Where We Ate: A Field Guide to Canada’s Restaurants, Past and Present

Now available for pre-order!

Available for pre-order now at:

About Where We Ate

If you’ve spent more than five minutes with me you know how much I love restaurants. I’ve worked in them, written about them, and who knows how many I’ve eaten in. So, after years of researching and writing, my first book is available for pre-order! Where We Ate: A Field Guide to Canada’s Restaurants, Past and Present is my love letter to Canada’s restaurants and the history of the incredible people who created our diverse dining scene.

Where We Ate is a history of restaurants, but also of immigration, cultural movements, and the origin stories of Canada’s most iconic dishes (donairs, poutine, Ginger Beef, California rolls and Hawaiian Pizza, just to name a few); the history of why we ate where we ate.

It is part history book, part restaurant bucket-list guide, and part cookbook — a cross-section of Canada’s mom-and-pop shops, high-end dining establishments and local favourites that make up our amazing dining scene.

Where We Ate will be published on June 6th, 2023 but to make sure you receive a copy on publication day, you can pre-order now wherever you buy books (the links are below).

I would so appreciate your support in pre-ordering the book. In today’s market, it is important for first-time authors like me to get lots of pre-orders because it gives the book a great headstart and helps to avoid supply chain issues, plus it ensures you get a copy on publication day!

What you can expect inside: from the publisher

“You’ve heard (and probably asked) this question a million times: ‘Where did you go for dinner?’” A love letter to 150 Canadian restaurants, and the stories and people behind them—from pre-Confederation to the present day, from Victoria to St. John’s—here’s where we ate.

What is Canadian cuisine? While cookbook authors and historians have spent decades trying to answer this question, Canadian food isn’t summed up by one iconic dish, but rather a huge range of meals, flavours, and cultural influences. It’s about the people who make our food, who cook it and serve it to us at lunch counters, in ornate dining rooms and through take-out windows.

In her debut book, restaurant critic and journalist Gabby Peyton has penned a celebration of 150 restaurants that have left a mark on the way Canada eats—whether they’re serving California rolls, foie gras poutine, hand-cut beef tartare or bánh mì—and brings us from one decade to the next, showing how our dining trends evolved from beef consommé at Auberge Saint-Gabriel in 1754 to nori-covered hot dogs at Japadog.

Organized chronologically, from pre-Confederation to the present day, you’ll find:

Charming, entertaining essays, and transportive photos and menus from archival collections that give cultural, economic, and political context
Many restaurants are still open for business, so you can plan your visits and bring history alive on the plate
15 recipes inspired or contributed by some of the featured restaurants, for those wishing to truly feel like they’re dining in

A joyous representation of the incredible diversity of restaurants, people, and stories that make up our Canadian dining history, Where We Ate is as much of a timeless classic as the restaurants it features.