Restaurants, Food Stores, and Food Trucks: Names and Locations

—SHOW NOTES—

◘ Foods you can get and not get in Newfoundland: names and locations ◘

Transcript

Hi, I’m Wayne Jones. Welcome to Newfoundland Boy, a podcast about the Canadian province of Newfoundland. This is episode 49: Restaurants, Food Stores, and Food Trucks: Names and Locations.

This episode of the podcast is a followup and complement to episode 48, where I talked about the topic in general but did not give specifics about individual restaurants and the like.

So, here we go.

The restaurants where you can get a traditional cooked dinner, and sit down and eat it in-house, are numerous. The food store I was thinking of when I mentioned that some stores also allow you to reserve a cooked dinner for pickup on Sunday is Spice-X in St. John’s.

The place in St. John’s best known for its fish ’n’ chips is Ches’s, but some of us think that Keith’s Diner in the Goulds does it better. The Squid Jigger in Ferryland also has excellent fish ’n’ chips, with a light batter, and with the fish often caught the same day.

There are some good ethnic restaurants as well, and even some really great ones. In St. John’s, RJ Pinoy Yum is a great Filipino restaurant in a huge space and with an equally huge menu. And very friendly servers. The Afghan restaurant I mentioned is called, well, Afghan Restaurant, a tiny place tucked away on Duckworth Street. The Persian restaurant is just the opposite: huge and especially nicely decorated. The food is great. It’s called the Persepolis.

There are a few Indian restaurants in St. John’s, and I’ve tried a few, but haven’t been blown away by any of them. I mean that in two senses: I also like very spicy food and thought that I was going to get it at the well-known India Gate when I ordered vindaloo, was given the standard warning by the server that it is very hot, asked them to make it as hot as possible, and though they promised “Indian hot” what they served was disappointingly mild.

The only really good, authentic Chinese restaurant I’ve found is vegetarian only. It’s called the Peaceful Loft. I’ve also tried the pho soup at a Vietnamese place called Pho FM in St. John’s, just down the road from me, and it was pretty good, but again not great. Maybe there’s a place with AM in the city that’s better? Corner Brook is the city where there is a simply exceptional Vietnamese restaurant, one of the best I have ever been to. It’s called Pho Vietnam and I try to get there every time I visit Corner Brook. 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 Pho Vietnam in Corner Brook would be in the top 5 among all those Ottawa restaurants.

Some of the other restaurants not to be missed are the Dildo Brewing Co. in Dildo, where I remember particularly the tower of great onion rings. The location is also special. After a beer and a few onion rings, you can head down to the attached dock, sit in a deck chair, and admire the water and the big DILDO sign that Jimmy Kimmel arranged to install there.

The only town in Newfoundland where I know at least a few of the food trucks at all is here in St. John’s. But 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. It’s called Picc-a-Dilly Dogs. There is also a food truck at the Joey Smallwood lookout point near Gambo. Very disappointing too. My quest will continue.

Apart from Tims, some of the best cafes I’ve been in are the Sugar & Dice in Corner Brook, which is just outstanding (the “Dice” part refers to the fact that they have board games there too). Great soup, great scones and other treats. There’s another excellent place on the other side of the island: the Irish Loop Coffee House in Witless Bay. Very small, but with home-prepared meals and baked goods. And super-friendly service. You can also get a table that looks right out on the bay.

As for St. John’s, this is very subjective, but my favourite cafes are the Postmaster’s Bakery, the Battery Café, Coffee Matters, Rocket Bakery, and Toslow.

And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. If you missed some of the names, check the transcript for the right spellings. And if you enjoy the show, please give me a like on Apple or Spotify. And join me again next Saturday.