Eating in Newfoundland and Labrador

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Rural Newfoundland is known for its seafood and its working-class roots. Rural restaurants offer an over-abundance of "golden foods" (deep fried) and classically simple fare. Vegetarians will be hard pressed to find anything without meat in it, and vegans might want to pack a lunch. But if you're a fish and chips lover, you'll "fill your boots". Mainly you will see battered cod, "chips dressing and gravy", dressing being a savory-laced stuffing mixture, fish-and-brewis (pronounced "fish and brews", salt cod mashed up with a boiled rock-hard sailor's bread, pork scrunchions, and traditionally drizzled with blackstrap molassas), jigg's dinner (also known as corned beef and cabbage, a traditional one pot meal consisting of salt beef,root vegetables such as carrot, turnip, parsnip and potato,and cabbage. Also thrown in the pot is a muslin bag of yellow split peas, known as pease pudding), burgers and fries, and seafood chowder.

But if you're nice, and lucky, someone might invite you in to their home for a homemade moose stew, rabbit pie, seal flipper, caribou sausage, partridgeberry pie or a cuppa tea with home-baked bread and homemade bakeapple jam. All of these are very interesting and delicious. A big traditional meal is often referred to as "a scoff", and as Newfoundlanders also love to dance and party, an expression for a dance and a feed is a "scoff and scuff", which might be accompanied by accordion, guitar, fiddle, a singalong, and a kitchen party. Kitchen socials are so much a part of Newfoundland culture that even today, many houses are better equipped to receive visitors through the back door (leading to the kitchen) than through the front.

Fish has always been at the heart of Newfoundland culture and even with the collapse of the commercial fisheries, you will find seafood dishes almost everywhere. Cod, halibut, flounder, crab, lobster, squid, mussels, and capelin (a small fish not unlike smelt or grunion) are all well represented. So too are other animals supported by the ocean system - seal, turr (murre) and the like.

A lot of Newfoundlanders habitually drink tea with Evaporated or "canned" milk (a popular brand being Nestle Carnation milk). If you prefer "regular" milk, you usually ask for "tea with fresh milk" and this is, in fact, a good way to spot a Newfie (or at least an Atlantic Province native) in other parts of the country. An easy excuse to have a friendly chat is to invite someone in for a "cuppa tea".

In "town" i.e. St. John's (and the other city centres of Newfoundland) there are many good restaurants for the picking, and several vegetarian and vegan friendly spots.

While in Newfoundland, particularly St. John's, do try to sample some of the candy and sweets from Purity Factories, an island fixture for many years and makers of several traditional-style confections. For many Newfoundlanders, Christmas would not be the same without a bottle of Purity Syrup, and breakfast without some of their partridgeberry and apple jam wouldn't be right. (Note: Partridgeberries in Newfoundland are referred to in many other places as "lingonberries".)