Feasting in St John’s, Newfoundland - FT.com 2/14/16, 5:18 PM

February 12, 2016 3:02 pm Feasting in St John’s, Newfoundland Nigel Tisdall

 Share   Author alerts   Print  Clip  Comments How the fog-prone Canadian city became an unlikely gourmet hit

©Alamy

Houses under the cliffs of Signal Hill, St John’s Should you ever go to St John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, I must warn you there is nothing to see. Well, there certainly isn’t the day I arrive in what locals call “Fogtown”, close to the easternmost tip of North America. The view from Signal Hill, from where one might normally survey its scenic harbour, is pure cotton wool. This is a shame, but bad weather has never stopped the fun in this most entertaining of ports.

Settled by fishermen from England’s West Country in the early 17th century, St John’s sprawls across the hills, a merry jumble of jelly bean-coloured houses, modern civic eyesores, show-off

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9d118968-ce72-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html Page 1 of 6 Feasting in St John’s, Newfoundland - FT.com 2/14/16, 5:18 PM wooden mansions built by the kings of cod, and haughty churches from the 19th century.

So why go? “People come here to breathe,” explains Lori McCarthy, a local tour guide, “and to grab an extra half-hour.” (The island enjoys its own timezone, 30 minutes ahead of the rest of Atlantic Canada.) Whales, icebergs and a rich linguistic and musical culture reminiscent of Ireland are other reasons. And, if you believe the current buzz, a burgeoning food scene to rival any in the country, centred on the area’s abundant fish, seafood, game, berries and wild plants.

“In the last five years close to 20 restaurants have opened in St John’s,” says McCarthy, whose company, Cod Sounds, runs food, foraging and fishing tours that help visitors tune in to this culinary flourishing. The boom has been partly spurred by the oil and gas industry, which has brought in new wealth over the past 15 years, but is primarily born out of the hard graft of local entrepreneurs, often self-taught, who have decided to pick up the saucepans in a weather-whipped port that most of the world thinks is unfathomably remote. It isn’t. The flying time from London to St John’s is a mere five-and-a-half hours; from New York or Toronto, about three hours.

“Not so long ago people here didn’t know what charcuterie meant,” says Shaun Hussey, chef and co-owner of Chinched Bistro in Queen Street, the first stop on McCarthy’s three-hour “Taste of St John’s” tour. Every fortnight Hussey takes delivery of an island-raised pig that forms the prime ingredient for his dishes. “I like to see what happens when you throw salt on stuff,” he explains. Sampling his house-cured fiocco, coppa, lonza and chorizo asturiana, I see why this small, two- storey restaurant has become such a hit since opening five years ago.

Hussey and his partner, Michelle LeBlanc, are typical of the St John’s let’s-just-do-it spirit. The Newfoundland Chocolate Company in nearby Duckworth Street was set up in a basement in 2008 by a no-previous-experience geographer and neuroscientist couple, Brent and Christina Smith. Later, I meet Jonathan Richler, a radio presenter boldly cooking up Jewish cuisine with a twist of Newfoundland, and Adam Blanchard, who in 2010 ©Nigel Tisdall gave himself a Christmas present of a cheese press and Michelle LeBlanc and Shaun Hussey of Chinched Bistro a how-to-make-it book. Now his company, Five Brothers, is the only artisan cheesemaker in a province larger than Germany.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9d118968-ce72-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html Page 2 of 6 Feasting in St John’s, Newfoundland - FT.com 2/14/16, 5:18 PM

There is a similar energy at Mallard Cottage, a homely restaurant in the Quidi Vidi neighbourhood, framed with window boxes filled with lettuce, herbs and flowers. Opened in 2013 with rustic wooden walls and seal leather seats, it is the sort of snug place where you secretly wish to get snowed in, surviving the blizzards with pan-fried halibut, duck leg confit and a help-yourself cakes table that costs just C$10 (£5) a head.

One of my best finds on this gourmet odyssey is a “rhubourbon” cocktail created by Mallard Cottage’s barman Gregory Brown that acknowledges the Newfoundlanders’ deep love of rhubarb. Mixing bourbon, triple sec, sparkling wine and rhubarb balsamic shrub (a house-made syrup), it makes a fine pick-me-up for Sunday brunch (which is served here till 5pm), half hair-of-the- dog, half “uh-oh-here-we-go-again” . . .

How bad were things before all this? “Bad!” says Tony Butt, proprietor of the Reluctant Chef in Duckworth Street, another stop on McCarthy’s tour. “People would boil everything up, then make the stock into gravy, then pour the flavour back on.” After starting out as a volunteer dishwasher in an Italian restaurant, “where I learnt what food tastes like”, he set up in 2012 offering ©Nigel Tisdall a five-course menu that changed every two weeks, a novelty at Jeremy Charles, chef of Raymonds, prepares the time. It has paid off. Today his chef de cuisine, Jay Schwartz, mushrooms is busy pickling juniper berries and cooking seal ragout with gnocchi, chard and Brussels sprouts.

Newfoundland and neighbouring Nova Scotia and Quebec are the only provinces in Canada where restaurants can get a licence to serve wild game. Demand is strong, and locals are also appreciative of traditional dishes. Cod tongues, cheeks and, for some, the sounds (the swim bladder) are considered delicacies, and you can still find seal flipper pie, fish and brewis (hard tack biscuits), and toutons (fried scraps of dough) with molasses. My advice is to start at Bacalao, a restaurant that pioneered “nouvelle Newfoundland cuisine” back in 2007. Here, Matt McDonald adapts classic meals such as Jiggs dinner (boiled salt beef with vegetables and pease pudding), pairs chicken with local bakeapples (cloudberries), and uses cod sustainably fished with pots on Fogo Island.

There is an obvious concord between the lakes, barrens, forests and wild seashores of Newfoundland and those of Scandinavia. Fittingly, at the next stop on our restaurant

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9d118968-ce72-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html Page 3 of 6 Feasting in St John’s, Newfoundland - FT.com 2/14/16, 5:18 PM crawl, I am served warm madeleines with spruce tip sugar by Mia Boland, who previously worked with Magnus Nilsson at the acclaimed Fäviken in northern Sweden. Opened in May, the Merchant Tavern in Water Street is currently the hottest restaurant in the city, with a menu of Canadian delights that ranges from Nova Scotia sparkling wines and Prince Edward Island beef tartare, to British Columbia albacore tuna with dandelion capers and sliced green strawberries. It is the sort ©Nigel Tisdall of high-ceilinged, hipster-filled eatery you find in many a big A dish at Raymonds city (yes, it is in an old bank), and a second hit restaurant from sommelier Jeremy Bonia and local chef Jeremy Charles, who are widely credited with putting St John’s on the global culinary map.

In 2010, they opened Raymonds, a harbour-view restaurant that has since garnered multiple awards and accolades from Canadian reviewers. When I meet Charles, he seems the antithesis of the modern celebrity chef, shy and humble with a thick beard like an old-time gold prospector. It is only when I dine at this warm and elegant establishment, set in a century-old building that was once the headquarters of the Commercial Cable Company, that it becomes clear something exceptional is going on.

A seven-course tasting menu at Raymonds costs C$220 per person, including some revelatory wine pairings. What? You’ve never tried moose, crispy lichen and whipped ricotta with a glass of chilled Tesch Deep Blue blanc de noir? Pity. For me, epiphany comes in the shape of an intriguing twig of Labrador tea (a bush) that skewers a grilled whelk and some seal bresaola, creating the perfect match of strangeness and pleasure. After that, I’m so hooked that if our server described the next course as “eye of newt, and toe of frog”, I’d still sit there nodding appreciatively.

The bad news is you may never get the chance to try this — Raymonds’ menus are always changing. “I’ve probably eaten here 20 times,” says McCarthy, “but I’ve never had the same dish.” This sense of constant questing is exhilarating, and when dessert arrives, its description, including a companion wine from Pantelleria, unrolls like some heavenly incantation.

“We wanted to do something with wild rose petals,” explains Peter Burt, the chef de cuisine. “Our pastry chef had some ideas, so we said go for it.”

And so I find myself dining in this beguiling fogtown on the edge of Atlantic Canada, savouring a deliriously good union of dark chocolate and wild rose espuma, spruce tip and milk chocolate streusel, whipped fresh cheese blancmange and sea buckthorn . . . Oh yes. All those rumours about the St John’s foodie revolution are true, and the proof is in this pudding.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9d118968-ce72-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html Page 4 of 6 Feasting in St John’s, Newfoundland - FT.com 2/14/16, 5:18 PM

Staying in a ‘saltbox’

“We found newspaper cuttings in the walls dating from 1907,” says Janet Denstedt, co-owner of Aunt Christi’s cottage. Set on the water’s edge at the end of a quiet road in Greenspond, a small community 400km north of St John’s, this whitewashed wooden “saltbox” is enjoying a new life as a stylish two-bedroom holiday cottage. The term derives from the similarity in appearance between such buildings and the small wooden boxes with sloping lids that were hung beside a ©Nigel Tisdall fireplace to keep salt dry.

“All our rental properties are over a century old,” Denstedt explains, “and were generally unused or derelict when we discovered them.” The story of the Old Salt Box Co begins in 2007, when she and her partner, Richard Wharton, both from Ontario, started visiting this tranquil corner of Newfoundland on holiday. Their first trip was by motorhome, then they rented cottages, “but it was hard to find anywhere good”. In 2009 they solved this problem by buying their own saltbox on Fogo Island, and after doing it up in a cheerful style they decided to do it again.

The couple now have eight properties, in Twillingate, Fogo, Musgrave Harbour and Greenspond, which have one to three bedrooms and are always in scenic locations. Though traditional outside, inside there are bright Caribbean colours and a clutter-less minimalism, with modern kitchens, restored roll-top baths, and beds with patchwork quilts. Ceilings have been raised, picture windows inserted, wooden floors varnished to an amber-like brilliance.

There is free WiFi and Apple TV, although many guests ignore these in favour of the annual parade of icebergs that rolls south from Greenland in May and June, along with whales that blow and breach offshore in July and August.

The Old Salt Box Co offers one-bedroom houses from C$170 per night; two-beds from C$180. For more on the area, see Adventure Central Newfoundland

Photographs: Alamy; Nigel Tisdall

 Share   Author alerts   Print  Clip  Comments

Printed from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9d118968-ce72-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9d118968-ce72-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html Page 5 of 6 Feasting in St John’s, Newfoundland - FT.com 2/14/16, 5:18 PM

Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2016 FT and ‘Financial Times’ are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9d118968-ce72-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html Page 6 of 6