A friend called tonight, en route from Halifax to Cape Breton, wondering if I could recommend a restaurant in Truro where he and his partner could eat supper. A quick Google search turned up TripAdvisor.ca's listing of 79 Truro eateries. That's right: 79 restaurants in Truro, one for every 159 residents. Moreover, 60 of the 79 had user reviews. Those that did not were mostly predictable chain outlets like McDonald's, Tim Horton's, and Subway. In seconds, I was able to call up the dozen or so with the highest user rankings, eliminate those whose cuisine did not interest my friends, click through...

Dan Conlin has kept track of the trick-or-treaters who called at his Duncan St., Halifax, home for the last 17 years. Yesterday's numbers showed a modest uptick, but the overall trend is dramatic and downward: This year's visitors began arriving at 5:35 pm, peaked at 7 p.m., and had vanished into the night by 8:15. Vampires, Princesses, and Ninjas led the parade, at six each. Only one cat made an appearance, likely the one pictured, feline fancier Rosa Eileen Barss Donham, who lives one street over from Dan. Conlin gives his Best Overall Costume Award to an eight-year-old walking box of Ritz Crackers, English in...

Peter Spurway thinks I'm romanticizing Don "Fuzzy" Bacich's legendary crankiness about patrons who wanted to slather his delicious French fries with ketchup: “… and another bastion of quality and tradition falters.” Tradition, yes. Quality? No. Not providing something that many of your customers would like to have has nothing to do with quality. It has everything to do with the perspective of the owner. While I certainly grant the owner the right to fashion their product to their own liking, they have to accept that a percentage of their current and potential customers are not going to like it and it will be seen by...

This afternoon, in a move sure to flabbergast longtime French fry fans in Sydney, a worker at Fuzzy's Fries offered a patron a plastic packet of ketchup. Civilization, as we know it, may be in peril. Former owner Don "Fuzzy" Bacich, who founded the landmark chip wagon at The Esplanade and Townsend St. 40 years ago,* offered a selection of salt, pepper, and vinegar, but had no truck with ketchup. He knew his proud creations owed their universal acclaim to the golden simplicity of their potatoey goodness. A little salt? Certainly. Some vinegar? Sure. But to slather his chips with the garish, tomato-based condiment...

My granddaughter Kate's first birthday provided an opportunity to sample the newest addition to Nova Scotia's craft beer landscape. Big Spruce Beer, brewed on the Yankee Line in Nyanza, is perishable, and must be refrigerated. It is sold only at the brewery, and only in these 1.89 l. (2 US quart) jugs (which ensures its status as a sociable drink). It has a mild, hoppy edge, and compares favourably with the best offerings from Propeller or the Granite Brewery. Well done! UPDATE: Big Spruce will have launch parties at Governors Pub in Sydney on April 12th, and The Wooden Monkey in Dartmouth on...

Yes, the blog posts have been slower this July. On those rare Nova Scotia weeks, when the sun blasts down and the temperature tops 25° for days on end, there are better things to do in than sit at a keyboard and grouse about the state of the world. In the backlog of posts I mean to get to: big developments in the Dexter Government's demolition of Talbot House (including five pending Contrarian FOIPOP requests looking for the motives behind this hatchet job); feedback from defenders of Neal Livingston and admirers of Cabot Links; and he next instalment of the Contrarian Election...

Dávur í Dali, a social sciences student at the University of the Faroe Islands, offers this friendly correction to our post about how Paul Watson's TV attack on the Faroese pilot whale hunt backfired: I am writing to you to correct a small misunderstanding in one of your posts on the Faroe Islands pilot whale hunt. Your post implies that we actively hunt whales, as someone would hunt deer or similar game. This is not correct. The whale hunts are not prepared or planned events. They happen when we sight a pod of whales swimming through our fjords or in general vicinity...

The master and his pupil picked up some Sushi at Sobey's, and sat in the park to eat it. "Why does supermarket sushi always come with this green spiky sheet?" the pupil asked. "Baran is the leaf of the aspidistra plant," replied the master. "It separates the eel from the avocado, and exudes phytoncides to preserve freshness." "But it's plastic," protested the student. "Yes," said the master. "Just as your iPod Nano is no longer vinyl."...

Oceans2012, a coalition lobbying to ensure that the 2012 reform of the European Union Common Fisheries Policy "stops overfishing, ends destructive fishing practices and delivers fair and equitable use of healthy fish stocks," has produced a slick video to back up its campaign: [video link] Some factoids: Typically, shrimp trawlers throw 80 to 90 percent of the marine creatures caught back overboard. This means that for one kilo of shrimp, up to nine kilos of other marine wildlife is caught and wasted...