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Eastern comfort
Chow down on traditional and ‘nouvelle Newfoundland’ cuisine in the fish houses and fine dining rooms of St. John’s
Story and photography by Wanita Bates
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THE CLOSEST I GOT to the sea while
growing up in Thompson, Man., was when
my mother would open a can of Clover
Leaf salmon. She’d make a cream sauce for
the tinned fish and serve it on toast. Some
people put shells to their ears to hear the
ocean. The whirling of Mom’s can opener
transported me there.
I had never tasted fresh saltwater
fish until visiting St. John’s in the
early 1990s. I remember my first
bite. It was at Ches’s, a popular
tourist landmark where the smell of
deep-fried fat hits you before the door
even opens. Workers scurried behind
the counter like bees on speed and
my plate arrived quickly: a piece of
golden-brown battered, deep-fried
cod bigger than my hand and a
mountain of home-cut fries. The
white, flaky fish melted in my mouth
and stole my heart.
In 1497, when Giovanni Caboto reached
Canada’s Grand Banks, he reported cod
“so thick you could walk across their
backs.” That voyage opened up the Atlantic
fishery, which brought people from
throughout coastal Europe to what would
become Newfoundland. About 400 years
later, fish and chips, a British workingclass
staple, arrived. And exactly 500 years
after Caboto spotted land, I moved to
St. John’s — for the warm-hearted people
and their unique culture, mostly, but the
fish was a delicious bonus.
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