Halifax's sleek Queen's Marque development woos visitors

Vancouver Sun

3 days ago

With the Atlantic Ocean at high tide behind him, Fred Dardenne is down on his hands and knees so that we don't have to be.
A half-hour's drive southwest of Halifax, the veteran forager is rooting for tasty wild food, kneeling on the grassy fields of Prospect Bay and amid the rocky crevices beside the rolling waves.
Those of us taking part in
Dardenne's foraging tour
are blind to all the deliciousness growing around us. But Dardenne, a Belgian-born lover of the land who moved to Nova Scotia 18 years ago and immediately started his business, sees all. His eagle eyes spot sheep sorrel and wild cranberries, caribou moss, sea asparagus and sea truffle. Soon, he's handing out samples that are as tasty as they are novel.
'It's a little garden,' Dardenne says, of the patch of land that he knows so well, close to where he lives.
That mid-May outing with Dardenne was one of several tasty highlights during our visit to Halifax. Our trip focused on the new and transformative
Queen's Marque
District, a $200-million development along the Halifax waterfront that's been opening in phases since late 2021. The complex is flush with high-end accommodation, appealing restaurants, tempting shops and attractive public spaces that nod to Haligonian culture and history.
At Queen's Marque, they know Dardenne too. His just-found wares bolster dishes at several of its restaurants and above all at Mystic, a fine-dining destination that opened in the fall of 2024 but has already been celebrated as the 71st best restaurant in the country, according to the latest Canada's 100 Best Restaurants list.
Before this spring, it had been more than a dozen years since I'd visited Halifax on a family vacation. Returning this year, I didn't recognize the striking waterfront that Queen's Marque had helped revitalize, or the crowded boardwalk adjacent to the district that is lined with more restaurants, bars, craft shops, bike rental shops, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and more.
Between the boardwalk and Queen's Marque, Halifax has a new hub for tourism, in addition to its long-standing attractions, museums and festivals. Nova Scotia's capital should appeal to vacationing Canadians seeking to visit more of their own country, especially with direct flights that connect Halifax to Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, in addition to other Canadian Maritime cities.
My three days in Halifax were focused on the culinary appeal of Queen's Marque, the luxurious accommodations at
Muir
, the district's luxurious boutique hotel that opened in December 2021, and the pleasures of two day trips including the outing with Dardenne.
Muir, a 109-room property whose name means 'sea' in Gaelic, is at once sleek and dramatically modern, yet also tied to the heritage and history of both Halifax and Nova Scotia. Built primarily of Nova Scotia sandstone and featuring Muntz metal, an alloy of zinc and copper that's used in building ships, Muir lives up to its tagline, 'Born of this Place.'
I was comfortable and even pampered in a spacious, harbour-facing room decorated with landscape paintings, photographs and ceramics by Nova Scotia artists. Everything about the room's ambience felt artful and local, down to a cosy wool throw blanket on the king-sized bed displaying an original Muir tartan. The room's visual centrepiece was a striking, well-stocked bar in a lighted, porthole-shaped display case. But the granite and marble bathroom with twin sinks, a heated floor and a rain shower vied for attention too.
Guests at Muir wanting to stay active can rent kayaks or paddleboards or make use of a large fitness centre with state-of-the-art equipment and a swimming pool. The centre and pool are part of Muir's Windward Wellness spa, which also includes an infrared sauna, a eucalyptus steam room and a halotherapy salt room.
I confess that we professional food lovers spent less time exercising and more time at the restaurants and bars of Queen's Marque.
For fine-dining fans, the district's must-visit highlight is Mystic, where the main draw is an evening's culinary journey through a $165 multi-course tasting menu filled with exquisite, delicious creations.
Dishes such as smoked egg yolk with wild sea flora, sea mustard and Acadian caviar, and lobster ravioli with Nova Scotia saffron, trumpet mushrooms and seaweed brioche were standouts. I've had significantly more expensive meals in other Canadian and American cities that fell short of what Mystic offered in terms of taste, sophistication and surprises.
Other Queen's Marque restaurants, all classy and eye-catchingly appointed, offered dining options at different price points as well as a range of cuisines and concepts.
Muir's ground-floor restaurant Drift, which is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, modernized Atlantic Canadian cuisine with dishes such as Hodge Podge (butter-braised cod filet, salt cod croquette, green beans, new potatoes, carrots, buttered leeks), sunflower-crusted salmon filet with land and sea asparagus fregola and Nova Scotia lamb shoulder with Lunenburg lamb sausage.
Nearby, Daryâ, which translates to 'sea' or 'ocean' in Persian, specializes in elevated Eastern Mediterranean fare, reflecting influences from multiple countries in that region.
Mezzes and dips hit the spot here but still left room for appetizers such as tuna carpaccio with charred eggplant and beef tartare with merguez spices, as well as mains like charred octopus with black garlic harissa and lamb tagine.
The most popular restaurant at Queen's Marque is Salt + Ash Beach House, a relaxed spot that can boast about its live-fire cooking while turning out approachable fare including sandwiches, a variety of pizzas, jerk cod and clams and haddock tacos.
The only lobster roll that I managed to snag while I was in Halifax was served at Sal + Ash, and that iconic sandwich, along with some impeccably crisp fries, did not disappoint.
We also enjoyed the intimate setting, small plates and wines by the glass at Peacock Wine Bar. Some of those glasses, to our pleasant surprise, were sparkling wines and whites made by wineries in the Annapolis Valley, an hour northwest of Halifax.
In fact, we made the hour-long trip to Nova Scotia's wine country to visit
Lightfoot & Wolfville Vineyards
, a veteran winery in the valley that launched in 2009. The setting there was idyllic, with the spacious, inviting, organic- and biodynamic-certified winery backing onto its gorgeous vineyard, with the shores of the Minas Basin in the background.
Lightfoot & Wolfville is well worth a visit, given its busy tasting room and shop (some of its wines are also available at the Liquid Assets shop at the Halifax Airport), as well as its restaurant that turns out wood-fired pizzas and refined salads.
We wound down our stay in Halifax at BKS, a speakeasy inside Muir that is open only for hotel guests and locals who buy memberships.
Forward-thinking but whimsical cocktails here were top-notch — especially those that we ourselves made at a 'Maritime mixology' class led by beverage director Elise Sergerie. She, like many of the Queen's Marque District staff we met, had 'come from away' to bring hospitality skills honed in Montreal, Toronto or Fogo Island to Halifax.
After our nightcap at BKS, we ventured out one last time into the district's public space.
Earlier in our trip, we had walked one sunny afternoon up the two-storey set of wooden steps called Rise Again to take in the view from its pinnacle. Then, we stood beside a 60-foot-tall art installation called Tidal Beacon.
On our last night, Tidal Beacon was transformed into a 12-minute light show, as its directional spotlights shone into the sky and across the harbour. It was a prolonged, lovely sight that sent us home with one more bright, pleasant memory.
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The writer visited Halifax as a guest of Queen's Marque, which did not read or approve this article prior to publication.