Seventeen years ago, amateur baker-turned-entrepreneur Tara MacDonald picked up a new hobby when she moved from Ottawa to Dartmouth: Baking croissants. It wasn’t always a fun hobby. “Temperamental little buggers” is how she referred to her rich and flaky viennoiseries, which she would labour over in her home kitchen, tinkering with butter, salt and flour. Still, she kept at it. Every Saturday, MacDonald would wake at 3:00 in the morning to roll and bake 100 plain, chocolate and ham-and-swiss croissants, which she would then sell at the Alderney Landing Farmers’ Market. She called her bakery Two If By Sea, a nod to the nineties rom-com filmed in Nova Scotia. Even before those croissants would turn Ochterloney Street into a foodie destination, garnering profiles in Chatelaine and turning “TIBS” into a Halifax shorthand, they were a hit with Haligonians: MacDonald’s baked goods “invariably” sold out at the farmers’ market before 10:30am, The Coast wrote in 2009. Nearly two decades later, both a lot and little have changed. Those same croissants are as popular as ever—and they’re a big reason why in 2025, Two If By Sea is joining The Coast’s reader-selected Best of Halifax Hall of Fame.
“The new Dartmouth”
It might be hard to imagine, given the ritual crowd of Dartmouthians who filter into—and fill—the Ochterloney Street cafe most mornings, but the cafe’s home on “the Darkside” wasn’t always seen as a surefire success. According to lore, one local reporter made a bet with MacDonald and her co-founder, Zane Kelsall, in the cafe’s first months that they would be out of business by the end of January. Instead, they thrived. Before The Canteen, Battery Park Beer Bar, Dear Friend, Oxalis, Doraku and Yeah Yeahs Pizza turned downtown Dartmouth into an epicurean Eden, TIBS paved the way for “the new Dartmouth,” drawing pastry-hungry diners across the harbour on the Alderney Ferry.
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Pretty much everything TIBS touches turns to gold: Haligonians voted Two If By Sea the city’s Best Cafe in The Coast’s Best of Halifax Awards 13 times in 15 years. The cafe has claimed gold in the category every year except for 2009—when TIBS was founded—and 2015—when Java Blend briefly claimed the top spot. (TIBS won silver.) Even The Canteen and Yeah Yeahs, perennial BOH heavy-hitters in their own right, got their start above TIBS: Chef Renée Lavallée opened her salad-and-sandwich shop above the cafe in 2014, growing The Canteen into a Portland Street restaurant three years later; Yeah Yeahs’ Josh Nordin, Dean Petty and Sal Mosca took over the space when Lavallée left and have been there ever since.
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The cafe hasn’t been entirely without scandal. TIBS severed its ties with co-founder Kelsall in 2018 amid numerous staff allegations of sexual misconduct. He hasn’t been allowed on the property since. (“We felt there needed to be a separation created in order for these businesses to remain respected by the people we work with and to have our staff be supported,” said Petty, who co-owned Anchored Coffee with Kelsall.) Petty and MacDonald bought Kelsall out of his shares in the cafe and coffee roaster. Both Petty and MacDonald spoke transparently with The Coast at the time, saying that they asked Kelsall “to step down” after hearing complaints about him from staff. They told The Coast that they believed their employees’ accounts. (Kelsall has not been charged with any offenses, and allegations against him have not been tested in court.) The cafe has not been linked to any improprieties since.
New owners, new era
These days, Yeah Yeahs’ Petty and Nordin are at the helm of Two If By Sea. MacDonald handed the reins over to the two in 2019, “retiring” from the bakery she co-founded to open a boutique inn in Lunenburg.
“I could have never predicted the blessings, generosity and love this café and its patrons have bestowed on my family,” she wrote in a 2019 Facebook post. “For this, I am forever grateful.”
In other circumstances, MacDonald’s departure might have spelled the end for TIBS, given how intertwined it was with her croissant creations. Instead, those pastries she perfected are keeping the Ochterloney Street cafe busier than ever: Nordin estimates that most days, TIBS will serve a person every minute “for four to five hours.” He calls the cafe’s team of six bakers “the engine that keeps it all moving” and credits TIBS’s baristas with keeping things moving during the busiest hours of the day.
The original croissants are still a hit—though there are new weekly additions, too, ranging from colourful key lime to savoury spanikopita. The other good news? They don’t sell out like they used to—and that’s by design, Nordin says. While TIBS used to run out of the flaky treats before noon—a reputation that became a bit long in the tooth—Nordin pushed to keep the pastries rolling all afternoon.
“I’m just like, ‘Well, fuck that.’ We’re there for the people,” he tells The Coast. “I want to be selling as many possible pastries as we can, but also, I want to be able to satisfy people whether it’s 8am or if it’s 2:30pm.”
TIBS’s pain au chocolat—a behemoth of a chocolate-filled pastry that has defied shrinkflation—is a regular bestseller, but Nordin says the prosciutto provolone is his personal favourite. He chalks its success up to the core ingredients, which the cafe doesn’t skimp on.
“It’s ham and cheese inside of a buttered croissant: It’s delicious,” Nordin tells The Coast. “The provolone gets a bit melty, and then, like, especially the edges, where the prosciutto is kind of peeking out of the edge of the croissant, gets crispy in the oven. And it’s just like, so savoury.”
This article appears in Feb 1-28, 2025.