Travel Just as popular as Tourism PEI’s Anne itinerary is its five-day culinary route. We began our mouth-watering journey with delectable steamed lobster with drawn butter at Lobster on the Wharf in Charlottetown. Around the island, we saw signs advertising community and festival lobster suppers. In New Glasgow, famous for its lobster suppers since 1958, we dined at red gingham-covered tables. The feast began with homemade rolls, seafood chowder or soup, steamed mussels and salads. Our steaming hot lobsters arrived with dishes of melted butter. We loosened our belts for dessert – a choice of freshly baked pies. Many P.E.I. chefs are graduates of Holland College’s Culinary Institute of Canada in Charlottetown. They elevate the tasty red crustaceans to new levels with creations such as the lip-smacking lobster salad on potato rosemary bread with melted brie and maple salad that we enjoyed for lunch one day. The Dunes Studio Gallery & Café in Brackley Beach serves scrumptious lunches and dinners, such as lobster sandwiches with lemon herb mayonnaise and alfalfa sprouts on baguettes with mesclun salad. Large windows overlook pools and gardens decorated with sculptures. Shoppers and art lovers can admire and buy dazzling Balinese, Thai and Indonesian carvings, paintings and jewellery collected by owner Peter Jansons and his associate Joel Mills. In the studio, we watched Peter create beautiful pottery that’s used in the café and sold in the galleries. Some of our best meals were in P.E.I.’s picturesque inns. At Dalvay-by-the-Sea Hotel, we dined on butter-poached lobster with spring asparagus velouté, scented with white truffles, lemon crème fraiche and asparagus sprouts. Built in 1895, the mansion is a National Historic Site of Canada at the eastern end of Prince Edward Island National Park. Celebrity chef, cookbook author and Food Network star Michael Smith operates a mind-boggling FireWorks Feast at The Inn at Bay Fortune, where his wife Chastity is the innkeeper. Created from his farm’s organic produce and locally sourcedmeat and seafood roasted on a 7.5-metre, firefuelled smoker/rotisserie/grill/ oven, the multi-course meal is an awesome experience. The Inn at St. Peters’ restaurant overlooks pretty gardens and St. Peters Bay, where fishermen collect blue mussels. Our butter-poached P.E.I. lobsters with sun-dried tomato, roasted garlic polenta, leek sauté and lobster roe sabayon were exquisite. Bounty of the Sea Left – Steamed lobster at Lobster on the Wharf, Charlottetown Right – Chef Michael Smith, The Inn at Bay Fortune Below– Sculpture-decorated gardens at The Dunes Studio Gallery & Café, Brackley Beach Bottom left – The Inn at St. Peters by St. Peters Bay CSANews | SPRING 2018 | 19
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