If Boulevard St-Laurent just south of Jean-Talon can be called Little Italy, then Montreal North should have the moniker of Big Italy. The businesses I chose to write about today are on the arteries of what is considered the heart of this neighborhood – the Madonna de Pompeii church – located on Boulevard St. Michel near Sauve St. When many of the immigrants settled here, they wanted to live nearby so that they could walk to church. Naturally, storekeepers tried to stay within that circuit as well. And stay they did.

Just calling the stores to interview someone for this column was a challenge, since I don’t happen to speak Italian. When you get into any neighborhood that is so ethnically saturated, then you know you are in a good place to find food that will taste more like their Mommas made them at home. So that is where I am leading you today To get to the first two stores, take St. Michel Blvd. For about ten blocks North of Metropolitain Blvd. and make a left onto Charland Avenue, a little street just before the underpass at Industriel Blvd. For the last store, Les Importations Giannini, go under the underpass, make a right on Mont-Joli St. and then another right onto Lausanne St., which is one way going south.

Italians are known for their attention to freshness and home cooking, so what you look for when you shop here are your basics – bread, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, great canned tomatoes, etc. The busier cooks who won’t be rolling their pasta from scratch will only buy very, very good pasta that has either been homemade by someone else or at least hails from Italy. For the heart of an Italian meal, pasta, you can start at La Maison du Ravioli, one of the first businesses in Montreal which dared, thirty-one years ago, to try to sell noodles to an Italian community.

La Maison du Ravioli, 2479 Charland Ave. at d’Iberville St. Phone: 514-381-2481. Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 1p.m. Ask almost any Italian about pasta, and they’ll know this spot. Around since 1976, they have built up a following of more than three hundred restaurants that buy here. Their specialties include meat or cheese ravioli and tortellini, medaglioni stuffed with ricotta and veal/beef/pork, cappelletti, cannelloni, gnocchi di patate and tagliatelle, but they don’t stop there. Find your favourite, top it with their new house sauces (rose, arrabiata, bolognese, napolitana) and find out what pasta is supposed to taste like. Now you can take home their homemade lasagne too – meat or vegetarian.

Salerno, 2411 Charland Ave at De Lille St. Phone 514-384-9142. Hours: Daily, 24 hours. Why am I not surprised that at any hour of the day or night someone in this neighborhood can buy a loaf of fresh bread? Every day of the week you can pick up cold cuts and salads to stuff into crusty breads like the pagnotta or the corona with a hole or the di grano or a whole wheat and white bread combo. Make a stop for some specialties – the stuffed pizza (cold cuts inside), calzone (cold cuts with cheese, or spinach and cheese) or taralli, pretzel-like treats made with fennel. Do not leave without buying the to-die-for mezzaluna, a fried dough donut-like treat stuffed with sweetened ricotta (and buy one for me!).

Les Importations Giannini, 9821 Lausanne Ave at Industriel Blvd. Phone: 514-324-7441 Hours: Monday to Wednesday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Going wholesale is a way to catch Italian specialties before they run out of them in the shops. The first little food showroom has select items: Granoro pasta products, Pugliasena olive oil (from their home town) and Monari Federzoni balsamic vinegar, in business since 1912. They sell the Journal de Montreal’s contest-winning pannetone by Loison. With Easter coming up, you can now also score Loison’s Easter special – the dove-shaped sweet columba. The wholesale end of the business goes way beyond this showroom, so if you ask you might be able to get some by-the-pound products like rare black chick peas or ciccerci beans (funny looking white-yellow ones from the lupini family). Local restauranteurs have been beating a path to their door for their fig syrup – mixed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar it makes the yummiest salad dressing. Organic food chasers will find pasta, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and flavored oils. Upstairs the local community makes a point of stopping here to choose from lines of Alessi and Calderone kitchenware, dessert sets, serving pieces, dishes, stemware, pasta machines, pressure cookers and heavy duty stainless steel pots and pans, as well as small gifts, frames and gift baskets. They are an authorized Jura espresso machine dealer (Saeco and Spidem) too. Note that espresso machines can be repaired here.

By now the holidays are upon us, and panic has set in. If you’re the one in charge of the food preparation and want to make these days special, why not head to a real farmer’s market to scoop up all your cooking needs? Somehow the sterility of a supermarket does not evoke the nostalgia of past holidays compared to meandering through the stalls of an old-fashioned real food market.

We are fortunate in Montreal to have two big ones (Atwater and Jean Talon www.marchespublics-mtl.com) which could cover all our needs, but the Jean Talon Market is much bigger and has a special feel, with its combination of rusticity and sophistication. Jean Talon Market is like a little city square, with its four encircling sides lined up with food delectables. More food stores and other related businesses ooze out from the square as well, and the whole thing spills into Little Italy with even more eating options. Started in 1933, it sits between Jean Talon St. to the north, Belanger to the south and Casgrain Ave. and Henri Julien Ave. to the east and west.

To get you started I have chosen a fish monger, a poultry specialist and a cheese store for your basics, and then I threw in one just for fun – full of Quebec homegrown gourmet goodies. As you circle the square, you will bump into just about everything else you need – veggies, meat, by-the-pound basics, bakeries, herbs, sausages, chocolates and even a cookbook store to help with recipes.

Poissonnerie Shamrock, 7015 Casgrain Ave. at the SW corner of the market. Phone: 514-272-5612. Hours: Sunday to Wednesday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. If you sell at the Jean Talon Market, (and they have since 1959), then you had better be up to snuff, since the restaurateurs and shoppers who come here are going out of their way to get the freshest ingredients. The one way traffic down the middle of this narrow shop first passes the prepared fish dishes like tilapia marinated in orange and salmon in brandy or lemon/pepper/dill, then goes past the fresh fish, lobster tank and the showcase of sixteen kinds of caviar. There’s beluga, of course, but also tabikko for sushi making. The wall of frozen fish and seafood has advertised specials. Look for the enormous easy peel shrimp or the scampis, both four to six per lb. Some highlights: octopus or seaweed salads, smoked yellowfin tuna, lobster oil, squid ink, stuffed escargot and good old salt cod. For your holiday meals, you can serve salmon tournedos, stuffed sole or oysters Rockefeller. Other location: Marche Maisonneuve, Fillets Express.

La Fromagerie Hamel, 220 Jean Talon St. East at Casgrain Ave. Phone: 514-272-1161. Hours: Monday to Wednesday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. www.fromageriehamel.com This cheese shop, open since 1965, is always bustling. About five hundred cheeses are stocked from France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Greece, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Hungary. Some special cheeses you can serve for the holidays might be: Stilton with port, a “winter” cheese (made only from November through March) called Vacherin Mont’or, or Cabriolet, a goat cheese from the South of France. Cheese gift baskets can be ordered too (at least two days ahead), and can have other items added, such as wine, crackers, chocolates, oil and vinegar, jam or pheasant terrines. Other locations: 2117 Mont Royal Ave. East. (514-521-3333); 9196 Sherbrooke St. East. (514-355-6657); Repentigny, 622 Notre Dame St. (450-654-3578).

Zinman Chicken Market, 7010 St. Dominique St. at Mozart St. Phone: 514-277-4302. Hours: Monday to Wednesday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday and Friday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Located one block outside the market and open for the last ninety years, this poultry market sells to at least three hundred local shops. They sell all the specialties you may want to serve for your holiday meal: rabbits, quail, ducks, hare, guinea hens, turkeys, pheasant, Cornish hens, partridges and pigeons. Their chickens are prized, as they are fed no mineral supplements, just old fashioned corn and grain, which might make them cost twice as much as the supermarket variety, but then they taste twice as good.

Le Marche des saveurs du Quebec, 280 Place du Marche du Nord at Henri Julien Ave. Phone: 514-271-3811. Hours: (This week only) Daily 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. until the 24^th). Regular hours: Monday to Wednesday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This airy bright jewel in the Jean Talon market brings you gourmet flavors, but only from Quebec. The tastes run from foie gras ravioli, to peach coulis or wild mushroom mustard. Some flavors for your holiday table might be dandelion or wild cherry wine vinegar, pheasant pate, smoked emu, rose jelly, oignon jam or carrot confit. They stock Quebec wines, and if you’re dying for some – caribou soup. This week there will be two to three tastings a day from some of their suppliers. Le Verger du Clocher will show off their apple muste products. The apple reduction is a yummy syrup good on salads, meats and fresh fruits. Nutra.fruit will showcase their cranberry treats: a cranberry confit d’oignon, sesame oil with cranberry, rosemary and garlic and a cassis and cranberry oil.