Restaurants, Food Stores, and Food Trucks

—SHOW NOTES—

◘ Foods you can get and not get in Newfoundland ◘

—Source—

◘ Statistics Canada, “Population by Census Subdivision (CSD), Newfoundland and Labrador, 2021 Census,” February 9, 2022, https://www.stats.gov.nl.ca/Statistics/Topics/census2021/PDF/Pop_CSD_Alphabetical_2021.pdf. ◘

Transcript

Newfoundland has one medium-sized city (St. John’s, the capital), two small cities (Mount Pearl and Corner Brook), several small towns, and hundreds of very small communities. The three cities make up about 30% of the entire population of the province. The small towns make up another 25% or so. And the very small communities make up the remaining 45%. These are rough numbers from Statistics Canada data. The total population of Newfoundland is about 510,000 and the total number of communities of all kinds is about 600.

All this to say that there are a lot of places in Newfoundland where you can get a wide variety of food at restaurants, food stores, food trucks, and other kinds of establishments as well. A lot of what I will talk about in this episode will necessarily be based on my own experience, and of course I have not visited every community in the province, and have not eaten at every place that serves food at the communities I have been in.

But to give an idea of what you can get served to you in Newfoundland, let me start with St. John’s, where I’ve lived now for two years as of early next month, because it has the biggest number and variety of eating spots. Probably not surprisingly, it’s easy to find traditional Newfoundland meals and food items of all kinds. Restaurants and stores often sell what are two staple meals in Newfoundland, the cooked dinner and the cold plate. (For the record, the contents of both these dishes varies from place to place, but I’ll risk it and say that a cooked dinner is a hot meal with turkey or beef, salt beef, potato, carrot, turnip, cabbage, split peas pudding, dressing/stuffing, and of course you can’t have it without gravy. I’m doing a full episode on the cold plate in a couple of weeks, but just think of it for now as the leftovers from the cooked dinner: cold potato salads, macaroni salad, tomato and lettuce, turkey or beef and a rolled-up slice of ham, and a bun/roll.)

You can get the cooked dinner in restaurants, but some food stores also serve it for pickup on Sundays and you have to reserve yours to get one. You can find cold plates of various kinds in grocery stores. Often they come in a couple of sizes and so you get, say, more meat and more kinds of potato salad if you pay more.

Fish ’n’ chips, often with freshly caught cod, is available all over the city and in small communities too, and in the latter where the fish might have been caught that day just a couple of hundred metres from where you are eating it.

Poutine is popular and a Newfoundland variety of it has the required fries, cheese curds, and gravy, but also with stuffing or dressing as well. And just in passing … some places use mozzarella cheese instead of cheese curds, which the United Nations has formally designated as a crime against humanity.

There are some good ethnic restaurants as well, and even some really great ones. Here in St. John’s I’ve had great Filipino and Afghan, as well as excellent Persian food. I’ve had my favourite ethnic food, Indian, at a couple of places in town, but I have to say I haven’t been that impressed. I haven’t tried all the restaurants yet, but the ones I have, have been pretty good but not great at all. The one authentic cuisine I have not yet even found here is Chinese. There are lots of “Canadian Chinese” restaurants, where you can get the chicken balls with the nuclear red sauce (which I like too), but the only really good Chinese restaurant I’ve found is vegetarian only. I’ve also tried the pho soup at a Vietnamese place just down the road from me, and it was pretty good, but again not great.

Corner Brook is the city where there is a simply exceptional Vietnamese restaurant, one of the best I have ever been to. When I lived in Ottawa before I moved to St. John’s I went to over 30 of the city’s Vietnamese restaurants, generally to try the pho. The Vietnamese restaurant in Corner Brook would be in the top 5 among all those Ottawa restaurants.

The only town in Newfoundland where I know the food trucks at all is here in St. John’s. There are lots of them, and alas the problem is that that I haven’t tried many of them yet. Tune in for an episode next year! The one thing I noticed though is that very few of them serve what we affectionately refer to as “street meat,” that is, large sausage dogs, and with a variety of sausages (not just wieners). After a long search I found only one in St. John’s this past summer, and the sausages were small and not that well cooked. Disappointing. My quest will continue. I also know that there are food trucks that serve specialty stuff, like tacos, but, again, I’m sorry to say I haven’t tried them yet.

Newfoundland has a practically uncountable number of Tim Hortons locations, but it also has lots of cafes that serve a wider variety of coffees and food as well, especially scones and other sweet stuff. Again, St. John’s and Corner Brook are the leaders here, but I’ve also been to cafes in very small communities that are just exceptional. Great coffee, great tea, great treats.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned any names of the eateries. For those who are interested, I will publish a shorter episode of the podcast in the next couple of days where I do list the names, and also give their details in the show notes.