Last week I made a day trip to the town of Dildo, Newfoundland, just over an hour’s drive west of St. John’s. And technically speaking, Dildo isn’t a town, because it’s unincorporated, but that kind of legal nicety doesn’t attract much attention when the name of your—let’s call it a community—is Dildo.
Because the town has embraced its name rather than changing it to something less suggestive for some of the tender souls amongst us, it encourages you to be in double entendre mode all the time, that is, in sexual pun mode the whole way there. I’m sure I’m not the first one to note that my itinerary passed near or, er, through other places with names that seemed appropriate. Six Beaver Island. Broad Cove. Spread Eagle. Little Ridge. And, no, I’m not making any of those up.
The origin of the name of the town actually derives from two Anglo-Saxon words: dill, meaning my husband is away at sea, and doah, meaning oh, dear, look at the shape of this eggplant. I’m kidding. According to one source, “the true origin of the word is lost to time,” but he speculates that it may derive from the word dill-dowl, meaning “a cove with poor wind for sailing-craft.”
It was lunch time so I headed directly for the Dildo Brewing Co. & Museum. The place was fairly (though not overly) packed with tourists, and I got a nice seat at the bar and went through the menu. I ordered the onion rings served vertically on about an 8-inch pole and the fish tacos. Do they never let up at this place? Oh, I also had excellent homemade chicken noodle soup, which seemed to have some salt beef in it too. The food was great. Pub food anywhere ranges from 0 to 10: 0 for the ones who think they can slap anything fried in front of you and you’ll eat it because you’re mostly interested in the beer; and 10 for the ones who want to make your experience orgasmic. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a better chicken noodle soup. The fish tacos had more fish than anything else, which was great. The onion rings were good: I should have asked for some paprika, which onion-ring aficionados the world over know is the perfect seasoning for them. Oh, and the beer: Dildo Lager. Superb. There was nothing crass in the décor of the place, but they did have a few zingers on the menu. I particularly liked what they called the Stout Dildo on the beer menu.
After the meal I just had to walk around the dock that the restaurant is on and, thank Jesus, there was a part of it that jutted out into the Atlantic, and a deck chair that I sat in where I could view both the ocean and the town. Cool, comfortable. Two women came by after a few minutes, taking selfies. One of them asked if her friend could sit in my lap for a photo: she was sure I wouldn’t mind. I said I wouldn’t, but she declined, perhaps because her husband soon showed up and helped them with the picture-taking.
His wife was giving him instructions on how to take the picture, and he suddenly stopped in annoyance.
“That is both funny and incredibly annoying,” I said to any and all of them.
The husband turned to me and said, “No. It’s pissing me off, that’s what it is.”
They eventually got the photos they wanted and left me in peace.
One of the things they were trying to make sure was in the pictures was the huge DILDO sign that’s built into the hill, just like the big HOLLYWOOD sign in that lesser town. In fact, as many people know, that sign was not installed on the initiative of the town but on the request of talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel. This was in 2019 when Kimmel made some jokes about the town’s name but then offered to construct the sign as well. The deal was done, and the DILDO sign mimics the HOLLYWOOD one even in the unevenness of the letters. I could easily see it from the perch of my deck chair, and, yes, I got photos too, and didn’t have to argue with anyone to take them.
I eventually hauled myself from my seat and walked around the pub and museum. There was a list of Dock Rules, a bullet list that I would have rephrased in some bullets so as to make the rules either all phrases (No Fishing Permitted) or all sentences (Use with Caution). But no one but editors know or care about these things. I got to see front and back of where the brewing vats are and where the delivery of the ingredients takes place.
There are two other things I wanted to be sure to note about Dildo. One is—and this is becoming a bit of a truism for any small place in Newfoundland I visit—but people are friendly. Granted, I was in a pub, but it felt comfortable and nicely festive there. All busy around me, as the servers went back and forth into and out of the kitchen, but I was able to eat and drink peacefully. The bartender was, as the kids say, friendly as fuck. The woman at the reception desk was the same. I find it pretty awesome. Have you ever been to the opposite of a place like this? Where the receptionist is low-energy and seats you without a word and hands you a menu, muttering “Your server will be right with you.” And the server just gets your stuff, serves it out to you, and hopes that they will get at least the 15% tip even though they have expended the least amount of energy and enthusiasm possible to get the job done. And it turns out the food is mediocre or horrible.
Dildo or no Dildo, this brewpub was 180 degrees of that. I plan to return and actually see more of the town. There are some photos in the show notes BTW.
The last thing to mention is that the drive to Dildo is lovely too. Water sometimes, forest sometimes, rocky land sometimes. Just beautiful. Next time, too, I might stop in and find out what exactly is going on in Spread Eagle.
