ST. ANDREWS: The best for last, part III

Our second dinner at the Rossmount Inn was part of the amazing package deal I wrote about before. We had a choice of three-courses from the menu and unlike other places, they didn’t care if we nixed one dessert for an extra appetizer. Oh swoon - flexibility AND great food.

I was blown away by the raw Malpeque oyster appetizer ($3 each). I’ve enjoyed them before but never with a frozen red-wine-shallot mignonette and verjus-apple vinaigrette.

A twist on the traditional French sauce for oysters, the mignonette was a concentrated punch of red wine and shallots that was frozen and then somehow served like shaved ice. Tiny cubed bits of apple were sprinkled over the oysters, so when you gulped everything down together, it was an amazing delivery of slightly sweet, sour, and savoury on top of the sea saltiness of the mighty bivalve.

This was Jason’s first taste of raw oysters and I’m afraid the unforgettable mignonette has ruined all future oyster experiences for him.

In lieu of one dessert, we shared the salmon tartare ($8). The salmon, first of all, was fresh like crazy, and cleverly paired with soft chunks of avocado, crunchy radish, sweet pear, chives, cilantro and extra-virgin orange oil.

Jason also got a yummy arugula salad ($7) - from the inn’s garden - layered with heirloom tomatoes, black olive tapanade, chèvre, basil, extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic reduction and smoked fleur de sel. I think we were short on vegetable-intake during our vacation.

We got a carafe of the 2003 Château Bonnet Entre-deux-Mers ($22), my new favourite white from the night before. But then Jason switched to a full-bodied, plummy Wyndham Estate shiraz for his first steak since we left Alberta.

Not surprisingly the grilled beef striploin ($25) was Sterling Silver from High River, Alberta. But this Maritime kitchen knows how to cook a good piece of meat.

The striploin was rare and tender, drizzled with foie-gras butter and red wine-truffle jus. Oh yum. Jason did a double-take over the incredibly smooth and tasty cauliflower purée and some pretty, candy-striped chioggia beets. Again, no boring potatoes/steamed veg here.

I went with the sautéed chicken breast ($16) with portobello mushrooms, white wine-rosemary cream sauce and rösti, a fried patty of shredded potatoes and a reflection of chef/owner Chris Aerni’s Swiss origins. It was nothing fancy but it was delicious and hearty, which I think is a main goal of the inn. It’s not fine dining so much as simply great food.

For dessert, we succumbed to the white-chocolate-sesame crème brûlée with grapefruit-campari sorbet in a spoon, and citrus gingersnap.

I didn’t want dinner to ever end here. Not only the food, but also the service is exceptional. We had the same server both nights.

She was so great, remembering what we liked and making recommendations. I asked for a jug of water to bring up to our room at the end of our meal on the first night. On our second night, she brought another jug unasked. I know it’s a small thing, but it really makes a big difference.

The restaurant at the Rossmount Inn is superb. I can’t recommend it enough for both the food and the value. If you’re ever in the area, make sure you make reservations, this can’t be missed. And if you’re not, make plans to go!

Rossmount Inn, 4599 Route 127, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, (506) 529-3351.
More info here.

 

ST. ANDREWS: The best for last, part II

Once we arrived in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, the plan was to wander around town and grab dinner. But we were so tired once we checked into the Rossmount Inn that we decided to stay for dinner, even though we had the next night booked there as part of a package deal.

I’m so glad we had two chances to eat here. The menu, which is largely local and organic, changes every day. The dining room is gorgeous but not stuffy.

We started with a cute amuse-bouche from the chef, two Asian-style spoons with simple heirloom tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and a bit of basil from the inn’s garden in the back. A lot of flavour in a tiny spoon. It was a great sign of things to come.

Jason’s warm chèvre gougeres ($4) were delicious, five savoury puffs filled with goat cheese.

My bloody Caesar oyster shooters ($7) were a revelation. They looked great and tasted even better. Three shooter glasses were filled with Clamato juice, vodka, lime, horseradish and chive oil and Malpeque oysters. The mix of flavours was so good.

From the carefully selected wine list, we got a carafe of the 2005 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Villages ($22), a ripe red with a slightly spicy finish.

In a typical role reversal, Jason ordered the poached halibut ($22) with brandade-potato galette, green beans, shiitake-brown butter vinaigrette - and I got a rack of lamb.

The halibut poached in extra-virgin olive oil was smooth, meaty and moist, and bursting with flavour. Anyone who says they don’t like fish needs to try this.

The fillet was nestled atop a brandade, which is usually pounded salt cod, olive oil and milk, but this one also made with potatoes for more of a galette-type crusty cake. It was a really nice partner to round out the fish.

I was in a meaty mood and the roasted rack of lamb ($2 from Whitfield Farms in nearby Sussex fit the bill. Six (six!) pieces of almost-medium rare, melt-in-your-mouth, tender wonderfulness with a ginger-soy glaze and charred red pepper oil.

Along with the heavenly lamb was an unconventional but tasty ratatouille of Japanese eggplant and chickpea. I love a kitchen that takes chances like that instead of sticking to the old mashed potatoes/steamed vegetables routine.

Already stuffed with the more-than-ample portions, we ordered a dessert plate of artisanal cheese ($16), thinking it would be a light end to the night. The platter arrived with huge pieces of cheese, warm toasted fruit-nut bread, medjool dates and walnuts.

It was fun to sample cheeses from New Brunswick that we normally don’t get to try. Three of the four cheeses were from La Bergerie aux Quatre Vents, a raw milk cheese producer in Sainte-Marie-de-Kent, north of Moncton:

• le bleu geai - strong creamy blue cheese made from raw cow’s milk
• tomme le champ dore - semi-firm and nutty made from raw sheep’s milk
• le gamin - my favourite; mild and earthy, like mushrooms, made from raw cow’s milk
• gris bleu - creamy aged goat’s cheese from Quebec, tangy and full-flavoured.

The best part is there was no worry about getting home because we were staying at the inn. So I also got a terrific, very dry, glass of 2003 Château Bonnet Entre-deux-Mers to go with dessert.

Here’s the kicker, our total bill (before tax) with both appetizers, two entrées, wine, and the cheese plate: $106.00.

Even better, we got to eat there again the next night. Stay tuned for part III.

Rossmount Inn, 4599 Route 127, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, (506) 529-3351.
More info here.

 

ST. ANDREWS: The best for last, part I

I’m not one for superlatives but our time at the Rossmount Inn counts in my top 10 favourite stays of all-time. Not only for the location in idyllic St. Andrews-By-The-Sea, New Brunswick, but for the service, the value, and most of all, the restaurant.

You drive along the highway with nothing but trees and then suddenly, a yellow mansion rises up out of nowhere at the end of a long driveway.

The three-storey inn has 18 rooms, the dining room and a lounge/reading room with an antique piano. Graziella Aerni runs the front of the house (and a lot of other stuff too) and her husband Chris runs the kitchen. They bought the estate in 2001.

I first found the Rossmount Inn because of a killer package deal - two nights in a queen room, two breakfasts and one three-course dinner in the restaurant - for $252. Total. For both of us. TOTAL. We hit the low-season rate, but the same package in the high season is only $319.

The house is all 1920s class, with a grand chandelier in the lobby in front of a grand staircase. The wide hallways upstairs have reading areas and coffee tables full of magazines. The bedrooms are furnished with antiques and simple country quilts but have modern bathrooms - and no TVs.

A path next to the inn leads up to Chamcook Mountain, the highest point in Passamaquoddy Bay. Really, it’s an easy half-hour hike up a hill, but mountains in New Brunswick are different from mountains in Alberta. At the top is a pretty view of the fall colours and the bay.

The dinners we had in the inn’s restaurant deserve their own entries, so here’s a small taste. For breakfast (included in the package), we had oatmeal soaked overnight in milk with yogurt and fresh fruit, as well as eggs, bacon, potatoes, toast and coffee.

So what, you might be wondering. Well, I loathe oatmeal. Like cross my arms in front of my chest, clamp my mouth shut, and furiously shake my head type of loathe. And I was hoovering this oatmeal, cleaning my bowl in minutes. It was smooth and delicious and unlike any lumpy oats I’d had before.

We did a lot of eating at the Rossmount Inn. Stay tuned for part II.

Rossmount Inn, 4599 Route 127, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, (506) 529-3351.
More info here.

 

BATHURST: Home on the north shore

I have fond, fond memories of northern New Brunswick where I was lucky, yet crazy, enough to live for two years. People here like to say: “There’s no shore like the north shore, that’s for sure!” Although with the accent, it’s more like “that’s fer shore!”

The mills and the mines are all slowly but I’d like to think there’s enough to keep the fine people here from moving away like in so many other Maritime towns.

Or they come back, like Jacques and Diane who run the Gite Authentique B&B in a stately renovated 1920s house with the most gorgeous front porch. Jacques is a chef who lived in Montreal but returned to Bathurst, where he grew up.

If I owned a house, this is what I’d want it to be. The B&B kept the house’s original architecture, curved arches and hardwood, and then added clean, modern furniture with timeless antiques. I wanted to move in.

Our room (#2) was huge, with an ultra-comfy queen bed, a walk-in dressing room and an ensuite with an European water-efficient toilet. I’m a nerd. I think that’s cool.

Breakfast was the other reason I wanted to move in. Fresh squeezed orange juice and a carafe of coffee awaited us at the appointed time.

Then Jacques came out of the kitchen with two huge plates of fresh crepes, neatly folded over organic local fruit, topped with an edible flower and his homemade wild rose jelly. Yes, homemade wild rose jelly.

I told you there’s no shore like the north shore.

PS: Jason wanted to add that he enjoyed the flat screen in our room, the first television he watched in eight days. It happened to be an episode of the Family Guy with this song that he didn’t stop singing for the next eight days. Lucky me.

Gite Authentique B&B, 695 Murray Ave., Bathurst, New Brunswick, (506) 548-3300. More info here.

 

HALIFAX: Breakfast at the Ardmore

The Ardmore Tea Room is a busy place on weekends, packed with hungover bleary-eyed twenty-somethings as I once used to be. Insert sigh here. But on a weekday, it’s kinda peaceful, sipping my coffee and watching the sun stream in the front window.

The paper placemats outline the history of the Ardmore, which first opened in 1958 and is now run by the original owners’ son. A shelf on one wall is filled with teapots.

The sign outside advertising “chicken and spaghetti” is a bit misleading, because there’s a lot more diner comfort food than just those two items.

But I must confess I’ve only ever come here for breakfast. And I think I’ve only ever ordered the homemade corned beef hash patties with two eggs ($6.50).

This spiced corned beef mixed with potatoes, lovingly shaped into patties, and grilled just so is a fabulous start to the morning. It’s nothing like the crap that comes out of a can.

Jason’s lumberjack combo ($6.75) was ridiculous: two eggs, two sausages, country-style ham, three pieces of bacon, hash browns and toast. I guess he needed the protein for all the lumberjack work he had planned.

Everyone comes here - students, truck drivers, families, the down-and-out, the rich and famous. It’s a welcoming place no matter what you look like. Even lumberjacks.

Ardmore Tea Room, 6499 Quinpool Rd., Halifax, Nova Scotia, (902) 423-7523.
Open Mon-Fri 5 a.m.-8 p.m., weekends 4 a.m.-8 p.m.

 

LUNENBURG: Postcard perfect brunch

Growing up, whenever someone mentioned the Maritimes, I pictured in my head colourful wooden buildings along a coastline. I’m sure that was because of postcards I had seen as a kid. Kind of like how you think of the Eiffel Tower for Paris or the pyramids for Egypt.

Turns out my iconic image is Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, its waterfront photographed a thousand times over. For that perfect shot, you have to drive to the golf course, park illegally along the narrow driveway and shoot back at the UNESCO World Heritage site with a telephoto lens. Or buy a postcard.

While I’d like to say this part of the trip was to fulfill some longtime dream, I had an ulterior motive. I wanted to eat at Fleur de Sel for no other reason than it came up time and again when I googled must-try places in Halifax - even though Lunenburg is an hour’s drive away.

Fleur de Sel is in a bright yellow wooden house near the water. (Though I suppose almost everything in Lunenburg is in a wooden house near the water.) It’s elegant and definitely not stuffy, with butter yellow walls and crisp white linens.

We only had time to stop in midday and luckily, the weekend brunch here is fabulous. Even though the menu was short, we still had a hard time narrowing down our choices.

The full breakfast ($9) sounded good - two eggs, grilled tomato, baked beans, potatoes, and two of smoked bacon, sausage or blood pudding - but so did the pan-fried whole sardines ($11) with fresh tomatoes, garlic and capers.

Jason and I both finally settled on the lobster benedict ($13). Large chunks of lobster lay under a sinfully smooth hollandaise sauce with pea shoots as garnish. The house potatoes were a nice surprise with hints of garlic and parsley. And even someone as averse to fruit as me couldn’t resist the refreshing slices of watermelon, kiwi and grapes.

I think Nora and Tom had the bacon and spinach benedicts ($11) which were just as good.

As with any respectable brunch, the coffee was strong, hot and plentiful. We were excited to be given sugar cubes instead of loose sugar, as we discussed our mutual appreciation of tidy symmetry.

Sugar cubes aside, the service at Fleur de Sel is superb and with a brunch this good, I can only imagine how wonderful dinner would be.

Fleur de Sel, 53 Montague St., Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, (902) 640-2121 or 1-877-723-SALT. Click here for more info.

 

HALIFAX: Jane’s on the Common

I know Halifax has scores of excellent restaurants downtown and on the waterfront but I wanted to try a laid-back gem that only locals know about. My friend and Haligonian Tom M. directed us to Jane’s on the Common and boy, was it a perfect recommendation.

Jane’s faces the Common, a huge park with soccer fields, softball diamonds and a fountain. The Rolling Stones played to a crowd of 50,000 there in 2006.

The restaurant itself is immediately comfortable with a small diner counter as you walk in, an expansive wall of windows on one wall, and a large blackboard on another with the day’s specials and desserts.

Jane’s doesn’t take reservations, preferring that people drop in for neighbourhood comfort food. We had no trouble getting one of the 14 tables at 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday, but they did fill up quickly.

Jane’s started us off with some delicious homemade lemon parsley biscuits. Right away, I knew we weren’t in Calgary anymore.

Our server was friendly and extremely professional. Wine and water glasses were always topped up and she checked in on how things were going at least twice. And then there were the astonishing prices. No tiny $10 appetizers or $30 mediocre entrees here.

Jason and I shared the seared scallop bruschetta ($7.00) on grilled bread. Four plump scallops (four!) were lovingly paired with roasted tomatoes and basil oil.

Nora and Tom shared the shrimp cake ($6.50), which also blew me away. A light potato cake with bits of red onions, perfectly crispy on the outside, topped with two delicious gigantic shrimp and drizzled with cilantro lime aioli. It also came with some dressed greens too. For $6.50!

The sun started to set, casting Jane’s in a lovely, familiar light. Unfortunately, that also meant the end for any usable photos since I hate using a flash in restaurants. You’ll just have to take my word that the entrees that followed were divine.

My cornbread-crusted haddock ($15) with fresh fruit chutney is how I imagine standing on the ocean would translate to a plate. Simple, fresh, and invigorating.

Nora’s salmon fillet ($16) was encrusted with black sesame seeds which I’ve never seen before, with a soy-lemon-maple glaze. Also delicious. (There was a lot of taste-tasting going on.)

Jason’s charbroiled pork loin ($15) we took to calling “pig on pig action” but in a good way. It came with a pancetta-molasses cream that somehow didn’t taste as heavy as it sounds. The pork came from the Martock Glen farm in Windsor, N.S.

All of those mains came with vegetables and the starch of the day, which was horseradish mashed potatoes.

Finally, Tom’s seafood pasta was loaded with huge pieces of shrimp and scallops with sundried tomatoes, pine-nut pesto, white wine cream and fresh Parmesan.

We washed it all down with a soft but surprisingly spicy red made in Nova Scotia. The Jost Trilogy 2003 ($32) is blended from three hybrids grapes: Foch, Leon Millot, and Baco Noir and well worth trying.

We all shared a great creme caramel ($5) for dessert with a hint of orange liqueur. After all that, Jane’s sent us home with a plate of homemade shortbread cookies. Now, this is a place that cares about food, its customers and their wallets. Amazing.

Jane’s on the Common, 2394 Robie St., Halifax, Nova Scotia, (902) 431-5683. Closed Mondays. Click for hours and menu here.

 

HALIFAX: The East Coast donair

This is Pizza Corner, the infamous intersection of Grafton and Blowers Street that features three different pizza outlets on three corners. It’s a magnet for people spilling out of nearby downtown bars. The fourth corner is a church.

Like all pizza places in the Maritimes, they also serve donairs — and donair burgers, donair subs and donair pizza.

As the story goes, the donair craze began in Halifax in the 1970s. When Peter Gamoulakos came to Canada, he could not sell any Greek gyros. So he changed the lamb to beef, ditched the tzatziki and created a distinctive sweet sauce and voila — the Halifax donair was born.

A donair is basically made of meat sliced from loaf of pressed ground beef, flour and various spices turning on a vertical spit, diced tomatoes and onions in a pita. But what makes it a Halifax donair is the thick sweet sauce made of evaporated milk, sugar, vinegar and garlic.

It’s best to eat it outside or over a garbage can. The pita is really an afterthought as the overloaded sauce and meat just ooze everywhere. I prefer shawarmas and garlicky sauce but this donair was pretty tasty, especially after a long night out.

The King of Donair claims to have invented this Halifax specialty and has turned it into a successful chain business.

Its Pizza Corner location does a steady business, especially after the clubs and bars get out, and is the scene, I’m sure, of many conversations like this one Jason and I had at about 2 a.m.

Me: I’m getting a small donair. What do you want?
Jason: Yes.
Me: No, honey, what do you want? A medium donair or do you want pizza?
Jason: Mmmmm. Yes.
Me: So do you want a donair or a pizza?
Jason (pointing to a donair pizza): I want that.
Me: You don’t want a donair?
Jason: Yes.

King of Donair, 1580 Grafton St., Halifax, Nova Scotia, (902) 422-0000.

 

HALIFAX: Beer on tap

Halifax is a city full of great pubs so you can’t go wrong. I kept insisting on trying to find this pub I went to once that had dark wood and servers dressed up like wenches and um, buccaneers or whatever you call guys serving beer in frilly shirts.

But I could only remember it was on a street corner and up on a hill. There are a lot of hilly streets in downtown Halifax. (Does anyone else know what I’m talking about?)

We ended up at Maxwell’s Plum, an establishment that boasts of 160 brands of beers and 60 on tap.

We were going to be adventurous and try beers we’ve never had before, but as soon as we walked in, we knew we had to get a beer tower - a beer dispenser with an inner compartment of ice on our very own table!

There are so many reasons this is genius. For slow drinkers like me - it takes me oh, an hour to sip a pint - the beer never gets warm. As the night progresses, there’s no danger of spillage since the handy spout keeps things neat. And a large quantity of beer means less impatient flagging down of the waitress for refills.

Also, Maxwell’s goes beyond the “fill line.” Not sure if that’s dangerous, but we’ll take it.

The beer tower is only available with Moosehead which isn’t a bad thing. It’s a pale lager most often associated with one’s university years. Predictable but not extraordinary. Like the used Toyota before you reach the VW Jetta years.

Besides, now that Molson and Labatt are foreign-owned, Moosehead is now Canada’s largest 100% Canadian brewery. And it’s brewed in New Brunswick. And people like to steal it.

In true pub fashion, the floor of Maxwell’s Plum is covered in peanut shells from the free snacks you can scoop up from barrels.

I couldn’t tell you how much the beer towers cost though, because Nora and Tom stole the bill. Then they took us dancing but that’s another story. Thanks, guys!

Maxwell’s Plum, 1600 Grafton St., Halifax, Nova Scotia, (902) 423-5090. Open seven days a week until 2 a.m. including kitchen.

 

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND: The honour system

Several potato stands line the highway from the Confederation Bridge into Charlottetown. They are not manned. They are run on the honour system. Imagine that happening on the 401.

You can pick up 10 ($3.00) and 50 pound ($8.00) bags of P.E.I. potatoes on your way home or back to the mainland, I suppose.

“In you we trust. Please pay to money jar.”

 

FREDERICTON: At the Market

Everyone has a favourite food at the Fredericton Farmer’s Market every Saturday. Mine always come from Kurt’s. Today, it was schnitzel (the unbreaded kind) with German mustard and sauerkraut. Others like the garlicky chicken donairs or Patel’s samosas. Ah, the infamous samosas.

As I’ve written before, the samosas are so popular people are willing to lineup forever for these things. The lineups got so big, they interefered with other vendors, so the market moved Patel’s to a different part of the building and most recently, to its own structure outside.

The market used to be the only place you could get samosas in Fredericton, but now they’re quite widely available, including some really good ones from Chez Riz that include whole peppercorns. Patel’s samosas are good, but I think the market lineup is also a strong part of the lure.

Here’s a Fredericton site that documents the ongoing tradition that is the Saturday market. But you may not find any pictures of Tinsel the clown there. He makes balloon animals for the kids, but no one’s EVER seen him smile. Ever.

W.W. Boyce Farmers’ Market, 665 George St., (at the corner of Regent and George Streets), Fredericton, New Brunswick. Open year-round Saturdays, 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. More info here.

 

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND: Last bastion of bottled pop

To Americans, it’s soda. To us Canadians, it’s pop. And to people who live on Prince Edward Island, it’s available only in bottles.

It’s been that way since 1984. Canned beer has not been sold on the island since 1973. The province banned cans to protect jobs at the island’s only bottling plant.

I like it. Fizzy liquids taste better out of bottles. But this unique slice of island life is coming to an end. Starting Jan. 1, 2008, the province will allow some cans and plastic bottles.

Half of the shelf space must still be devoted to refillable glass bottles, but it was nice to see the store coolers full of only tidy rows of cold bottles.

 

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND: Lobster supper

The very first time I went to Prince Edward Island, I did the natural tourist thing and went straight to Cavendish to visit the site that inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic novel, Anne of Green Gables.

But I really should have done the OTHER thing P.E.I. is famous for - the lobster supper.

The very first lobster supper was held in 1958 as a fundraiser for the New Glasglow and District Junior Farmers Organization. They served dinner for $1.50 in a building that had just been hauled from a nearby community.

Now 49 years later, New Glasglow Lobster Suppers can feed an average of 500 people in one sitting. Four original Junior Farmer members still own the restaurant which feels like a giant community hall with friendly checkered tablecloths.

To start, you pick your size of lobster from 1 lb. ($29.95) to 4 lbs. ($65.95). While that price may sound steep, consider this: everything in the supper, except the lobster, is all-you-can-eat.

Virginia, who’s just moved to P.E.I., and I already had a strategy to avoid filling up on bread so we could maximize our seafood intake. But as soon as the basket of buns arrived, our game plan went out the window. These were fluffy, warm, truly homemade pieces of love.

Then came the mussels. Nothing elaborate, just a big bucket of meaty yummy steamed mussels. Did I mention all-you-can eat?

Bowls of creamy seafood chowder arrived next, with chunks of shrimp, haddock and scallops. Chris went for seconds on this one.

Before I could finish my soup, I had to make room for the plates of potato salad, garden salad and coleslaw. Nothing remarkable but refreshing nonetheless.

The table was quite full as the main course arrived. Three of us got 1.5 lb. lobsters, while Virginia got a “baby” one-pounder. There’s really nothing fancy to lobsters other than how fresh they are, and these ones were top-notch.

Here at the supper, you can get your lobster hot or cold and it comes with lemon wedges and little cups of melted butter. Oh, and plastic bibs of course.

I love that the children’s menu offers a half-pound lobster for $13.95. I would’ve ordered that if I was little.

Topping it all off is a choice of homemade pies. From which I can remember, there was pecan, raisin, cherry, apple, and their “famous” lemon meringue. That’s all-you-can-eat too. I only half a piece of raisin pie, too stuffed with everything else.

New Glasgow Lobster Supper, Route 258 off Highway 13, New Glasglow, P.E.I. (902) 964-2870. Open 4-8:30 p.m. June to mid-October. More info here.

 

ST. STEPHEN: Sweet chicken bones

Ganong is Canada’s oldest candy company, started in 1873 by the Ganong family in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. Today, it’s run by the family’s fourth generation and the town is still home to the head office and manufacturing plant on One Chocolate Drive.

St. Stephen is known as Canada’s chocolate town and naturally has a chocolate museum which features the history of Ganong. There, you learn fun facts like former president R. Whidden Ganong used to eat two pounds of chocolate every day before he died at the age of 93.

In 1885, Ganong invented the chicken bone, a cinnamon hard candy with a soft chocolate centre. Apparently, it’s still a best seller today.

The Ganong Chocolatier Shoppe puts out little dishes of pink chicken bones to try. It’s kind of like grabbing a mint from the dish your grandmother always has out, including the part where you pry a piece apart from the rest of the sticky pile.

You suck on the hard chicken bone, until the cinnamon candy dissolves and splinters into pieces in your mouth. Like a chicken bone! Then while you try not to choke, the chocolate centre hits your tongue. Mmm. Weird.

In 1920, as the story goes, a candy maker was asked to create a chocolate bar with the texture of cheese to take along on fishing trips. I still don’t understand the cheese texture part of the request.

Anyway, that’s how the Pal-o-Mine was born, a bar of yellow fudge and coconut covered with chocolate and peanuts.

Ganong also makes Jason’s favourite Roman Nougat bar, white nougat embedded with bits of fruit-flavoured jellies.

Admission fee to Ganong chocolate museum: $5

One Pal-o-Mine chocolate bar: 89 cents

Jason clutching candy from the Ganong store: priceless

The Chocolate Museum, 73 Milltown Blvd., St. Stephen, New Brunswick, (506) 466-7848. Open March to November. Museum website here. More info on Ganong here.

 

NEW BRUNSWICK: Noah’s Ark

A pastor in this town of Florenceville had a vision in the late ’80s that he was supposed to build an ark so he did. The ark is 2 stories high and about 2/3 the size of the ark as described in the Bible. It has portholes.

It serves as the dormitory for the Bible college that the pastor also started. There are about 30 rooms as well as administrative offices inside. I think it’s available to rent as a retreat centre as well.

If you’re in this part of the world, don’t forget to have French fries and visit the Potato World museum. They harvest a lot of potatoes around here.

Noah’s Ark, Burnham Road, Florenceville, New Brunswick. South of the town, about half a kilometre east of the Transcanada Highway.