Where should I eat in Quebec City, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Poutine — fries, fresh cheese curds and hot brown gravy — has two competing birthplaces, both in the dairy country of Centre-du-Québec. Warwick claims 1957, when Fernand Lachance of the Café Idéal, later Le Lutin qui rit, tipped curds onto a customer's fries and warned it would make "une maudite poutine" — a damned mess. Drummondville claims the finished dish: Jean-Paul Roy of Le Roy Jucep had served fries in sauce since 1958 and put curds, fries and gravy together on the menu in 1964. The Canadian Encyclopedia treats the Quebec origin as settled and the town as unresolved.

The older table is heartier. Tourtière, the spiced meat pie of winter, comes in a deep-dish version from Lac-Saint-Jean made with cubed meat and potatoes; fèves au lard (beans baked with salt pork), pea soup and cretons, a spiced pork spread, fill out the traditional spread, much of it built for the sugar-shack table.

Maple is the through-line. Quebec produces more than 90 percent of Canada's maple syrup and roughly 70 percent of the world's supply, and from late February through April the cabanes à sucre around the city and on Île d'Orléans serve set meals — omelettes, ham, beans, tourtière — under a glaze of the new season's syrup, with maple taffy poured on snow to finish.

Rue du Petit-Champlain runs narrow at the foot of the cliff, its stone houses converted to bistros and boutiques, and on a cold evening the windows steam from inside while snow piles against the doorsteps.

Order the caribou if you come for Carnival: the festival's signature drink mixes red wine, spirits and maple syrup, and it is traditionally carried in a hollow plastic cane sold at the Carnival sites. Outside Carnival season you will rarely see it poured.

• Lunch — Take poutine at a casse-croûte-style counter on Rue Saint-Jean, where portions are generous and prices local.
• Afternoon — Cross to a Petit-Champlain café for ice cider, the still, sweet cider Quebec makes from apples left to freeze.
• Dinner — Book a traditional table in the old town for tourtière and the full winter menu; in March, swap one dinner for a sugar-shack sitting on Île d'Orléans.

Sugar shacks are strictly seasonal — the sap run ends in April, and weekend sittings at the well-known cabanes sell out weeks ahead in March. In the old town itself, Carnival weeks and peak summer squeeze restaurant capacity, so dinner reservations matter more here than the city's size suggests.

Use the things-to-do question in this group to time a Petit-Champlain dinner after the walls and the Citadelle, and the when-to-visit question if a sugar-shack trip in March is the goal.