FOOD AND DRINK HITS OF 2015

Posted on 12/21/2015

This year of eating and drinking on the road has been a blast. Here are my top hits of 2015 from the cheeriest trails to the hippest eateries and the hottest new culinary cities.

Cheeriest Trail in Canada

This year Nova Scotia launched the Good Cheer Trail: Canada’s first winery, craft brewery and distillery trail. It encompasses over 35 beverage-specific experiences across the province from Yarmouth to Cape Breton taking in 14 wineries, 12 craft breweries, five distilleries, five brew pubs and two historical (Port Royal and Fortress of Louisbourg) locations. Guysborough, first settled in 1629, has both the Authentic Seacoast Distilling Co. (making rum) and Rare Bird Craft Brewery. Sea Fever Fortress Rum is created by patiently maturing select Caribbean rum in oak barrels protected behind the massive stone walls of the Fortress of Louisbourg. Steinhart Distillery in Arisaig is owned by Thomas Steinhart, whose family has been distilling for generations in the Black Forest of Germany. His gin is the absolute best. www.goodcheertrail.com Best Booze Trail in America

The American Whiskey Trail is a journey into the history of spirits in America, starting with the colonial era, where whiskey played an important economic and social role. The gateway is George Washington’s Distillery at Historic Mount Vernon. The bulk of the distilleries on the trail however are in Tennessee and Kentucky, where the indigenous limestone rock is a natural filter, cleaning the water of iron and impurities which would adversely affect the whiskey. Each distillery has its own unique setting and story to tell visitors. Jack Daniel’s in Lynchburg, the oldest registered distillery in the United States, is a crowd favourite drawing over 200,000 visitors annually. Makers’ Mark in Loretto established in 1805 as a gristmill distillery, is the oldest working distillery on its original site. www.americanwhiskeytrail.com Culinary City of the Year

Istanbul is the only city on earth that straddles two continents. Located on the Bosphorus waterway in northwest Turkey between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, its commercial centre is in Europe while the rest is in Asia. The dining scene is diverse and exciting from döners shaved from skewered marinated steak cooked by a vertical fire of hot coals in the Grand Bazaar to top notch Turkish cuisine (delicious kebab in a yoghurt sauce, crispy beef tripe, bluefish, artichoke in olive oil) at the Park Şamdan restaurant in the luxurious Hotel Les Ottoman. The hip, modern Mikla on the top of the Marmara Pera with sweeping vistas has a lengthy wine list that includes many great Turkish wines by glass and bottle. At Ciya on the Asian side stews are made from ancient rural recipes well recreated by Chef Musa Dagdeviren. www.locallyistanbul.com Most Exotic for Canadian Foodies Remote Fogo Island off the northeast coast of Newfoundland is home to the stunning Fogo Island Inn, an architectural gem, with 29 rooms boasting unbroken floor-to-ceiling views of the North Atlantic Ocean. Chef Murray McDonald and his team create modern interpretations of traditional Newfoundland cooking such as fish and brewis which mixes salt cod, hardtack and fatback into a thick stew. He deconstructs another favourite dish, Jiggs dinner with pease pudding into an artfully arranged plate of baked yellow peas, slivers of salt beef, split pea dumpling and cod. Fresh caught crab and lobster is served with salads of cellared potato, lardon and local egg. Desserts include updated versions of figgy duff (steamed pudding), “pi” (berry pie – there are 16 kinds of edible berries that grow wild on the island), and toasted oak shortcake with local berries and whipped cream. www.fogoislandinn.ca

Coolest Inner City Revival Montreal’s former gritty working class inner city districts are gentrifying: in Griffintown, Little Burgundy and Saint-Henri the restaurant scene has gone from dismal to dazzling. Le Mercuri Montreal at the edge of Griffintown and historic Old Montreal is two restaurants in one location – one that’s industrial/rustic chic with an open wood fuelled fire pit for grilling fish, steak and baby back ribs and another that’s all fine dining tasting menus. At Le Vin Papillon on Notre-Dame Chef Marc-Olivier Frappier serves up rotisserie celery root with bagna cauda, house smoked ham and artichoke/pecorino madeleines. Equally renown dining spots on the same street are its sister restaurants Joe Beef and Liverpool House. Further west down the street EVOO delivers fresh market French cuisine and killer brunches on the weekends. At Grumman ’78 in Saint-Henri, housed former a garage, the food is eclectic and fun: horse tartar, prime steak tacos, sofrito pie, fried chicken, roasted duck chilaquiles and the like. https://www.tourisme-montreal.org/Cuisine/Restaurants Craziest Wine Trails

Arizona with its swath of Sonora desert, iconic saguaro cactus and searing summer heat seems more like a place for cowboy tales rather than wine trails. However with almost 100 wineries, some which make remarkable wines, a trip to the vineyards is a rewarding experience with plenty of Wild West flavour to boot. Willcox, once the cattle capital of America, is a tiny town with a railroad that runs through its centre. Winery tasting rooms now line its main streets. Flying Leap Vineyards is in the former Brown’s Saloon where Warren Earp (Wyatt Earp’s younger brother) was shot and killed. www.arizonawine.org Moonshine Capital of the World The moonshine-fuelled origins of NASCAR, now a multi-billion dollar business, is no secret. Tour the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina and along with more than 50 interactive exhibits, you’ll find a moonshine still on display built by none other than Junior Johnson, one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers. (Long before the sport of stock-car racing existed, the young men of the poor, rural south figured out that bootlegging offered plenty of cash if they were faster drivers than the feds.) North Carolina has over 40 distilleries, many of which are making (now legal) moonshine. In Wilke’s county, aka the moonshine capital of the world, at Copper Barrel Distillery, still master Buck Nance is making flavourful, smooth moonshine with 90% rye (and just 10% corn) just as it was taught for generations in his family – long before it was legalized.