I’d like to tell you a bit more about Claire and Alex’s great neighbourhood in Toronto. I feel I got to know it fairly well after staying with them for three weeks and getting out and about quite a bit.
(P.S.- can you believe the Junction was a dry neighbourhood until 2000?? That explains why there are still very few liquor stores…)
I’ve already talked about Crema – a great neighbourhood coffee shop – and the Junction Farmers’ Market. Here are a few other highlights:
One of the reasons Claire and I went to Leslieville was to visit Hooked. Claire is a chef and she had heard from her colleagues about this great fish store. I haven’t been to many fish stores, but Hooked is an incredibly cool place. Its focus is on sustainably caught fish and seafood. The two owners, a husband-and-wife team, are professional chefs who really care about where their fish comes from. They buy direct from fish farmers and fishers across Canada. There is tons of selection, and the staff are extremely friendly and knowledgeable. Overall it’s just a beautiful place to shop. They also carry a selection of sauces, marinades and pickles made in-store to complement your fish meal. Hooked even runs a teaching kitchen where you can take classes on fish preparation.
We picked up some oysters and fresh sardines for supper. It was a delicious fish feast, and only my second time eating oysters. The first time was after my father’s funeral 8 years ago, and I wasn’t a fan of the slippery sensation. This time I really enjoyed them! The taste reminded me of mussels, and I loved the salty brininess. They tasted like the sea. Dad loved oysters, and I think he would have been pretty proud to see his chef daughter cracking them open and the three of us knocking them back.
We broiled the sardines, and their firm, creamy flesh had an incredibly rich flavour. They were, however, on the large side (about 8 inches long) and full of bones. The meal was a long one – and at the end of it, we were all left with sticky fingers and plates covered in tiny fish bones. But it was worth it.
Hooked
888 Queen Street East
206 Baldwin Street
Toronto, ON
Jacques and I were in Calgary for a few days in July, right after we left Canmore. Since we were in the city on a Saturday, I wanted to check out one of the farmers’ markets. There are many of them, but the one that seemed the biggest and easiest to get to from our hotel was the Calgary Farmers’ Market.
The market is big, and since it’s open four days a week, many of the stalls are semi-permanent. In that sense it reminded me a bit of Halifax’s Seaport Farmers’ Market, though it’s bigger. There is a great mix of vendors, with lots of ready-to-eat food stalls, and plenty of people selling meat, vegetables and fruits, and cheese. We started off with some delicious coffee from Fratello Coffee.
Jacques went for some dim sum. He loves it, but hardly eats it anymore since there isn’t much choice at dim sum for celiacs (that I know of).
There were also many stalls selling desserts and baked goods, including the one below which specialized in middle eastern sweets. I’m not sure what exactly these kataifi are, but they look good. Jacques enjoyed his baklava from this stand.
I was excited about visiting Miss P’s Gluten Free stand. Here are some of her cupcakes. I bought a loaf of focaccia bread and some chocolate chip cookies, both of which I enjoyed. The bread had a delicious flavour, though the texture was on the dry side.
I had a gluten-free buckwheat galette for lunch. A galette is a type of French crepe made with buckwheat flour. I chose a filling of spinach, tomato and goat cheese, and it was tasty.
We really enjoyed strolling around the market. Lucky Calgarians who get to shop there all the time! Though I love our markets in Edmonton, it would be great to have one that was open more than one day a week.
Calgary Farmers’ Market
510 77th Ave. SE (Just off Blackfoot Trail and Heritage Drive)
Open Thursday – Sunday 9 am – 5 pm
It’s time to play a bit of catch-up. I have a couple of posts about our trip back to the East Coast last summer that have been waiting on the back burner for months. Here’s the first of at least two.
Everywhere we travel, there’s always a focus on food. A big part of our trip home was visiting all of our favourite restaurants. PEI is also a great place to go shopping for food, especially in the summertime. Fresh seafood is a huge draw, and there’s also great produce, meats, cheeses and other foods. These are a few highlights from our trip.
We didn’t have the chance to do much cooking, but we had one supper at J’s parents’ place, and I wanted to cook seafood. We tried to buy some at the farmers’ market, but it was a Wednesday and the seafood stall wasn’t there. So we headed to another amazing place to get fresh seafood: the Queen Street Meat Market.
I know, it doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Not only does the market sell more seafood than meat, it isn’t even located on Queen Street. (I assume it once was). It’s one block over, on University, in a not-very-nice strip of the avenue, across from the Dairy Queen. But it’s a great little shop that feels like it hasn’t changed much since the 1950s.
My Dad used to frequent this market a lot to pick up his meat and fish. They sell premium Island steak, all kinds of other meat, fish and seafood, cheese, and some local produce too. The wooden interior is painted white, and it’s a little cramped, with a long L-shaped glass display counter where you place your order, big freezers against the wall, tanks swimming with live lobsters, and food stacked on tables around the room. Taped to the walls are old calendars and charts detailing the different cuts of meat you can get from a cow.
There’s nothing fancy about this place. The pricing labels made from styofroam meat trays and scrawled with black marker can attest to that. But fresh products have nothing to do with extravagance. And what you get at this market is the best – the mussels we ate that night were fantastic.
For a more touristy but nonetheless delicious food shopping experience, Anne of Green Gables Chocolates on Queen Street does the trick. They also have locations in Cavendish and Borden. Yes, many things in this town and across the Island are named after our beloved heroine, though as far as I know there is little to no mention of chocolate in the Anne books.
The chocolate shop is a large store selling everything from individual truffles to PEI “Oysters” (like chocolate turtles) to hard candies. They also carry Avonlea-brand preserves and cheddar cheese, and cheese from Cows Creamery (makers of the famous ice cream).
A very popular item is the chocolate-covered potato chips made from PEI potatoes. I saw these packages sticking out of many tourists’ bags as I walked around town, and there’s even a display set up in the store where you watch the staff making the treats. I didn’t sample them myself, but how could you go wrong? Sweet and salty is the best combination ever.
Just down the street from the chocolate shop is a brand-new food store unlike anything I’ve seen in Charlottetown before. Liquid Gold Tasting Bar sells high-quality olive oils and vinegars, and the shop is set up in a unique way. Each oil and vinegar they sell is held in a large silver vat with a tiny spout, and each is available to taste. You can make your way around the store sampling everything from jalepeno olive oil to cranberry pear balsamic vinegar, and tons of other interesting flavours.
The store is large, bright, and airy, and there’s lots of information about olive oil and vinegars up on the walls. There’s even a special section with truffle oil – that one, not surprisingly, is not available for everyone to taste.
I love the way the store makes shopping a really participatory experience. It’s definitely a great way to get people t0 buy your product. I was shopping with my friend Mackenzie, and she chose two bottles as gifts (a 200 ml bottle is $11 and 375 ml is $18). The friendly salesperson told us the original Liquid Gold store is in Halifax, in the Hydrostone Market. This made Mackenzie happy, since she just moved there.
It was busy during our visit, and I really hope Islanders support the store through the year so it doesn’t have to become one of the many businesses that open only during the summer for the tourist trade.
Since Charlottetown does a booming tourist trade, it only makes sense for food-inclined visitors to want to check out local products. If you’re there for a visit I hope you enjoy these three spots. The Charlottetown Farmers’ Market is also a great place to enjoy a local food experience. There’s also a newer downtown farmers’ market on Sundays, though I haven’t been there yet.
Queen Street Meat Market, 368 University Ave. www.queenstreetmeatmarket.com
Anne of Green Gables Chocolates, 100 Queen St.
www.annechocolates.com
Liquid Gold Tasting Bar and All Things Olive, 72 Queen St.
www.allthingsolive.ca
It’s no secret that I love farmers’ markets. The earliest one I can remember was in Halifax, where I grew up. It’s also North America’s oldest farmers’ market. It was in an old brick building downtown that used to be the Alexander Keith’s brewery. I loved the energetic bustle of the market – it was always filled with people, all working their way through the warren-like maze of rooms stuffed with vendors.
The year I moved back to Halifax to go to school I visited the market a few times. In fact, I did my first ever radio story on the new building the market was planning. Many vendors felt the old brewery building was just too packed and too crowded. Some shoppers found it claustrophobic. Other people loved the historic, chaotic character of the market and didn’t want to give it up. (Tension! Perfect for a journalist.)
When I did that story almost four years ago, the new building was supposed to open the following summer. Instead, it got delayed two years and opened in August 2010. When I was home for my sister’s wedding last summer, I got to visit the old market one last time. I really loved that market, but I wasn’t a fan of having to push my way through the crowds. If you were actually trying to do your weekly shopping, I can see it taking a very long time. I was looking forward to the new building.
I visited the new market with my Mom on a cloudy, chilly day in July. It’s a short walk from the old building, smack dab on the water at the south end of downtown.
The building is impressive. Not only because of the harbour location, but because of its focus on the environment. Panels inside explain how much energy the building is saving with its four wind turbines and geothermal heating. It also boasts a green roof and a living wall. The building has LEED Platinum certification, one of the highest environmental designations in the world.
It’s wonderful to stroll down the aisles with the harbour just outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. There are two floors of vendors and the entire building boasts soaring, warehouse-type ceilings . The second floor is more of a mezzanine-type area, where you can look over the railing to the floor below. I read that this new market is double the space the old market had.
The building has some permanent store fronts and is open six days a week, with the farmers’ market held on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. We went on a Wednesday and there were only a handful of vendors. I’d love to see it on a bustling Saturday too.
The one stall I really cared about was there, though – Schoolhouse Gluten-free Gourmet. I read about this business online before the trip and I knew I had to check it out.
It’s a small bakery run by a family in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, and they visit the market twice a week. Not only did they have the cutest little stall, their treats were great. I wanted to try so much stuff that Mom kindly treated me to some of it. It’s not every day you come across a gluten-free bakery!
We ate our pumpkin muffins right away. Though very crumbly, they were moist and had a rich, delicious pumpkin flavour. We tried two kinds of cookies – ginger and chocolate chip. The ginger were definitely superior. They were thick and chewy, as good as any ginger cookie I’ve ever had. The chocolate chip tasted a bit like rice flour and were pretty dense, but not bad.
I was really impressed with the cinnamon-raisin bread. It passed my two tests for great GF bread: it didn’t require toasting to enjoy, and it was good even after the first day I bought it. Definitely the best GF bread I’ve tried. Too bad this bakery isn’t closer!
Although it would have been great to see more vendors, we had such fun exploring the building. There’s a small deck with benches on the second floor. But the best part is the deck on the roof. It’s so wonderful to emerge from the building to an amazing view of the harbour and the two islands – George’s and McNab’s. I also loved the garden up there, the plants creating so many different colours and patterns.
We also had the most delicious lunch – gluten-free buckwheat crepes with egg, cheese and ham. I was really happy that the crepe stand not only offered gluten-free batter, but the women working there took great care cleaning off the cooking surfaces and using GF utensils to cook my crepe. I devoured the hearty crepe with the salty, peppery filling.
The old market in the brewery building is still open, since some vendors didn’t want to make the switch to the new place. I’m curious how many people still visit the old one. Of course it has its charm, but I found the new location so spectacular that I’m wondering how long the old one will survive.
Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market
1209 Marginal Rd.
www.halifaxfarmersmarket.com
Schoolhouse Gluten-free Gourmet
7014 Highway #3, R.R. 2, Mahone Bay
www.schoolhouseglutenfreegourmet.com
