The Perfect Halifax Food Crawl

So – both my wife and I had yesterday off and I decided that it was time to for a good old-fashioned food date.

You know how some fellows will take their lady out to dinner? They’ll go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant and try to make polite conversation and fuss around with the menu and smell the wine steward’s cork if he offers it to you?

Well, that just isn’t our style.

We started out by heading downtown on the bus in the early afternoon – about 3pm to avoid the 5pm rush. We didn’t drive because sometimes it’s nice to have a beer when you eat and the local police here in Halifax are awfully funny about drinking and driving.

We got off at Spring Garden Road in front of the new Public Library and walked up to the intersection.

“Where are we going?” my wife asked me.

“Never you mind,” I told her. “This is an adventure and I get to lead.”

For those who might take that wrong way I want to remind you that my wife has about two decades of making a living as a professional dancer to her name.

Meaning I actually NEVER get to lead.

🙂

(right dear?)

🙂

So we crossed at the intersection and stepped into the Nestlé Toll House Café

5475 Spring Garden Road

Belinda had a giant waffle cone of pralines and cream and I had myself a Nutella milkshake.

The ice cream was delicious – but I am fairly certain that the milkshake cup had a hole in the bottom because that milkshake disappeared awfully fast on me.

Oh wait a minute – (patting stomach) – I think I’ve found it.

It’s a great little shop to stop for some gooey sweet chocolately treats and the “Double-Trouble” sandwich looked awfully tempting in that it was two cookies of your choice with a filling in between of either icing or ice cream – depending on your druthers. The giant cookie cakes looked awfully good as well.

So we conversed a little – well, actually she conversed and I mostly made nom-nom-nom sounds over the extra ice cream that had mysteriously fallen out of Belinda’s ice cream cone and my mysteriously empty milkshake cup.

Afterwards we walked down and swung by the Black Market and then to the Neptune Theatre where we bought a couple of tickets for an upcoming Dylan Thomas play of “Under Milk Wood”.

We made our way down Barrington and for a quick peek at Strange Adventures comic book shop. My wife had not seen the new location so we had a quick look around. Afterwards we ambled on over to the Urban Cottage Antique Shop.

Then we made our way down to Historic Properties and checked out a little clothing shop that sold nightshirts. Belinda LOVES nightshirts and she picked up this one.

We made our way along the waterfront, stopping to chat with local artist Brad Perry – a gent who has been sketching caricatures on the Waterfront for over twenty years now. I used to set up my palm reading booth right next to his pitch back when the waterfront was open to free-range vendors.

After that we walked to The Shack Oyster Bar.

Click the photo and it will take you to their Facebook page.

We were just in time for BUCK A SHUCK Friday – which goes from 5-6pm on Fridays.

We each had a dozen raw oysters. I had mine with a bit of lemon and Belinda added horse radish to hers. There was a bit of a wait because of the crowd but the oysters were awfully fresh and tasty. We sat at an outdoor table and hand fed scraps of the leftover oyster meat to a starling who landed right on the middle of our table. After we fed him I shooed him off and told him to make for Alcatraz.

🙂

After that we headed up to THE OLD TRIANGLE IRISH ALEHOUSE and were served by a lady name of Lou who gave us some of the best customer service we had ever experienced. We split a smoked salmon platter with some slices of freshly baked soda bread, some lovely capers and slices of onion and cucumber and tomato. I had a glass of Guinness that suffered from the same problem that my milkshake had while Belinda tried a pint of Harp ale.

We ate our faces off but then – when the waitress Lou came back to the table to ask us about desert only I told her that we were on a food date and we weren’t done yet.

“Follow me, darling,” I said to my wife.

“We are we going?”

“On an adventure.”

So we headed up the hill to 1567 Grafton Street to the Scanway Cafe where I told the girl behind the counter that me and that giant hunk of chocolate bread pudding needed to be alone together for awhile. We got our desert to go and we hopped a bus and came home and watched an old Peter Falk Columbo movie while I made some more nom-nom-nom sounds over my bread pudding and Belinda got into a slice of Chocolate Genoise Cake with Espresso Buttercream in the middle.

The two of us were grinning and giggling and happy as a pair of cuddly guddy-gutted lapdogs.

So the next time your mate asks you if you would like to go on a dinner date – DON’T THINK SMALL!

Never mind the Pub Crawl – think Food Crawl!

Yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon