Interesting Food in Newfoundland

Every place you visit around the world is known for their own certain food specialties and delicacies. In Halifax where I was born and raised our specialties are garlic fingers, lobster rolls and donairs. Chicago is known for deep dish pizza, Berlin is known for curry wurst, Texas is known for its BBQ, etc. On my recent trip to Newfoundland aside from moose and seal flipper pie I learned about some of the very specific Newfoundland food specialties and delicacies. Here is some of the interesting food in Newfoundland.

The bakeapple. Also known as cloudberries, this fruit can be found across Canada however it is extremely popular in the summer months in Newfoundland. The fruit grows wild on low plants in marshy bogish areas with only one fruit growing per plant. Its a taxing job to go bakeapple picking if you can even find them to begin with. Many Newfoundlanders are very secretive with their bakeapple picking spots and some even go to the extremes of stopping at various places on the way to their favourite spot to throw people off in case they are being followed.

Bakeapples are tart and have little seeds inside similar to a raspberry. Most commonly people make bakeapple  jam with them and bakeapple cheesecake.

Iceberg beer. A popular beer company in Newfoundland is called Quidi Vidi and one of their most sought after beers is their Iceberg beer. During iceberg season Quidi Vidi harvests pieces of iceberg from the many icebergs that drift from Greenland to the province as they melt in the spring and summer. They then melt down the bergy bits and use the ancient water to make Iceberg beer.

Iceberg beer is nice and refreshing especially to have while on an iceberg watching tour. My favourite part however is the fancy blue bottle that it comes in.

Toutons. A touton is literally a pan fried ball of dough. A popular breakfast food in Newfoundland, however people can often find an excuse to eat them any time of day. Served warm, people eat them with butter or molasses and sometimes butter and molasses but then the big question is which do you put on first?

While I was in Newfoundland I also enjoyed a touton sandwich which was two toutons flattened out with ham, cheese and egg thrown in the middle for quite the tasty breakfast sandwich.

**Please note** if you have a heart attack from eating too many toutons it is not my fault…

Candice Walsh cod jigging.

Cod tongue and cheeks.

Captain Dave Boyd cleaning the cod and cutting filets.

Salt cod.

Cod, cod, cod. Newfoundlanders love cod. There use to be so much cod around the waters of Newfoundland that they would slow ships down. Canadian Heritage moment flashback. However sadly the cod fish have now been over fished. These days there is a fishing moratorium on cod fish in Newfoundland but I was lucky enough to be there during one of the only couple of weeks each year that you are actually allowed to go cod fishing. Each boat is allowed to only catch 15 cod per trip. When we went out fishing with Captain Dave Boyd of Prime Berth: Iceberg, Whale Watching and fishing tours we had 15 cod on our boat in roughly 20minutes. Captain Dave has been fishing for 61 years and he knows how and where to fish.

Cod fish filet at the Twine Loft restaurant in Trinity, Newfoundland.

Aside from enjoying some nice cod filets we also dined on cod tongues and cod cheeks which are the Newfoundlanders favourite part of the cod fish. The cod cheeks were quite tasty and the texture reminded me of a scallop… the cod tongue on the other hand was a bit tough and rubbery. There is a good chance that the cod tongues we had were cooked a tad too much but I think I will just leave the tongues for the locals next time…

While there we also dined on Jigs dinner, icebergs, the best soft serve ice cream in Newfoundland and more. To watch my funny experiences with these foods hit play on the video below.

Honorable mentions go out to moose meat and seal flipper pie.

Have you been to Newfoundland? What would you like to try or What is your favourite Newfoundland food?

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