Welcome to Foodie Paradise: Culinary Weekends at Fox Harb’r

Let’s say you want to eat at one of the best restaurants in Canada. But let’s also say you don’t want to eat off the regular menu at said best restaurant, you want a special tasting menu. And you want to watch it get made. And ask the chefs questions while they’re making the special tasting menu. Oh, and also, you want a specialized culinary seminar so you can learn even more about food and really boost your foodie cred. Or maybe you want two of those seminars. Three of them? Why not. But where, oh where, can you get all this? We’re glad you asked. Why, at our very exclusive, entirely bespoke, blink-and-you’ll-miss-out culinary weekends, of course.

What’s a Culinary Weekend?

Short answer: a weekend full of amazing meals cooked by one of Canada’s stand-out chefs along with special experiences where guests get to learn about wines, spirits, and food. For a longer answer, we’ll tell you our upcoming fall culinary weekend and give you a little taste of what happened at our last one.

Fall Culinary Weekend 2024

Chef Alex Chen is a pretty big deal. His Vancouver restaurant, Boulevard Kitchen & Oyster Bar, is number 22 on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants, and it’s on the Michelin recommended list. A mix of classic French and modern Asian food, Boulevard has been wowing guests for ten years. Chen also hosts TableOne, a monthly dinner series built around seasonal, locally sourced ingredients. And on November 1–3, Chen is bringing the TableOne experience to Fox Harb’r.

On both Friday and Saturday night, guests will experience tasting menus that bring the skill and ethos of TableOne to Nova Scotia. At the Saturday night dinner, there will be live demonstrations, tableside presentations, and a talk about culinary philosophy with Chen. Of course, not all meals can be opulent tasting menus—but guests are still in for a treat. Saturday breakfast will feature lobster eggs benedict, and during lunch, guests will enjoy the First Annual Chowder Cup, an event we’re co-presenting with Taste of Nova Scotia where six apprentice chefs will compete for the Best Chowder title (as voted by our guests). And just in case you miss out, they’ll post the winning recipe online. We bet it’ll be as good as ours.

What will culinary weekend guests do when not eating a plethora of incredible food? Dave Pieroway of Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation will give us a seminar on the joys of Irish whiskey, wine expert Mark DeWolf will walk us through the wonderful world of red wine, and we’re going to hear all about the terroir of growing good oysters—which is something we’re passionate about here on the Northumberland Strait, home of truly excellent oysters. Finally, guests can enjoy a cooking demonstration with Alex Chen where he’ll explain how to prepare geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck), which is a unique clam native to the Pacific. Oh, and there will tasting components to all these events. In case our guests aren’t tasting enough delicious things already.

Was the Last Culinary Weekend So Epic?

Yes, yes it was.

In May, Fox Harb’r hosted Chef Darren MacLean, and we got a real snapshot of what it takes to be one of Canada’s most acclaimed chefs. He has three restaurants in Calgary: Nupo, Eight, and Shokunin. We’ll just give you the highlights—so you have an idea.

Without mentioning every single thing we ate, menu highlights included local wild scallops with yuzu kosho nuoc mam, chilled carrots in madras curry, barbecue lobster with sweet corn agnolotti, and 30-day dry-aged Japanese wagyu with kinome and pickled ramp relish. Chef MacLean also served Okami Kasu, a Japanese-style beer made with Canadian ingredients and the first beer in the world to use sake kasu as an ingredient.

When we weren’t eating everything, we learned about local rum from Taste of Nova Scotia, got a truly eye-opening experience forging for local edible foodstuffs from Chef Sean of Gourmet by Nature, and experienced local, can’t-get-it-anywhere-else cheeses from Catherine Keeler of Annapolis Fine Cheese. The experience taught us so much about food, ingredients, and creativity. We learned a lot and we’re sure our guests did too.

So, About the Fall Culinary Weekend . . .

November 1–3. Register right away, space is limited. And start dreaming of those oysters.