Guédilles aux crevettes nordiques comme au resto

What is a “guédille” in Quebec French?

A guédille is Quebec’s summer sandwich: a hot-dog bun loaded with a mayonnaise-bound salad — shrimp, lobster, chicken or egg — and eaten at roadside canteens all season. It is a category rather than one recipe, so une guédille aux crevettes and une guédille au homard are both perfectly ordinary orders. Ask for one in France and you will get a blank look.

The word is attested in Quebec from around the mid-1950s and its origin is genuinely uncertain; one proposal links it to old dialect words for lettuce. Regional versions diverge: in the Gaspésie a guédille arrives with coleslaw and a few fries on top, and the Maritime/New England lobster roll is its close cousin. This recipe is Québécois through and through, right down to the crème sure — Quebec’s word for sour cream.