About Food In Nunavut - Many Nunavut restaurants offer delicious, well prepared “country food,” what northerners call foods traditionally eaten by Inuit. Arctic char, a fish similar to salmon, is one of the most popular. Scallops gathered from Cumberland Sound by Inuit fishermen are sometimes available at restaurants and retail outlets in Iqaluit and other northern communities. Greenland shrimp is also a local favourite. Turbot from Pangnirtung may also be available in season, in the Baffin. Caribou is a northern staple. It is very nutritious and low in fat, so it's a good choice for the diet-conscious, and widely available. Muskox, most easily available in the Kitikmeot, is well worth trying, very much like well-marbled beef.
For the more adventurous palate, community feasts offer traditional fare such as raw and boiled caribou and seal, and raw frozen char. Everyone is welcome at community feasts, but be prepared to experience culture shock: you will see whole seals laid out on the floor, being butchered and consumed raw in the manner Inuit have done for centuries. You may encounter maktaaq, the outer layer of skin and blubber from whales (beluga and narwhal), served raw. An Inuit delicacy, this food is very warming due to its high caloric content. The usual method of eating maktaaq is to cut it in small bits and swallow whole. Local shellfish such as mussels and clams are also popular fare in some communities. But these are almost never available on a commercial basis — you will have to be lucky enough to have someone invite you to join them.
Because of the short growing season, the traditional Inuit diet was heavily based on the results of the hunt, by land or sea. There are a few edible greens and berries gathered from the land in the summer, such as tart,lemony mountain sorrel, Labrador tea, Arctic blueberries and cranberries, and crowberries (often called “blackberries” by the Inuit due to their glossy dark colour, but not the same as blackberries in southern Canada). None of these are available fresh commercially, although there is a firm from Northern Quebec now marketing traditional Inuit herbal teas. In many parts of Nunavut the vegetation is very fragile, so visitors are asked not to pick berries on their own. It’s best to do so only if you are out with an Inuit outfitter or local family who knows the traditional berry-picking spots.
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