With a flight’s worth of double-digit temperature days on the horizon, Halifax is finally turning a corner from “holy frig it’s cold” to “ah, yes, that’s what it feels like when the sun hits your face.” (Answer: It feels damn good.) And with the city warming up and May knocking at the door, it’s about time for the annual spring turnover. No, not all the flowers about to bloom—although that’s nice, too. This time of the year means another thing: Patio season.
Some patios have already bravely begun opening for the year—here’s looking at you, Oxford Taproom and The Brewery by Quinn’s—while other Halifax favourites are juuuust about ready to re-open. Here’s what we know right now about when Halifax’s beer gardens are back for 2024, starting with the earliest arrivals.
Good Robot Commons
Good Robot’s beer garden made an immediate splash with its arrival to North Park Street in 2023. Right across from the Halifax Common, it offered Dee Dee’s ice cream and tasty nachos from Asado in one of the best people-watching spots in town. (Plus, a steady supply of Good Robot’s just-the-right-spicy Diablo lager.) The Coast’s readers voted it the second-best beer garden in Halifax in its first season, and it’s poised to make a run for the top spot.
The Good Robot folks have teased that it’s set to re-open “very soon,” and while there’s no official date as of publication, the beer garden’s website lists it as closed from Nov. 1 until Apr. 30. Could that mean a May 1 opening?
Stillwell Beergarden
The reigning champion of The Coast’s reader-selected Best of Halifax awards, Stillwell’s Spring Garden Road craft beer garden has been on a prime Golden State Warriors-esque run since it burst onto the scene in 2016. At the time, Stillwell had been licking its wounds after losing out on the tender for the Halifax waterfront—where it had operated a hugely successful beer garden in 2015—and having plans for a beer garden at the Common fall through due to neighbourhood noise concerns. (Ironically, in the same spot that Good Robot’s beer garden has since become a hit.)
Enter Spring Garden Road and an empty plot between Eastlink and Bookmark.
“Spring Garden Road is an interesting sell,” co-owner Chris Reynolds told The Coast in 2016. “I like the vibe of that corner. The park is there, it’s just a cool part of the city. It's a very different vibe from the waterfront … The beer garden project for me is really fun because it can become what the space needs it to be."
Back then, Reynolds figured Stillwell would call Spring Garden and South Park home for two summers, possibly three. (“I don’t want to look for another beer garden ever again,” he joked.) This will be its ninth year now (one bizarro COVID summer included). The Stillwell folks have rolled out hot dogs and sausage plates, halloumi sandwiches, Bavarian pretzels and soft-serve ice cream from Dairy Bar. Plus, all the tap options you’d expect from a Stillwell venture.
The Stillwell team has been mum on an exact re-opening date, but says it will be mid-May. Not far off, at all.
The Beer Garden
Where better to enjoy a sunny day in Halifax than the waterfront? The Beer Garden (also called The BG) has been packing crowds in on summer afternoons since the Legendary Hospitality group—which owns Stubborn Goat, Durty Nelly’s, Salt Yard Social, Antojo and Sketti & Ball—won the tender for the waterfront space in 2016.
Since then, The BG has turned itself into a fall and winter destination as well as a summer one, running Sip & Shop and live concerts during the December Evergreen Festival and Oktoberfest parties in late September. The tap list offers a range of Halifax favourites, from 2 Crows to Burnside to Lake City, with the usual domestic draughts on offer as well. And a pretty full menu of food options, too—from lobster rolls to shrimp tacos to seafood chowder.
The BG’s team plans to re-open mid-May as well.
