Food and drink
Across New Brunswick, eateries encompass a wide range of culinary experiences, from simple roadside shacks serving honest unadulterated ‘fish & chips’ to renowned ‘fine dining’ restaurants where menus change daily to reflect the best offerings from land and sea.
Our wonderfully fresh, plump and juicy oysters, mussels, scallops, clams, crab, salmon and trout make New Brunswick a heaven for lovers of fish or seafood. For many though, the lobster is the “king of the sea”, served boiled (with melted butter for dipping), simply grilled, or enthroned as the focus of a more elaborate dish.
New Brunswick’s rich Acadian culture also provides a number of traditional dishes to look out for. Be sure to try fricot à la poule (chicken and potato stew), pâté à la viande (meat pie – yes, we know it sounds better in French), Acadian fish pancakes, poutines à trou (baked pastries stuffed with raisins and cranberries) and fragrant pets de soeur (cinnamon rolls).
During the warm days and cool nights of spring, sap rises in sugar maple trees. For those in need of a sugar rush the province has a number of camps where maple syrup production is demonstrated, and of course the tasty treat sampled.
Spring is also the time when we search out green gastronomic goodies such as fiddleheads. These unfurled fronds of the ostrich fern take their name from a resemblance to the curled top of a stringed instrument. Cooked in variety of different ways, some say fiddleheads are at their simple best when steamed and served with butter and lemon juice.
Between mid-August and mid-September join us in looking out for delicious wild blueberries in roadside stalls, shops, farmers’ markets. Hailed by many as a ‘superfruit’, these squashy succulent spheres are ranked as nature’s number one antioxidant – are they the key in the quest for eternal youth?
More of an acquired taste, and one that MUST be good for you, is dulse, a reddish seaweed picked by hand and sun-dried on the rocks of Grand Manan Island at low tide. Rich in vitamins and minerals, dulse can be eaten as-is for a savoury snack, or used to infuse chowders, soups and bouillabaisse with the flavour of the sea.
To accompany food, why not try a glass of locally produced wine? New Brunswick is home to around a dozen wineries, with fruit wines – made with blueberries, apples, raspberries and more – a particular speciality.
We also love our beer. For those with more traditional tastes Moosehead Breweries is Canada’s oldest independent brewery and is located in Saint John. Here a range of beers, including the flagship Moosehead Lager is produced. Elsewere, a handful of brewpubs / microbreweries are dotted about the province – look out ales brewed by the Pump House in Moncton.
Eat, drink and enjoy!
