When Fran Shirazi visits a cafe, she’s both a customer and salesperson. “Everywhere I go, every corner store or coffee shop, I ask them if they want to carry our product,” she says. Shirazi moved to Halifax from Tehran in 1994. Ten years later, she bought Staff of Life Health Foods & Bakery. At the […]
Food
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There’s no place like Silong
Silong Pinoy Tambayan 16 Titus Street “Pop-pop rolls” are my earliest memory of Filipino food. When I was young, my Nanny and Pop-pop would visit my parents house from Mississauga for a couple weeks every Christmas. They would spend their days watching mass on television, shuffling around the main floor and baking. My siblings and […]
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Liu’s Formosa Gift & Tea House is closing
Liu’s Formosa Gift & Tea House 278 Wyse Road For years now, tucked in at the top of a pile of toys and trinkets, surrounded by colourful hanging lanterns, a couple of maneki-neko figurines—lucky cats—have welcomed you into Liu’s Formosa Gift & Tea House, their seesawing paws beckoning you inside with serene waves of “Hello!” […]
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Making bars safer in Halifax
International Women’s Day Craft Fair and Panel Discussion Thursday March 8, 5-9pm Timber Lounge, 2712 Agricola Street $2/PWYC Avalon Sexual Assault Centre and Ladies Beer League are teaming up to make bars safer for women. “Alcohol is the most commonly used substance to facilitate sexual assault,” says Dee Dooley, regional capacity co-ordinator at Avalon. “Bar […]
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Many hands make light work at the Mobile Food Market
“I found I was getting sick quite often, and I just wasn’t eating any fruits or vegetables. It was just rice and protein, that’s really all I was eating.” That’s how Adam Savory was eating before Halifax’s Mobile Food Market came to Spryfield. These days, he gets his veggies in by ordering one of the market’s […]
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Where I work: Fox Hill Market & Deli
Fox Hill Market & Deli 2760 Robie Street Before owning El Gallo Mexican Cuisine, Ivonne Rand was a tailor at Winchester’s (now Chester & Felicity) Bridal. She moved to Halifax in 1998, and her daughter Carolina Quintana-Kohut followed her a year later. Tucked safely in her luggage were 12 pounds of corn tortillas—a Mexican staple […]
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Nothing but good vibes
“A s a young boy people called me Mr. Food,” says Dwayne Green confidently, discussing his role as chef and owner of the newly-opened restaurant, Jamaica Vibes. “By the time I was seven I was making Sunday dinner for the family, and I don’t mean simple things, but complicated dishes like lights”—pork, goat or sheep […]
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What’s cooler than being cool? Icewine.
In the middle of winter, it’s tempting to do everything possible to escape the cold. What would it look like, though, to embrace winter’s icy grip? To find warmth and community in the deep freeze? It might look something like the Nova Scotia Icewine Festival, an annual event in the Annapolis Valley that showcases for […]
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Jamaican jerk 101
Nothing irks Jamaicans more than the miscategorization of jerk. (Well, that and people randomly shouting “irie man” as a primary greeting and asking “Have you seen Cool Runnings?”) Jerk, as a stand-alone term, is not a seasoning blend but rather the process by which meat, poultry, fish, seafood and vegetables are seasoned and cooked—it’s a […]
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Find your Caribbean Bliss
Caribbean Bliss 3619 Novalea Drive Elias Fathallah hates cooking. “But I love to clean,” he says with a laugh. Luckily Caribbean Bliss has Rickey Smith, a chef who has been in the kitchen since before Fathallah bought the business in September of last year. Only a few minutes later he’s putting rice on the stove […]
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SHOP THIS: Hill’s Jamaican Jerk Sauce
When Paul Hill moved to Halifax in 1994, he missed Montego Bay’s food more than its sunshine. With the aromas of jerk chicken and pork a recent memory, he started experimenting with his own sauce recipe, playing with ingredients on a quest to strike the right balance. “Two years ago I went back to Jamaica […]
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Three dishes to try from Jamaica Lee Style
Jamaica Lee Style various locations streetfoodapp.com/halifax Ludlow Lee learned everything he knows about cooking from watching his mother work her magic in the kitchen. “Every time she cooked something I would like, I would try it and then I would go try and make it,” says the co-owner of Jamaica Lee Style. But he’s come […]