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It was early Saturday morning late last fall. I was on one of my twice-annual trips to Halifax, visiting my eldest son, a second year poli-sci student at Dalhousie University. To be sure, I love the lad, and miss him, but truth be, there are other reasons for visits. I have a deep weakness for the city of Halifax, its rich history, its colourful architecture, and increasingly, its welcoming restaurants and other fertile grazing spots.   

On this particular morning I was wandering the Halifax Farmers’ Market looking for breakfast options. A crepe? A pain au chocolat? A three-inch thick waffle smothered with strawberry sauce?  No, no and no. I venture deeper into the maze of tunnels and stalls. Garlic sausage on a bun? Now we’re getting somewhere. And then I see it. Like a lighthouse in a sea of jagged rocks. The oyster stand.  Philip Docker’s ShanDaph oysters, caught in the waters off Big Island in Docker’s self-designed suspended cages. I used the first ShanDagh in sacrificial fashion, to purge the flavour of harsh coffee. Which freed up the second oyster to taste purely of itself – creamy, briny, salty.  Docker shucked me a third and final, before I moved on to sausages courtesy of Bill Wood of Wood ‘N Hart Farms, whose handmade stall sign reads encouragingly: “Eat More Lamb. 50,000 Coyotes Can’t Be Wrong.”  Final Market stop, Boulangérie La Vendeénne, for the best croissant this side of the Atlantic. 

But it was those oysters that lingered with me longest, their supple delicacy, their fleshy sea-sweetness, bobbing to mind all day.

It had been a happy morning.

Waddling up the steep hill from the Farmers’ Market to my hotel, in search of a good cappuccino, I discover The Smiling Goat Organic Espresso Bar, conveniently located next door to The Lord Nelson.  It became a twice-daily pleasure.

I ended the day at a big, raucous, Greek eatery. Opa is an excellent place to be hungry. It is impossible to imagine sitting down here for a meal and rising at the end of it with a shred of appetite left.  (This news may not surprise you – Greek restaurants are not known for dainty portions.) But it’s not the quantity of food that impresses at Opa; it is the quality. 

I dropped a small fortune there, feeding my son and his roommates, all ravenous and permanently broke blokes. But I went alone to Fid.

I’d had enough of hungry college kids and Fid was my favourite of Halifax’s high-end restaurants. By way of amuse bouche, a sea urchin, harvested 25 minutes up the coast I’m told, served in its shell, splashed with sake. And then scallops, five perfect beauts, coral roe attached, deeply bronzed, on a smoky bed of roasted tomatillo. They haunt me still. Squash ice cream and a Parmigiano tuile were the escorts for a tarte Tatin.

The ten-year-old Fid is owned by chef Dennis Johnston and maitre d’ Monica Bauch. Named for the wooden, cone-shaped tool used by mariners to splice lines, Fid the restaurant is all about splicing flavours, weaving the local, sustainable products of the region with the British and Asian inclinations of its chef. 

Now, I must tell you, Fid shut its doors a few months ago, for a renovation and a re-think. It reopened in April, as Fid Resto. Word is the white linen has been stripped off the tables, prices have been slashed and the new menu is filled with comfort food – fish cakes, gnocchi, lamb pie, steak and mash, cider-braised rabbit, scallops. Those gorgeous scallops I re-eat in my memory? University is four years. Gives me lots of time to check out the Fid changes and report back.

A Halifax visit is not complete without brunch at Jane’s on the Common. Jane Wright’s seven-year old project has been a resounding success, judging by the noon queue for a Sunday table. Food is hearty and homey: ricotta pancakes, poached eggs and fish cakes, beet and fennel salad with maple sesame dressing, and a very fine bowl of seafood chowder.

Memorable meals can also be found in a pizza joint. In an Italian oven fired with fruitwood from the Annapolis Valley, Morris East is a newish restaurant for Halifax, serving thin crust pizzas, soups, small plates and yummy desserts. And what pizza!  As well as traditional sorts, with tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil, there are more unusual varieties. The poached pear pizza with maple and sage aioli, blue cheese and roasted shallots is surprisingly very good. They also offer an endearing lunch deal of a half pizza with a bowl of soup or a salad, for about $10, and have an admirable wine list.

TAKE A DRIVE…

My son had a significant hole in his travel resumé. Having lived in Halifax for over a year, he had never toured the serpentine Lighthouse Route that hugs the South Shore, never leaped the rocks at Peggy’s Cove, or had a meal at Fleur de Sel in the lovely Lunenburg.

So I rent a car and take the boy west. It’s November, and the road seems almost untravelled. We arrive at Peggy’s Cove at dusk. The light is glorious, slicing through the clouds in stunning rays. We have the place pretty much to ourselves. It is utterly, eerily lovely and whipped with a shockingly cold wind. We landlubbers always forget to bring a tuque.

We might have felt alone at Peggy’s Cove, but Fleur de Sel restaurant was packed. Housed in a yellow clapboard, Arts and Crafts-style house, smack in the centre of Lunenburg’s historic district, this French restaurant draws deliciously from the sea and local farms for inspiration. The dish that best warmed me was a seafood risotto of stunning flavour and freshness.

We take our time on the way home. Stopping at the Kiwi Café, an emerald green restaurant and coffee shop in the Village of Chester, owned by transplanted New Zealander Lynda Flinn.  Toys and books for visiting kids, water bowls for visiting dogs and solidly good home-baking keeps the place crowded and the crowd happy. 

The fire greets you more cheerily at the Biscuit Eater Café in Mahone Bay than does the donkey sign that demands you “Get your Ass in Here” – though this turns out to be good advice.  We order biscuits and as we sink our teeth through the salty, cheesy crust to the crumbly hearted inside, there is a moment not just of mouth-pleasure, but also of relief – the relief of knowing that this little café-bookstore with its sunny walls and bulging shelves, is perfectly named.  That good cheese biscuit came with a thick bowl of black bean soup and a pulled pork and blue cheese sandwich, and ended with a strong espresso and a slab of chocolate cake – like the old fashioned, from-scratch birthday cake your mother made. Only considerably better.

“You’ve saved the best for last, Mum,” I’m told on my final night in Halifax.

I am to dine at my son’s home – the purple house on Robie Street, the top floor of which he shares with four other guys. “Just pasta,” he warns me, “But we make our own sauce.”  (One of the guy’s has an Italian girlfriend. I take heart.) They make their own wine. (God have mercy.)

I climb the stairs, littered with bikes and shoes and backpacks. Candles are lit. The table is set.

Of a home cooked meal by the first to leave my home, I’m probably not the most objective critic.

WHERE TO EAT…

Halifax Farmers’ Market, 1496 Lower Water St., www.halifaxfarmersmarket.com

Open Saturdays from 7am to 1pm

 The Smiling Goat, 1551 South Park St., Halifax, 902-446-3366 www.smilinggoat.ca

 Opa! Greek Taverna, 1565 Argyle St., Halifax, 902-492-7999 www.opataverna.com

 Fid Resto, The Courtyard, 1569 Dresden Row, Halifax, 902-422-9162 www.fidresto.ca

 Jane’s on the Common, 2394 Robie St., Halifax, 902- www.janesonthecommon.com

 Morris East 5212 Morris St., Halifax, 902-444-7663, www.morriseast.com

 Kiwi Café, 15 Pleasant St., Chester, 902-275-2570 www.kiwicafechester.com

 The Biscuit Eater, 16 Orchard St., Mahone Bay, 902-624-2665 www.biscuiteater.ca

 Fleur de Sel, 52 Montague Street, Lunenburg, 902-640-2121 or 1-877-723-7258  www.fleurdesel.net

 WHERE TO STAY…

 In Halifax: The Lord Nelson Hotel was closest to the Dalhousie campus, which is why I selected it. It also offers reduced rates to families associated with any of the area’s universities. (2009-2010 rates, $145 November to April; $169 May to October) www.lordnelsonhotel.com

 In Lunenburg: The Kaubach House, 75 Pelham Street, Lunenburg, NS, 902-634-8818 Toll Free: 1-800-568-8818 www.kaulbachhouse.com

Innkeepers: David and Jenny Hook

Circa 1880, this heritage Victorian offers 6 guest rooms with en-suite bath. Breakfast included. Open May 1 to October 31, off season by reservation only. Room rates vary from $99 to $169, depending on room and season.

 

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I’ve been eating and drinking in the Rockies – very much and very well – as the Ottawa member of an 8-strong panel of judges plucked from across the country, and led by Gold Medal Plates culinary advisor James Chatto, and I want to give you the results and a bit of the flavour. 

The Gold Medal Plates Canadian Culinary Championship just wrapped up at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel this past weekend, and the winner was Hayato Okamitsu, of Catch Restaurant and Oyster Bar in Calgary. He had turned heads (and won gold) at Calgary’s Gold Medal Pates Competition with a dish that was ambitious and complex, to be sure, but also vegetarian (imagine!) So you can add bold and brave to that honour. 

Our own Charles Part, from Les Fougeres in Chelsea competed masterfully but ended up just shy of the podium in fourth place.   

The three day gruelling event began with the Wine Pairing Challenge. Each of the six chefs (Montreal’s Deff Haupt, Ottawa-Gatineau’s Charles Part, Toronto’s Patrick Lin, Calgary’s Hayato Okamitsu, Edmonton’s David Cruz, and Vancouver’s Frank Pabst) was given a mystery wine (later revealed as Inniskillin Okanagan Malbec 2005) and the paltry sum of $350 with which to created 250 small plates (for the assembled fans) of a dish that would marry beautifully with the wine. Charles Part sourced some lamb shoulder from a farm outside Calgary, cooking it sous vide with black currants and roasted garlic, pairing it with a minted pea risotto, and an even darker green salsa verde, and his dish won the “People’s Choice” award by a landslide. 

Saturday morning was the Black Box competition, where each chef, in turn, was given the same six ingredients with which to create two dishes, plating each dish for each judge, in precisely 60 minutes. Madness and mayhem. Again, borrowing from a stocked pantry, Part did well with what he was given – a loin of pork, tank raised rainbow trout, 2 lbs of Sylvian Lake Gouda cheese, some rolled oats, a bottle of Saskatoon berry syrup and a bag of organic carrots – Alberta products all (yes, even the Gouda!) His treatment of the pork was wonderful – he sandwiched gouda between escalopes of panko-crusted pork, crowned it with a softly poached egg, and made a wonderful Branston-style pickle heady with basil and rosemary to serve with it.  

For Part’s final dish, at the final event on the Saturday night, he chose to go with a firing squad at dawn sort of last supper dish. It was a delicious bistro-style plate of Quebec Moulard Duck confit, which he balanced on a disc of roasted pear layered with goat cheese from Floralpe Farms anchored on a crunchy bed of rosti potato. He finished the dish with a pile of wilted spinach and a zippy sauce of ground Tellicherry peppercorns, thyme and Niagara wood aged vinegar. The judges were unanimous that, in terms of taste, texture, and wine match, it was brilliant. Where he lost marks (and others gained) was in the categories of “originality” and that slippery “Wow! factor”    

The silver medal went to Frank Pabst, of Blue Water Cafe in Vancouver. Bronze was taken by Chef Deff Haupt of Le Renoir in Montreal. 

 

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I’ve been dodging chefs, doing some fancy undercover work, at the inaugural “Chefs’ Hour” at The Ottawa Farmers’ Market.  It had been my plan to see who showed up between 2 and 3 last Thursday afternoon – the hour during which chefs were given front of the line treatment. I was going to see which farmers they visited, who they chatted with, what they bought and from whom they bought, and then go dine at their restaurants to see what they were going to create with that which they had bought. Clever eh?

But the last part of the plan backfired, and so I cannot report on what Matt Carmichael (Restaurant E18hteen, Social) was planning to do with all those zucchinis, or what John Taylor (Domus) with all that elk. While trailing them, and others who came (Beckta chef Mike Moffatt, NAC chef Tim Wasylko, among others) I bought so much myself, I was left with no choice but to go home and make supper.

This staying home and cooking nonsense has been a difficulty of mine since Mother’s Day weekend, when the farmers’ markets opened. I now bounce out of bed on the weekends, grab some bags, a kid, a dog, a husband, and head to St Paul’s University on Saturdays, to Lansdowne on Sundays. I wander the stalls, chat with bee farmers and strawberry pickers, elk ranchers and bread bakers, and come home with bags bulging, wallet depleted, a fridge full of material I then have to face, and a big silly grin on my face.

Last weekend, breakfast was a spiced chicken burrito at Zucante’s. Mid morning snack was a smoked bison sausage from Pykeview Meadows on sourdough bread from Bread & Sons Bakery, and dinner were rib eyes from Fitzroy Farmers, with beets and salad greens from Jambican Studio Gardens, fresh peas from Limeydale Farm (with a drizzle of the coriander-mint chutney from Emerald Bakery) and strawberry love tarts with rhubarb compote from Four Sisters Food.

Last Thursday supper: peas with garlic scapes, elk burgers, strawberries from Abby Hill Farms, with chocolate cookies from Art-is-in-Bakery.

If it’s grown, reared, smoked, pickled, fired, sewed, designed, caught, collected, foraged, brewed or baked by folk who live and work roughly within a one hundred kilometre radius of the Greater Ottawa Area, it’s fair game at either the Main Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, or the much bigger Ottawa Farmers’ Market on Sundays (and now on Thursday afternoons from 2-7). Both these markets insist on particular criteria: goods must come from a defined local area; and they must be grown, reared, processed or caught by the stallholder.

There are immeasurable benefits to this sort of face-to-face buying and selling.  Plus there’s an energy, a social buzz, a pioneering spirit at these markets that’s impossible to put a price on.

These markets are in their infancy. They are makeshift, established in parking lots, under rows of tents, at the mercy of the elements, birthed by people with vision and commitment. They are vitally important, and deserving of our support as they grow and evolve into something more permanent.

So go. Go with kids, your dog, a hat, maybe a raincoat. Bring some reusable bags and some cold hard cash. But do go. You are buying, directly from the source, the freshest, most flavourful, most local produce possible, and in doing that, you are supporting your home community and economy and helping the environment by reducing food-miles.

Ottawa is the richer for these places.

PLACES LIKE…
From the Main Farmers’ Market (Open every Saturday until September 27, from 9 am to 2 pm on the grounds of Saint Paul University. See www.sustainablelivingottawaeast.googlepages.com)

• Jambican Studio Gardens (Colin Samuels and his nieces) sell me bunches of Easter egg radishes and promise me raspberries in July.
• Cora and John Beking of Bekings Poultry have great eggs. www.bekingseggs.com

• Limeydale farms on NCC property and when not at the market, sells at a summer stand at Hawthorne and Hunt Club. Their main product is sweet corn in season, but right now, they have the sweetest peas for sale.

• Terre a Terre Farms near Montebello, and have been a certified organic farm since 1988. Elise Charette sells me salad stuff, including mizuna, beet greens and arugula

From the Ottawa Farmers’ Market (Open every Sunday until October 26, from 8 am to 3 pm and Thursdays from 2 pm to 7 pm.  See www.ottawafarmersmarket.ca for details)

• Neil Family Organics uses the natural pectin in apples to thicken her jams and jellies. We stock up on rhubarb-raspberry and buy a jar of her “curry in a hurry” sauce to throw on chicken one of these nights.

• Ottawa Valley Honey. Mike Kositsin, Arnprior beekeeper and honey producer. Trained by ninety-year-old grandfather. Russian by name, Rasputin by hair style. A chronic grinner, Mike explains that he has 80 colonies and no website, that he gets stung “all the time”, that honey is made from just two things, flowers and bees (or, more specifically, the nectar of one and the enzyme of the other) and that his job is to take out the “bee bits” (antennae, wings, legs) through a series of screen filters. That nothing is added to what he takes from his hives. We stock up on basswood and wild flower honey.
• Four Sisters (“Healthy Food that doesn’t taste like Dirt”) are indeed four sisters who make, other than those terrific strawberry love tarts, a wicked curry and smoked-paprika hummus.
• Art-is-in-Bakery Bread has a line up 20 minutes long at noon on Sunday. Its breads and buns and cookies are fantastic, and Ottawa clearly knows it.
• Bread and Sons Bakery does not enjoy the same crowd, but its breads are also excellent. Buy some and compare!

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