Eating OFF the Hill: Donairs and seafood in Halifax

Spending a few days in Halifax last weekend for the Liberal biennial convention, I decided to make the most of my limited outside meal opportunities by focusing on the local specialty -- the Donair -- and the proximity of the ocean to eat as much seafood as possible. The nearer I am to saltwater, the more fish and seafood I eat.

My first seafood meal came not long after arriving in town late Thursday evening, as I wandered down to Stayner's Wharf in search of what my grandfather always told me was brain food. I had expected a more extensive seafood selection, but settled on the Cajun haddock with pineapple salsa. It came with rice with black beans & tri-coloured bell peppers. I don't care for beans so the rice didn't do much for me, but the haddock was excellent. The cajun spice was spicier than I expected but no complaints from me, and the pineapple salsa was a nice tough. Alas, in my hunger I neglected to snap a photo.

While box lunches were on offer Friday in the Laurier Lounge at the convention, I opted to order in from Tony's Donair and Pizza. One regular (medium) donair, and three donair egg rolls with donair dipping sauce (two were for a friend).

I'll begin with the egg rolls. While the meat was good, the dough was too chewy to be enjoyable and I found the sweetness of the donair sauce a bit much when dipped with an egg roll -- it's better dispersed at a lower ratio in a donair.

Moving on to the donair, my only negative note is too much chopped raw white onion, bunched up together -- it distracted from the experience. The meat was tender, succulent and tasty, the pita fresh. And there was tomato for variety. It was a lot of meat for a medium, and after the egg roll was more than I could eat. Will hold the onions next time and it will be perfect.

Usually when I visit a steakhouse, the steak is mandatory. But after afternoon appies in the Laurier Lounge and Peace by Chocolate at the Judy Party, when I joined friends at The Barrington Steakhouse & Oyster Bar, I opted to go for something a little lighter -- the Lobster Mac & Cheese. Hey, in my mind it's lighter.

It was truly delicious. Decent amount of cooked lobster, actual elbow macaroni (restaurants putting mac & cheese on the menu but actually serving penne or some damned thing is a long-running pet peeve), creamy cheesy goodness, piping hot, bread crumbs, mmm delish. It was the steak of pastas.

On Saturday for lunch, rather than trying for donair delivery or venturing to one of the recommended donair shops (all a taxi drive away) I decided to go to an establishment a block away: Johnny K's Authentic Donair. After Tony's the day before, I immediately regretted not sticking to the recommended options (King of Donair was next on the list).

The regular (medium) was smaller than the Tony's regular. While I held the onions which was great, it's all about the meat and the meat just did not hold up to Tony's. There was enough of it, but I found it processed-tasting, lacking in flavour and a bit dry. In the Ottawa shawarma world, we've long known too many places will try to compensate for dry meat with more sauce. In a good shawarma, you don't need to go heavy on the sauce when you have tender, succulent seasoned meat that can be the star. I think the same holds true with donair.

Speaking of which, with shawarma I always go for the garlic sauce over the sweet, and the sweet donairs served to confirm this choice for me.

For dinner, after the Prime Minister's speech I met a friend down the street at The Five Fisherman, where they had a more extensive seafood selection than Stayner's.

I began with the Nova Scotia seafood chowder, and it was the best chowder I've had in recent memory. Creamy and packed with quality fresh seafood. Tasted home made and not processed. Flavourful broth, chunky scallops. shrimp, clam, mussels and scallops -- the in-shell clam was a nice touch. A chowder I would fight to make sure you say it right -- chowdah!

Next up for the main was more haddock -- they like their haddock in Halifax. So did I, though. I cannot find the menu description online, but it was a delicious creamy sauce with plenty of haddock and fresh veggies. Delish.

Going for a walk behind my hotel in the evening I came across a desert place specializing in cheesecake, called the Sweet Hereafter Cheesecakery. They had me at cheesecake. My slice of chocolate peanut butter cheesecake could have used more peanut butter, but it was sinfully rich and, washed down with a tall glass of cold milk it was a great cap to the evening.

Finally, on Sunday, after touring the excellent Canadian Immigration Museum at Pier 21 and walking along the waterfront, and discovering King of Donair doesn't open until too late for me to get my shuttle and taking a taxi to Pizza Corner seemed an unjustifiable expense, I turned to Google for Lobster Roll recommendations and kept walking down the wharf -- making sure to step out onto a pier for authenticity's sake before taking the obligatory Barret's-themed photo -- to visit Salty's.

Yeah, so I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold?

Its waterfront location offered a great view, but I got a bit of a tourist trap vibe I didn't get from my other seafood stops. Still, after inquiring of the market price I went ahead and ordered the lobster roll.

It came on a croissant, which doesn't seem traditional though it was a tasty pastry. I was not impressed with the paltry amount of lobster I got, maybe half of what I had at Barrington's for roughly the same price. It was tasty, but not great value. The salad was a standout, highlighted by the stewed red peppers and a tasty raspberry vinaigrette.

Knowing that this wouldn't hold me until a late dinner back in Ottawa though, part way through the main I ordered a seafood chowder. It was disappointing after the amazing chowder at Five Fishermen the night before. Bland broth, filler potato, not enough seafood. There were two shrimps, but otherwise it tasted generic and processed.

And with that, my meals were at an end. Farewell to Nova Scotia!

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Eating up the Hill: A taste of Nova Scotia

Last Tuesday was a reception I and many other hill dwellers had circled on our calendar weeks ago: the Taste of Nova Scotia reception. And with dreams of lobster rolls and scallops in our heads, we descended on the Sir John A. MacDonald building in droves.

Unfortunately, many of us were turned away. For the first time I can recall, the RSVP list was being strictly enforced -- even for pass holders. If you weren't on the RSVP list, with the exception of MPs and Senators you were turned away. Luckily, while I don't always RSVP, for this one I did (perhaps the fear of losing out on fresh seafood being too much to risk) and was able to venture inside.

It was a lot more upscale than I was expecting -- I'd been picturing a kitchen party with donairs and beer. Instead, it was much fancier, with chefs preparing small plates at a variety of food stations and a series of bars offering selections of Nova Scotia-produced beer, wine and even the harder stuff. The wine was decent, but the rum was quite nice. The food was the main attraction, though, and I definitely left full.

My favourite was the Seared Scallop Escabèche, which was prepared with pickled red onions and dukkah (hazelnuts, sesame seed, cumin and corriander) by Chef Renée Lavallee of The Canteen in Dartmouth. The ingredients nicely complemented the flavourful scallops, which remain one of my favourite non-fish seafood choices.

Of course, there was lobster as well. Here we have soft poached Nova Scotia lobster with a smoked corn relish, bisque fluid gel, vanilla bierre noisette, corn shoots, micro watercress and radish paper. I don't know what most of that is, but I do know it tasted delicious. I managed to get one, but this station was constantly swamped by demand -- they couldn't plate them fast enough.

I did enjoy several of these crab on toast thingies (I neglected to snap a picture of the station sign for this one, so crab on toast thingee is the description you get.) I thought the bread took away from the crab a bit too much, but otherwise, delish indeed.

It wasn't all seafood. I inhaled several of these wild mushroom ravioli pockets, which could have used a bit more sauce but were otherwise delicious.

And a meaty hit was the Meadowbrook Pork Coppa, which was sous vide and charred pork with a sweet potato puree, black mustard seed and silver birch glaze, prepared by Chef Jason Lynchg of LeCaveau Reasturant in Grand Pré and Chef Jeffrey MacNeil of Prime Restaurant + Wine Bar in Lunenberg.

So it wasn't quite an East Coast kitchen party, but when I bid a farewell to Nova Scotia I had enjoyed a great deal of local specialties and spirits, and left with a new determination to always RSVP.

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Lessons from Stephen McNeil’s landslide Liberal victory in Nova Scotia

As part of the Liberal Party of Canada biennial session this afternoon on provincial and municipal best practices, we got an inside look at how the Nova Scotia Liberals won a historic majority government from campaign director (and federal Liberal VP English) Chris MacInnes. And Premier Stephen McNeil was in the room, just to keep him honest.

The work leading to last year’s victory was years in the making, said MacInnes. There’ a lot of windshield time when you’re Nova Scotia premier, from Darthmouth to Meat Cove. McNeill was on the road constantly for years.

The party made the decision after a tough loss in 2009 to build to a victory in 2013, and took definitive steps to see through the challenges and meet that goal.

One key step was the caucus office establishing an outreach team to reach out to communities they hadn’t traditionally reached out to. Partly because of that, they won with a strong slate of female candidates who now hold key positions in the government, electing a House of Assembly much more a reflection of a modern Nova Scotia.

They made a conscious decision to have research-based communications, instead of just shoot from the hip priorities. They did deep research to identify priorities, and focus caucus like a laser on those. They’d still hold the government to account, but the research helped to focus their priorities and they saw a direct correlation between their poll numbers going up and their focus on research-identified issues.

They did heavy pre-writ advertising for the first time, beginning one year from the election. The fundraising system was modernized – you couldn’t even donate on their web site until four years ago. They invested in the federal party’s Liberalist voter identification and management system, which MacInnes said fundamentally changed the way they fight elections in Nova Scotia, and will for years to come.

By bringing the call centre in-house for voter ID, training volunteers, Liberalist, polling and volunteers at the doors, MacInnes said they had four to five data points on where their support was during the campaign. The senior campaign team had confidence in the outcome – although they didn’t tell the leader – because of those data-points. Liberalist also helped the central campaign hold campaigns accountable – they knew if candidates were knocking on doors, and teams entering activist codes correctly.

Finally, MacInnes said the level of cooperation from the national party and different provincial wings was like he had never seen before. Volunteers came from as far away as BC to help. New Brunswick Liberal leader Brian Gallant campaigned in five ridings, and federal MP Dominic LeBlanc campaigned as well. Everyone was eager to join the campaign, and he said the cooperation between the federal and provincial campaigns was seamless, and they were always there with help on training, information and advice.

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Jack Layton and Darrel Dexter extended caption contest

NDP leader Jack Layton shares a laugh today with Nova Scotia's NDP Premier, Darrell Dexter today at the Nova Scotia NDP's annual convention. Now here's a photo that needs a caption. My extended contribution is below, feel free to leave yours in the comments...

Darrell: Jack, I know that you've been in a righteous lather over the HST in BC and Ontario. You're not going to give me a hard time for jacking-up the HST by two points, are you?

Jack: Of course not, Darrell, you're my boy! You're my boy! We'll just ignore the fact that Nova Scotia now has both an NDP government AND the highest HST in Canada, and hope no one notices our hypocrisy.

Darrell: Awesome, you da man, Jack! Say, by the way, are you going to let your caucus vote to kill the gun registry or what?

Jack: Gotta go my man. Solidarity!

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Ignatieff will talk isotopes during Nova Scotia visit today

This week Michael Ignatieff's Hiding in Plain Sight Summer Tourpaolloza 2009 takes him to the Maritimes.

Today he's in Cape Breton, where events are scheduled to include a visit to the wharf at Port Morien with MPs Roger Cuzner and Mark Eyking to talk with local fisherman, a bbq at noon at the Big Fiddle in Sydney and then a meeting with local officials and tour of the Cape Breton Regional Hospital’s cancer centre.

He’s expected to speak to reporters there on the need to produce more medical isotopes for early cancer diagnoses.

Medical isotopes are used to diagnose heart disease and some cancers, but earlier this year the world’s supply began to decline. So far, Nova Scotians haven’t been denied tests because of the growing shortage, according to a Canadian Press report.

Its a timely visit, given the continued incompetence Lisa Raitt and the Harper Conservatives have demonstrated on the isotope crisis as more and more Canadians have their medical testing delayed or postponed and costs for hospitals increase.

And we saw yesterday that one of the sources Raitt has continually been holding up as a Chalk River alternative, Australia, is falling apart. As the Liberals have been saying all along, Australia was never a viable alternative given their own internal issues. And now that has been sadly confirmed:

A fledgling Australian nuclear reactor isn't yet making enough isotopes to cover for a downed Canadian reactor that used to produce a third of the world's supply.

Doctors say Australia's OPAL reactor could still be a few months away from running at full speed.

"I've been told unofficially about two months, two-to-three months," said Dr. Christopher O'Brien, head of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine.

"So, some time mid-fall."

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The chips are falling into place...

...for a fall election. At least on the Conservative side. Even though Harper, of course totally doesn't want an election. No way Jose...

The federal government has reached a deal with Nova Scotia over offshore revenue sharing, ending a politically damaging battle with the province amid talk of a fall election.

The new arrangement will provide Nova Scotia with a guarantee that it will not lose any royalties under changes made to its cherished offshore accord in last spring's federal budget.

A deal, or a surrender by Harper to pave the way for a fall election? I don't know enough about the details to say one way or another, so I'll leave that to the experts and the spinners. I do know this though:

A three-person panel will be set up to study the value of the complex cash royalty, which was part of the province's original 1985 offshore agreement...The panel is expected to report with a binding decision, which could mean a large cash payment to the province.

A billion here, a billion there, and just in time for an election campaign. Handy that. It will be interesting to see if Bill Casey now comes back into the Conservative fold. I imagine the Cons will be putting major pressure on him to do so. (Or not, see update below) One also wonders if it will be enough to save Peter McKay's seat.

Found it a little peculiar there were no comments from Premier MacDonald in the story, just Harper, as I was interested to see how Rodney would frame it. Maybe CP will add that in later. Also interesting was that this came the day after the Newfoundland elections and Danny Williams' landslide victory. Danny, by the way, called the Nova Scotia deal a bad one:

The premier of Newfoundland and Labrador blasted the agreement in St. John‘s today, saying Prime Minister Stephen Harper has gotten Premier Rodney MacDonald to take less than he would get under the Atlantic accords, adding that Harper has “a way of preying on the weak.‘‘

So, Newfoundland is still an issue to be dealt with for the Cons, as is Saskatchewan, who the story notes are still suing the feds over equalization. Between this and the Wheat Board brouhaha the Cons are in trouble in Saskatchewan. I'd expect the NDP to take some seats from them there at the moment, and maybe if we're lucky the Liberals could sneak-in too.

After the Nova Scotia deal, if we see a quick move to appease Saskatchewan it would be an even clearer sign (were it not blindingly obvious already) that Harper is determined to go to the polls this fall.

Meanwhile, in Liberal land, Stephane Dion had a press conference yesterday and announced...well, not a lot really. He shuffled around his shadow cabinet, made Bob Rae foreign affairs critic, gave Garth Turner a job too, and booted one MP from their critic portfolio:

Mr. Dion also stripped MP Raymonde Folco of her role as official languages critic — she had told reporters that Mr. Dion was not selling in Quebec and was too old to change his ways...

Good, this was very necessary. I would have liked to have seen some of the other people that broke confidentiality and ran to the press over the Carroll thing punted too though. Still, hopefully this sends a message. While debate is good, and changes need to be made, it's important for party executives and MPs to work within the system, not through the media. Undermine the leader in public and there need to be consequences.

On an unrelated matter, I would also have liked to have seen Denis Coderre moved out of the defence critic job. I admit, that was probably impossible after the whole Afghan trip thing this week, the timing and optics would have been brutal. But while I've defended Coderre on the trip issue because I believe he's in the right there, I still would rather see someone else in that role. Nearly anyone else, to be honest.

In other news from the Dion presser:

Stéphane Dion signalled Tuesday that he will try to sidestep a fall election, and might even tell his Liberal MPs to sit out a confidence vote on the Conservative government's agenda.

Sigh. It looks like Bryan Wilfert wasn't freelancing after all, but was floating a trial balloon for the OLO. I've already articulated why I think this is an exceedingly crappy idea, and nothing I've heard since has served to change my mind. I'm not pleased to hear this. As I said earlier, we need to start standing-up for Liberal values again. Prop-up the Cons and I don't care how you spin it, it'll be bad. Jack and Gilles will be over the moon.

Finally, an example of really lame attempted Conservative spin:

Conservatives, meanwhile, scoffed that Mr. Dion has decided to avoid an election because his party is in disarray.

"The Liberals are struggling with a weak leader, thin bench strength and a tarnished brand," said Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow.

Of course, the Conservatives (say they) don't want an election either. I guess that's because Harper is such a strong leader with strong bench strength and a shiny brand, right Ryan? Or maybe they're just lying when they say they want to avoid an election...

UPDATE 1: Via Garth Turner comes this exchange from Harper's presser on the Nova Scotia deal, and Bill Casey:

Question: Prime minister, now that you’ve got this agreement, are you going to welcome Mr. Casey back into the Conservative caucus?

Answer: No. Mr. Casey made demands that he knew were incompatible with our budget, that he knew that this government would not agree to and has not agreed to. Mr. Casey is not welcome into our caucus. Just so I can be as clear as i can be on it, there — when there is a next federal election there will be a conservative candidate in Mr. Casey’s riding, and it will not be Mr. Casey.

Well, I guess that settles that. As Garth says, vindictive, petty, spiteful, bully. To that I would add stupid. I could see Harper being enough of a dick to freeze Casey out if he wanted back, but what's the political upside to such a course. I've always maintained that, despite his being arrogant and wrong and all that, Harper is a smart strategist. He's lost me here though, because I don't get it. Neither does Steve.

UPDATE 2: Speaking of Carroll, something that was probably inevitable finally happened today. Since it seemed fairly clear we were heading this way, one wonders what the frick took them so long?!

Jamie Carroll has officially stepped down from the party's top administrative job and he has given up his role as deputy national campaign director as well.

The announcement comes after weeks of controversy over Carroll's allegedly dismissive response to demands that Dion include more Quebecers in his inner circle.

It's unfortunate, because I think Carroll is a good guy and that the infamous diversity remarks were blown widely out of proportion by people with their own agendas. However, I think for the good of the party and the sake of party unity he probably had to go. Rightly or wrongly, he had become a lighting rod for controversy. It dates back to his ill considered remarks in Diebel's book. It wasn't all his fault, but he had become a roadblock to progress.

Now, with Carroll gone, it will be interesting to see if the people who were calling for his ouster now get on board and start being team players working for the good of the party. Were their motives what's right for the party, or driven by their own personal agendas? With Carroll now gone, their reaction and behaviour going forward will tell the tale.

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