Lobster Dinner in Nova Scotia

What Makes Fine Dining Fine?

We recently celebrated a significant wedding anniversary and treated ourselves to lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant. It was expensive but it was a place that we had long wanted to visit and, if you can’t treat yourselves after 30 years of marriage, when can you? But… while the food was nothing short of divine, we didn’t really enjoy all the other ‘stuff’ that goes with luxury dining.

The wine was eye-wateringly expensive (and not that amazing), we were requested to comply with a dress code, a hefty automatic service charge was added to the bill (we could have asked for it to be removed) and we just felt, well, not fully relaxed. The service felt kinda overly stiff and formal. It was a lovely experience, just not as sublime as we’d hoped it would be.

Our local city has a fine dining restaurant which is much more up our street. Owned by a chef who has worked in amazing kitchens all over the world, the food is exquisite but it is served in a relaxed, informal environment. You can dine in a t-shirt and jeans if you want. Bring your own booze and become your own sommelier. You share a table with the other guests and enjoy lively conversation and usually a laugh. As you say your goodbyes you get a hug from the chef’s wife (this is optional!). And did we mention how exquisite the food is?

Seafood and Eat It!

We’ve recently returned from a road trip to Nova Scotia, one of Canada’s eastern maritime provinces, located on the Atlantic coast. We travelled in a ‘figure 8’ around the peninsular, hugging as much of its beautiful coastline as possible, and with a firm determination to scoff as much seafood as we could. We ate like kings every day. But what we loved most about Nova Scotia’s seafood was how down-to-earth it was. No pretentious plating, no fiddly processes, just good honest food.

Nova Scotia’s Lobster Fishing Industry

The town of Lunenburg is around an hour’s drive from Nova Scotia’s capital city Halifax. It’s a beautiful UNESCO heritage town with colourful buildings lining the gorgeous coastline and harbour.

The Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg is extensive and absolutely fascinating. It’s the perfect place to discover Nova Scotia’s maritime history, particularly in the context of its fishing industry. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable and give talks about lobsters and fisheries throughout the day. We really enjoyed interacting with them.

Canada has very specific rules about catching lobsters. All fishermen need a licence. These are issued by the government and each costs $1.25m CAD. Licences are issued for particular ocean regions, which mean that the fishermen assigned their locations are responsible for looking after their patch. There are very specific rules on what they can catch – undersized lobsters and females with egg-laying potential all have to be returned.

Dories and Lobster Pots

We learned about the history of fishing in the area and the evolution of the lobster pot.

The dories would be launched and the catch hauled in. Interestingly, during both World Wars U-boats would torpedo the schooner although they would rescue the souls on board, destroying the main boat, but would leave the crew in the dories to make their own way back to shore. 

Lobsters are caught in pots which are designed like wooden crates with internal netting. They are weighted down with rocks to keep the pot on the bottom of the seabed and a wooden or plastic buoy marks its location. Lobsters have a keen sense of smell and are attracted by bait – usually bits of fish – and they swim backwards into the pot. Then they become trapped inside the netting.

The older type of pot had a wooden catch which local seals learned how to open by rubbing their bellies on it. Then they could work their way inside to get a tasty snack – free food! They have been observed teaching their young pups to open the pots too. Modern lobster pot designs use a bungee catch which is ‘seal-proof’ but also incorporates a hinge that rusts away after 4 weeks or so, allowing lobsters to escape if the pot ever loses its mooring and drifts away to the sea. 

Sometimes you may encounter a more unusual species in the pot!

The sea is as much a part of the fabric of Nova Scotia as its beautiful landscapes. The bounty from both land and sea are taken very seriously, but the focus is on enjoying the great ingredients.

Lobster? Food For Poor People?

When visiting Musée des Acadiens des Pubnicos in southern Nova Scotia, a museum which showcases traditional Acadian life, we got chatting to the boatbuilder who had been demonstrating how to build a dory over the course of the summer. He told us that when he was a child, lobster was considered to be poor man’s food. At school, the poorer kids who brought lobster sandwiches would try to swap their lunch for the baloney or peanut butter sandwiches that the richer children brought in. 

And perhaps that is why that lobster, considered to be such a luxury food worldwide, is treated with respect but is not elevated to snooty levels here, it’s accessible to all. We ate lobster dinners in family restaurants and diners throughout our trip.

Best Lobster Dinners in Nova Scotia

Lobster Roll – another classic that we had long wanted to taste. Tender chunks of lobster meat in a soft roll with salad and dressing. We loved that different types of restaurant had variations that suited their style of cuisine. So an Italian restaurant in Halifax offered a scrumptious lobster ciabatta.

Even the Subway, a fast food restaurant chain, had lobster subways on offer in Lunenburg. They were very reasonably priced and pretty tasty too.

At the Grand Banker Bar & Grill in Lunenburg  they take their seafood seriously. The Lunenburger is a smashed meat burger patty with bacon, cheese, rocket, aioli, and, of course, lobster in a toasted artisan roll. If that wasn’t enough, this juicy burger is topped with a bacon-wrapped scallop.

Lobster Mac ‘n’ Cheese – a humble comfort food made luxurious with the addition of succulent pieces of lobster. And nothing like the stingy lobster mac ‘n’ cheese we’ve had in the UK where you need a microscope to identify any pieces of lobster that may have somehow been incorporated in the sauce – here you get luscious chunks of lobster tail and claw.

Lobster Poutine – Poutine is Canada’s national dish and we were keen to taste it on our visit. It comprises chips (French fries) smothered in yummy gravy and topped with cheese curds. It sounds kinda wrong to an English girl who likes her chips with vinegar and a Dutch boy who won’t eat chips unless they are accompanied by mayonnaise. But poutine is surprisingly delicious. The key lies with the gravy – the best poutines we ate were served with a thick, rich gravy that was full of flavour. Lobster and traditional gravy doesn’t really work – gravy is really a sauce for meat- so lobster poutine tends to use a creamy sauce.

One of the things we most liked about the restaurants in Nova Scotia was that not only were the prices very reasonable, while the lobster may have been the star of the show, you would often be offered the main attraction as part of a full dinner. In Baddeck, on Cape Breton island, we enjoyed all-you-can-eat chowder, all-you-can-eat mussels, a choice of whole lobster or snow crab, followed by a dessert. All for less than the price that a UK fishmonger would charge just for a single lobster that you’d have to prepare yourself. Baddeck Lobster Suppers offers exactly what its name suggests. (And the all-you-can-eat was absolutely good to its word – if you fancied some mussels or chowder, even after finishing your dessert, you only had to ask for more.)

(We did choose the snow crab here, because we had eaten a lot of lobster by the time we reached Baddeck. And it was sublime.)