Until North America’s massive economic gut popped a button four years ago, fine diners ate in a different league than Haligonians. Living in a reservations-only land of futuristic foods and fantastic ingredients, they spent small fortunes on tasting menus and, compared to the unskilled people who made fast food and the uncouth people who ate […]
Coastal Cafe
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Barista
Gold Winner Zane Kelsall, Two If By Sea Cafe Silver Winner Henry Whitfield, Starbucks Bronze Winner Kate Atkinson, The Coastal Cafe Zane Kelsall can’t imagine a working life without coffee. “I’ve been a barista for 10 years in one capacity or another,” says the 27-year-old co-owner of Two If By Sea Cafe. “Whenever I try […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Breakfast
Gold Winner The Coastal Cafe Silver Winner Cora’s Bronze Winner Ardmore Tea Room If you’ve ever been prowling around for a seat at The Coastal, you know it’s popular. If you were patient enough to wait for one, you’ll know it’s worth it. Owner Mark Giffin is blunt about not promising the most amazing dining […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Brunch
Gold Winner jane’s on the common Silver Winner The Coastal Cafe Bronze Winner Chez Tess jane’s on the common really packs them in for brunch, and the ones that don’t have a seat yet, know it’s worth the wait. jane’s takes typical brunch fare and kicks it up a notch. OK, a couple notches. With […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Breakfast
We like the Elvis—the peanut buttery, banana waffle delight. But’s that’s us. We also like that the Coastal is licensed. We like that it’s open from 8am to 3pm, with breakfast served until 2pm and lunch served from 11am. We like the overlap. We like the all-day breakfast on the weekend. We like the Elvis. […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Brunch bunch
The Coastal Cafe is busy, as always. My two friends and I have dared to go for a weekend brunch, arriving just after 10am hoping that we’ll find a tiny window between market-goers and late-risers. The Coastal is, after all, tiny. You can count the tables on your fingers, and they are so closely situated […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Breakfast
Fighting off a challenge from Cora’s, Coastal maintains its dominance in the Best Breakfast category for another year. There are plenty of reasons for this: Owner and chef Mark Giffin’s amazing food, the friendly energy that suffuses the intimate Robie Street room. Or, we could heap all the credit on The Elvis, that monument to […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Cuppa brew
If the new library has a cafe, wouldn’t it be nice if it could have a bar, too? Wishful thinking, we know, but there are spots in the city where you can buy a coffee for one hand and a beer for the other. We took a sip out of the coffee-holding hand (honest) and […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Cheap Eats – Seven Dishes under Seven Dollars
$6.50 – McCoastal breakfast sandwich Coastal Coffee The description of the McCoastal, Coastal’s breakfast sandwich, comes across as tasty but innocuous: two fried eggs, havarti cheese, maple sausage on an English muffin. But the actual physical presence of this delicacy is something else altogether. It is roughly the size of a small human baby. The […]
Posted inLifestyle
Northern lights
King-in-exile of the local music scene, Sloan was the highest-profile band to come out of the mid-’90s Halifax music explosion. Though they’re longtime Toronto scenesters—it even says as much on their website—Sloan often sang of its hometown experience, as on a few key tracks from the 1999 release Between the Bridges. The bridges in question […]
Posted inLifestyle
My summer: Paolo Colbertaldo, chef
Colbertaldo started cooking early. “My father wouldn’t teach me how to do carpentry because I was left handed, so my mother took me to the bakery.” In Halifax he worked at the Soho, for the US Consul General as well as doing catering for the film industry. He’s spent almost four years at jane’s on […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Breakfast
For the more discerning diner who appreciates effort, thought, and time put into what they are eating…the Coastal welcomes you, announces the website. The more discerning diner will also appreciate The Elvis: a buttermilk waffle sandwich, filled with peanut butter, bananas and bacon, covered in maple syrup. 1st Runner-up Ardmore Tea Room 2nd Runner-up Cora’s