A
Short Guide to Some Attractions in Halifax
RESTAURANTS
da Maurizio's
(423-0858--rezzies necessary, closed Sundays), in the
old Brewery, is the best restaurant in Halifax.
Excellent northern Italian cuisine. Has the best foie gras in Halifax. The radicchio salad is a delight.
(Its weakness is the risotto, which should be avoided as it's too salty.) All
the pastas are good. Highly recommended
Fid (422-9162--rezzies necessary and hard to
get) is a very fine estaurant. It has interesting
contemporary cuisine. Lunches (which we only know from the menu) have a hint of
Thai influence. Expensive but worth it. Highly
recommended
Fiasco (429-3499--span class=SpellE>rezzies advised) is on Brenton just off Spring
Garden Road. It is a very good small up-scale
(pricey but not expensive) restaurant. The chef/owner is Czech, though you
notice this more from the Mucha prints on the wall
than from the food. The lamb, duck, and pheasant are especially good. Highly recommended. (Note: A vegetarian colleague recommends
avoiding Fiasco.)
Bish (425-7993 reservations advised, closed Sundays, not open for
lunch) is a very attractive restaurant and has a lovely location on the
boardwalk with a great view of the harbor. The food, while very good, is
slightly disappointing (even if one forgets that it is owned by da Maurizio's). Expensive. (Note:
We have heard several reports that the food at Bish
is excellent. So perhaps our weak endorsement, which is based
on limited experience (half a dozen meals), is a hasty generalization.)
The place can be overrun with people from cruise ships. It is the best of the
places on the water. (Bish did win the Halifax poll as best new
restaurant and best romantic restaurant.)
La Perla (469-3241) is located across from the ferry terminal in Dartmouth--a three-minute
walk from the ferry. Serves pretty good northern Italian food. The lunch fare
is not nearly as good as the dishes served in the evening.
The best pizza--really
good yuppie pizza--is that provided by Salvatore's Pizza (455-1133). Two
warnings, their delivery is slow (by pizza standards) and not reliable (so don't
hesitate to call back and check on your order) and if you order the salad get
the dressing on the side because they use too much.
Tomasino's (425-7111 for take-out pizza, and 422-9757 for their eat-in
location on South Street)
deservedly gets high marks for pizza in local "best restaurant"
polls. (But it is clearly inferior to Salvatore's.)
Picolo Mondo Ristorante (429-0080) on Argyle
Street is a good mid-priced Italian place. Extensive bar, relatively quiet, good service, and better than
average food. (Though a student of Sheldon's--whose opinion he trusts--recently
had a bad "haughty chef" experience there.)
Anatolia (492-4568) is a good mid-priced Turkish restaurant on Dresden Row
near Spring Garden Road.
Baan Thai (446-4301 on Dresden Row north of Spring Garden,
above Fid) has the best Thai food in town. The mango salads and the papaya
salads are a special treat.
Thai Chin (429-8424) is best avoided. (Sheldon, who is not prone to stomach
problems and who survived eating his way through Thailand without any tummy upsets
got sick after eating there! And even had he not gotten sick he would not have
recommended the place.)
For Indian food we
prefer Curry Village (429-5010) to Taj Mahal (though our opinion is not shared by some who eat
more Indian food than we do).
The Greek House (422-8877 at 6253 Quinpool) is our
favorite Greek restaurant in Halifax.
It is cheap, has plain deor, and serves very large quantities of pretty fair
standard greek dishes. It
has beer on tap. Not fancy but very good value.
Just a few doors down
the street from The Greek House there is an Ethiopian restaurant named The
Ethiopian Restaurant. However, The Red Sea on the south side of Quinpool is better. Both are very inexpensive.
The Hi-Times Cafe
on Gottingen
Street serves good West African food at quite
reasonable prices.
Dharma Sushi, on Argyle Street
has good cheap Japanese food, including good, fresh sushi. Not an elegant place
but very good value for Halifax.
Doraku, on Dresden Row, serves very good, slightly more expensive sushi
in a less casual atmosphere.
Momoya (492-0788), on Barrington
Street serves good Japanese food in a more
traditional Japanese setting but seems to attract fewer Japanese clients than
Dharma Sushi does.
Try Satisfaction
Feast for organic vegetarian food prepared by followers of Sri Chimnoy. The service is at the pace you would expect from
folks whose karma is so serene. The bread and the house tahini
salad dressing are worth buying to take home.
Soho is also a good vegetarian/near-vegetarian place (they do offer
meat dishes) that's worth visiting for their folk art decor. A good place to go
with a large group if some may be quasi- or actual vegetarians.
Scanway's, a bakery on Quinpool Road, makes the best
desserts in town. (Their marzipan cake is a wonder.) It also provides the food
for the Cheapside Cafe (425-4494),
located downtown in the Nova
Scotia Art Gallery. (The Cheapside
Cafe is a good place for lunch).
Sweet Basil (425-2133), on Lower
Water Street, also serves the desserts made by Scanway's and is a pleasant place for a mid-priced dinner.
(If you decide to sit outside on their small patio make sure you have warm
clothes. The fog can roll in and it can suddenly go from being warm and
pleasant to being quite chilly.)
McKelvie's (421-6161) is a popular fish restaurant. (It is the only one in Halifax on our list.)
Thea has a slightly negative view of the place and Sheldon has a slightly
positive one. The fish is fresh and the tourists are plentiful. Better fish,
but less variety, is available at Sweet Basil. We do not recommend The Five
Fisherman, which is the largest fish restaurant in Halifax. It caters primarily to tourists and
is noisy. But it did win the local poll for best fish restaurant in Halifax. The mussels are
the best thing to get there.
The Economy Shoe Shop (on Blowers) is the hangout for arty-types and a leading local
pick-up place for thirties and older. It supports poetry readings and has
decent food.
Bud the Spud, a chip wagon, sells extremely good french fries in front of the Public Library on Spring Garden Road
(by the statute of Winston Churchill). (Bill the Spud, another chip
wagon, competes with brother Bud. Traditionalists
prefer to patronize the wagon with the name that rhymes.)
The Granite Brewery (aka Henry House 423-5660, on Barrington Street South)
has decent pub food that is very reasonably priced in a pub that isn't overrun
with students. Some folks (including Thea, but not Sheldon) like their
brewed-in-the-building beer.
Granite Brewery &
Gingers (422-4944) is a
downtown spin-off version of the Granite Brewery. Can be
overrun with business types. Slightly more expensive
but still pretty cheap.
Halliburton House Inn (425-0658) serves expensive, interesting food with a Canadian
slant. (One finds items like caribou and other things from National Geographic
on their menu.) Good food in a small old but well maintained hotel
Jon Allan's is the best steak house in town, while Ryan Duffy's (which
is cheaper) is second best. (We point these out but do not recommend either of
them.)
Seven and Deco are two of Halifax's
newer trendy restaurants. On the basis of only a few visits to each we strongly
recommend that you avoid Seven and weakly recommend against Deco. (Deco's decor is art deco, a style we like. It is pretty
good but the lamps are cheap looking.) Jane's
on the Commons (located on Robie Street at the northwest
corner of the Halifax
commons) has got good reviews from friends. We have always been slightly
disappointed by it. It does not take reservations.
The Mid-East Food
Centre and Cafe (492-0958) at Agricola and North
streets has very nice middle-eastern food served in a plain lunch-counter-like
setting. The falafel sandwiches are very good value. The walnut baklawa (sic) are better than the other types they offer.
The Italian Market
on Doyle Street,
next to the Port
of Wines liquor
store, is a good place for informal deli-style lunch.
Chicken Burger, out on the Bedford
Highway, on the right-hand just before Sunnyside
Mall, is the closest thing Halifax
has to an old-fashioned drive-in fast-food place. The (non-greasy) chicken
burgers are good; the milkshakes taste like they did when we were kids; the
deep-fried clams are a maritime delight (and not very fatty); and the juke box
has popular tunes from the fifties and sixties. A nostalgia
trip.
Nice ice cream
can be purchased at the corner store at the south end of Tower Road (by the entrance to Point Pleasant Park). The people who run the store are
very nice. Italian ice cream may be had at the Italian store near Bish on the
waterfront and at Cows near the Sheraton on the waterfront. (Not open in
winter.)
The Thirsty Duck is a good pub (with not bad burgers) on Spring Garden.
COFFEE SHOPS
Thea is a big fan of Steve-o-rinos (on Brunswick
Street, near the public library). If you have
breakfast there, a bowl of their granola is enough for two people. Trident
(on Hollis Street),
is a coffee shop/used bookstore. (It's a good place to go and collect a bunch
of books to read over coffee.) On the Dal campus
there is a Second Cup, by the entrance to the library, and an
independent coffee shop at the (northwest) corner of Coburg and Henry
streets. Most of the chain coffee shops are in town, but the closest Starbucks
is in the Chapters bookstore in the BLIP (Bayer's Lake Industrial Park),
which is a twenty-minute drive from downtown. (The BLIP also has a Walmart, K-Mart, Sears and other such stores.)
OUTSIDE OF HALIFAX
There are an unusually
large number of really interesting places to eat as one travels the byways of
this lovely province. Feel free to ask us about them.
ENTERTAINMENT
The Scotia Music Festival, an annual (late
May/early June) music festival that attracts world-quality artists. In
addition to a number of evening concerts, there are rehearsals and master
classes that one can attend as an audience member. The festival's web address
is www.scotiafestival.ns.ca; or
you can phone 429-9467. (Our experience--which is limited because we are often
away at the Learneds when it is on--is that the Scotia
Music Festival is really quite good. We particularly recommend getting the pass
for the master classes in addition to whatever concerts you decide to go to. If
you get the (fairly cheap) pass, you can enjoy lots of quite decent student
performances.)
The DuMaurier Theatre in downtown Halifax has live
performances. For tickets, phone (902) 429-7070 or go to www.neptunetheatre.com.
BOOKSTORES
Our favorite bookstore
in Halifax is The Book Room (on the
corner of Barrington
and Blowers streets) but we may be prejudiced by the fact that they always keep
She Let Herself Go in stock. (Note that they claim to be the oldest
bookstore in Canada.)
The town also features
lots of good used bookstores. Schooner Books on Inglis
likely has the largest philosophy section.
HOTEL INFORMATION
Contact Check Ins Nova Scotia, a free booking service run by the provincial
government, at their toll-free number: 800-565-0000.
Visiting Halifax
Halifax is a fine
city and one can have a good time here any time of the year. The spring arrives
rather late and is often rainy and cloudy with chilly winds. (April and early
May are to be avoided--unless you like that sort of weather.) Winters are
variable but almost always quite sunny. (Halifax
gets slighly more sun per year than Toronto
or Montreal
primarily because our winters are so sunny.) Snow cannot be relied upon in
winter. The summers are always pleasant (though sometimes there are a few too
many tourists) and the autumn is usually quite warm and nice.
For a more complete guide send an email to sheldon.wein@smu.ca