rearrange the whole day to prevent it. I assumed we'd be able to find a decent place to eat. After all, everyone always says Montreal and Quebec have good food and any place you wander into is likely to be good.

Thus, for lunch we looked at a map of local restaurants and stores and chose one that sounded good: Epicerie Europeenne.

Epicerie Europeenne Review

Epicerie Europeenne ( http://www.epicerie-europeenne.com/ ) turned out to be a cross between a market (i.e., a small grocery store) and a deli.

Once again, as at Chez Victor, no one spoke English. (Both Epicerie Europeenne and Chez Victor were outside of the walls of old town / the tourist part of town.) We grabbed a deli menu and tried to determine what the items were, determining meats mostly by process of elimination after crossing off words we recognized.

Both sandwiches we shared were made on good bread -- long rolls with just the right amount of crunch and give.

One sandwich included sopressata, a cured form of salami that looks like pepperoni and tastes very similar. My mom said, "that's good pepperoni!" and she was right. Good, and very spicy!

I think our other sandwich included prosciutto and bocconcini, a type of mozzarella. (My dad and I determined this by process of elimination on a copy of the menu.) My notes say "the white stuff is spicy too" -- I think this applies to the cheese.

Sadly, we were hungry and I forgot to take pictures of the sandwiches.