The most historically appropriate place to eat in Québec City: a restaurant housed in the Maison Jacquet, the oldest surviving building in the Old City, built in 1675. The house has changed hands many times over the centuries and was once home to Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, who wrote Les Anciens Canadiens (1863) — the first French-Canadian novel — while living here.
The menu is an exercise in Québécois traditional cooking: tourtière, maple-glazed duck, pea soup, sugar pie, cretons. It's unabashedly retro and makes no apologies for it. The cooking is honest, generous, and good. Tourists appreciate the historical setting; locals come for the tourtière, which is taken seriously. Book ahead in summer; the restaurant fills with visitors who have done their research.