Q1: Montreal is a multi-ethnic city, and we have many places to buy authentic groceries from different parts of the world. Today you wanted to tell us a bit about East European food.
When you think of Russian or Baltic food, you think of hearty stick to your ribs dishes and that’s just about what we need at this time of year. Since these are local family businesses, much of the food is homemade so free from preservatives or additives. Their meat products are smoked naturally with wood, not injected with flavoring.

Q2: What countries are we talking about?
Russia, Roumania, Hungary, Slovenia

Q3: What kinds of foods might we find there?
Well borscht of course, chicken Kiev, different kinds cured meats: gypsy sausage or Moscow salami, goose pastrami. There’s healthy foods like kefir, yogurt drink and their smoked fishes are full of omega 3 (mackerel, herring and sturgeon). You’ll always find dumplings – my favorites are called pelmeny, little meat dumplings that I put in soup. Cabbage is good for you and they make homemade sauerkraut and stuffed cabbage. Don’t forget these stores also make wonderful desserts.

Q4: In what part of town would you find these stores?
West of the city in the Snowdon area: Sherbrooke St., Decarie Blvd., Victoria Ave.

At Bucarest Charcuterie and Patisserie you’ll find that Rumanian food and everything to make an authentic meal – meatball soup, stuffed grape leaves, naturally smoked sausages, chopped eggplant salads, stuffed cabbage, marinated mushrooms or carrots, goose, lamb or pork pastrami, fresh roe, homemade sauerkraut, pickled cabbage heads, etc. can be purchased here.

Russian foods to try would be sprats, sturgeon, whole herrings, smoked eel and mackerel, kefir and pilmeny (meat dumplings and others), chocolates and homemade cakes. Their canned groceries cover more of Eastern Europe, and include: sour tomatoes, white cherry or walnut preserves, chestnut puree, Hungarian paprika paste, pumpkin seed oil, black currants in syrup and yummy juices (pomegranate, red currant, blackberry).

Location: 4670 boul. Decarie at Cote St-Luc Rd. Phone: 514-481-4732

Patisserie et Charcuterie Bourret – The Roumanian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Swiss, German take-out foods in this 40-year-old business include zakuska, smoked eggplant, fish egg salad, goose pastrami, salamis, stuffed cabbage, pickled whole cabbage, fresh and smoked sausages, head cheese and Bulgarian sheep feta.

Bakery specialties to try are kifli (almond and apricot), poppy seed bagli, the 7-layer dobosh, cozonac, and torte wafers ($3.99). There is a wall of grocery products like gooseberry jam, chestnut puree, letcho, Hungarian noodles.

Location: 5771 Victoria, Snowdon  Phone: 514-733-8462   www.bourretinc.com

St. Petersburg Russian Delicatessen – If you’ve ever wanted to try gypsy sausage or dried Moscow salami, you’ve found your spot. Russian yummies include smoked trout and mackerel, salmon caviar, borscht and chicken Kiev of course, but also spicy carrots, pickled mushrooms, herring with beets and potato, pelmeny, 10 kinds of pierogies and varenikas in the freezer, lots of jarred and canned veggies, and after you’ve had your pickled tomatoes, grab a piece of halvah or a  few cookies from the 75 bins and wash it all down with strawberry soda, sour cherry tea – or kefir.

Location: 5584A Sherbrooke ouest  Phone: 514-369-1377

Q1: With summer BBQ and picnics happening, meat eaters still love to chomp down on a meaty mouthful so are there any ways to buy “healthier” meat in Montreal?

A: Local European-style butchers are still making sausages, and luncheon meats the good old fashioned way by hand. They’ve been in business for years and know how to do it without a lot of chemicals. When shopping at their stores you don’t have to worry about big factory food contamination episodes. You can find them all over town, not necessarily just down on the Main (Boucherie Hongroise or Slovenia).

Q: 2 Can you give us some places to shop, let’s say on the West Island?

I was speaking to Peter of  La Bernoise (3988 Boul. St-Charles, Pierrefonds, Phone: 514-620-6914) and he avoids phosphates and MSG when making his sausages, bacon and ham. Think about when you open a package of bacon and  it’s all wet with water. Phosphates are added to suck up salt and water making the bacon weigh more (and taste less).

With their own smoker using real wood, this 30-year-old business has been able to cook authentic European (German and Swiss) specialty sausages, smoked pork chops and veal roast, smoked ham, bacon and smoked pork hocks. The butcher counter sports the meatloaf, air-dried sausages, knockwurst, lamb sausage, schublig and air dried beef, which you can eat with sauerkraut and squeeze-tube mustard along with rye bread made with muesli. Homemade whole wheat and 6-grain bread are available as well as groceries: dumpling mixes, Kuchen Meister cakes, Knacke brot plum butter, Lindt chocolates and even German crossword puzzle books.

Q: 3 What about nitrites and nitrates, aren’t those in sausages too, shouldn’t we be avoiding them?

At Salamico (1980 Lucien Thimens Ville St-Laurent, Phone: 514-336-7104), you can buy about 20 different types of nitrate-free sausages, like German white sausage (veal), Italian or breakfast sausage. Other popular ones: Toulouse with fine herbs, merguez, cheese and mushroom cheese and broccoli, lime and coriander.  Julie Anne said the fat content is lower in her sausages too with the chicken sausage there’s only 5% fat. Pork ones have 15%, whereas at the supermarket it would be at least 20% or more fat added.

For 43 years, you could always find a little bit of the taste of your homeland (if it was Germany, Switzerland, Poland or Hungary) here. Some of their interesting specialties are Lyoner sausage, Hungarian salami, gendarme sausages, bacon with paprika, teewurst, smoked pork loins or hocks, duck fat and imported sauerkraut. For sandwiches, there’s sliced veal, roast beef, roast pork and different kinds of ham. Where else can you get “custom-made” meat where you can have them cook it in the way you  like it?

Shelves of imported foods (gooseberry, prune jam or sour cherry syrup, PK herrings, ground poppy seeds, egg noodles, biscuits) run across the front of the store along with German magazines and cookbooks.

Q4: Okay, where’s the beef, what do you have to offer the beef lovers out there?

At Levinoff, (8610 8th ave., Montreal Nord, Phone: 514-725-2405), open since 1951, there’s a  new upscale shop-at-home service for certified Angus prime cuts (the kind the restaurants use). You can get T-bone, rib roast, NY cut strip steak, rib steak or tenderloin; if you order $100 worth, there’s no delivery charge. Since they’re in the heart of an Italian district, handmade Italian sausages are always fresh and ground beef is always available at really low prices  – and you can buy fresh chicken, pork and deli meats.

This is a win-win situation, if you shop at these stores, you are keeping them in business and buying healthier choices for your body. How many of you know the first name of the butcher you buy your meat from? It’s time to go back and shop at these informative family businesses and find out what you are eating.

With their own smoker (and no MSG or phosphates!), this West Island shop has been able to cook authentic German and Swiss specialty sausages, smoked pork chops and veal roast, smoked ham, bacon and smoked pork hocks. La Bernoise’s butcher counter sports the meatloaf, air-dried sausages, knockwurst, lamb sausage, schublig and air dried beef, which you can eat with sauerkraut and squeeze-tube mustard along with rye bread made with muesli. Homemade whole wheat and 6-grain bread are available as well as groceries: dumpling mixes, Kuchen Meister cakes, Knacke brot plum butter, Lindt chocolates and even German crossword puzzle books.

Location: 3988 Boul. St-Charles, Pierrefonds
corner: Boul. Pierrefonds
Tel: 514-620-6914
Hours: Tues-Fri 9-6, Sat 9-5

In the cold of winter, it’s a good moment to look for some stick-to-your ribs hearty food.

Part of my background is Polish, and I never realized how influenced you are by your taste genes until I wound up with my husband on a business trip in Mississauga. We had landed in Little Poland, and we wound up eating all of our meals in Polish restaurants and smacking our lips. We just could not get enough of the flavors.

When I returned and tried to find those kind of dishes here, I couldn’t. In Montreal, the restaurants that are Polish-like are more North Americanized for the Canadian palate. I keep pining for the tastes I found there, so I have rounded up a grocery/café that comes closest and two bakeries for some traditional desserts.

The other odd Polish connection is that I don’t bake a lot, but I have one favorite – a much admired and requested dessert recipe for New York Cheesecake. It wasn’t until I walked into Rosemont Bakery that I realized that cheesecake is a staple of a Polish bakery – my taste buds had searched for their roots and found them.

Battory Euro-Deli, 115 St.Viateur Ave. West at St. Urbain St. Phone: 514-948-2161. Hours: Tuesday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you have a hankering for hearty Polish delicacies, head over here for the national dish of bigos, and then have some kielbasa and throw in those pierogi stuffed with meat, cheese and potato, cabbage and mushrooms or blueberry. You can buy them cooked to eat on the spot or take them home frozen by the bag. For the winter you can stoke up on some hearty soups in the café. See if you can survive tripe (cow’s stomach) soup or go for the popular Ukrainian borscht (a vegetable soup with beets), clear borsht (just beets), spinach soup or “zurek”, a sour soup with sausage. Stuffed cabbage is on the menu, so are potato pancakes and stuffed crepes – meat or mushroom with cabbage. Cold cuts can be bought too, along with groceries: Winiary dried soups, Tenczywek plum butter, Develey mustard or Kamis and Prymott gravy, Tymbark soda, dumpling mix, horseradish cream, sour cherry syrup and six kinds of sauerkraut or mustards. For dessert look at the counter for cheese, poppy and apple strudel. Prices would please starving artists.

Rosemont Bakery, 2894 Rosemont Blvd. at 6th Avenue. Phone: 514-728-7711. Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Your basic Polish bakery staples are sold by this bakery to many charcuteries and family tables around town. The trays of apple cake come in sweet or not-so-sweet, and there are trays of cheesecake (regular, chocolate on top or peach) and cherry cake. The machovietz loaf has poppy seeds and chocolate on top, and the piernik is a honey cake, while the babka comes in marble or fruit. Donuts are famous in Polish bakeries, so these paczek come with plums inside, vanilla cream or strawberry. The hearty breads are black bread, regular rye and round ryes that have no yeast. To put between the bread slices, there’s country sausage, ham sausage and Polish ham. Some staples fill the wall – Winiary and Prymat sauces, thick “beety” horseradish, candy, Placki mixes, Tymbark juices (carrot, cherry, white grape) and don’t leave without the sour pickles from the fridge.

Patisserie Danka, 15450 Pierrefonds Blvd. at Jacques Bizard. Phone: 514-620-1253. Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday and Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. A Polish bakery on the West Island is a find. Very traditional babkas, chocolate babkas, cheesecakes (raisins, chocolate covered or poppy seed) and apple cakes are lined up. Authentic strudels in poppy seed, chocolate, vanilla, walnut, lemon and orange are baked, and stefanka, the 7-layer cake, is here along with honey cake made with cream or plums. Roulades come in chocolate or mocha, vanilla and walnut, and you can buy meringues or rum balls. “Drajdushka” are a kind of a brioche with raisins, and those delectable plum donuts are here if you get in early enough. Some groceries (cookies, candies, jams, teas, syrups) and a few videos line the shelves.