#i mean it’s really not that bad but i miss the bitter peppery taste of arugula

[youronlyjeanie]

it is so hard being an arugula girlie in household of spinach people

[lansdellicious]

Halifax Holiday - Hopscotch Dinner Club

OK look, let’s start on the most honest of footings: this place, and its head chef Stephanie Ogilvie, was the main reason we wanted to go to Halifax in the first place. That’s not even an exaggeration. We are avid Food Network viewers, and when Top Chef Canada happened it was all but given that we would want to go to as many of the restaurants that housed these chefs as possible. Getting to PEI for Lucy Morrow’s restaurant would have been challenging, and of course we have been to Chinched several times, so given the realities of travel right now Halifax was an obvious choice. To say I was excited would be an understatement, and to say I was fanboying a little would similarly be on the conservative side.

Hopscotch Dinner Club (link is to the menu) is a farm-to-table style restaurant that makes use of a lot of locally-sourced ingredients, from the common to the very unusual, and elevates the ever-loving heck out of them. One thing I could tell from Stephanie’s Instagram feed (linked above) was that he presentation was always top-notch. But you’re here for the food, not me gushing over how excited I was to eat it. Let’s go!

I went with the roasted new potatoes to start with as for some reason the idea of dill pickled crème fraiche really spoke to me. Remember a minute ago when I said that the ethos of this restaurant was to elevate common dishes? Oh boy did they do that here. In the past I have found new potatoes to be immensely challenging to get right; often bland, easy to undercook and requiring a lot of seasoning to be palatable. True class in cooking comes from being able to take such a basic and somewhat bland ingredient and really impart both flavour and texture to it. Even without the dill flowers and the creme fresh, the crispiness and seasoning on these potatoes were enough to make the dish good enough. The powerful dill flavour that came through in different ways (creamy from the crème fraiche, salty from the seasoning, and slightly different, grassy almost from the flowers) took this up several levels. I never thought I would be raving about new potatoes but...here I am. Unreal good.

Sarah on the other hand opted for the smoked eggplant and black garlic baba ganoush with pickled veggies, and thank the maker that she did. This was phenomenal. I’m not sure that I had ever had baba ganoush before, but this had a wonderful sweet smoky flavour and a texture that was like eating a cloud. It was an ideal dip for the veggies, which seemed to have been pickled to different levels and somehow were all still perfect. My only tiny gripe her was that, as beautiful as the veggies were in their arrangement, the baba ganoush...well, the colour and shape of the presentation didn’t exactly put one in mind of an appetizing dish, if you catch my meaning. The taste more than made up for it, however,

I’m not sure, but I think I only ended up choosing the duck because I didn’t want ribs and nothing else was calling to me. I have had a very hit-and-miss relationship with duck, often finding it too greasy and heavy. I had never eaten farro and was not sure how tobacco would work in cooking, but I just went with it anyway. I chose...wisely. The breast was perfectly cooked, rare in the centre with a crispy sear on the skin to give that variety of taste and texture. The interior texture was tender and smooth and just out of this world. If I had to describe farro, I would say that it’s like if quinoa and barley had a baby. I would love to add it to my diet more regularly, actually. The duck breast was on a bed of Swiss chard (I was pretty proud of myself for recognising it) and served with a leaf I had never seen before, with a peppery taste almost like a combination of cilantro and basil. It is apparently fish mint, also known as chameleon plant, and I need more of it. The biggest surprise of the dish though was the tobacco honey, which was a unique flavour that perfectly complimented the duck breast. I would buy this stuff by the vat. Tobacco gets a bad rap for obvious reasons, but without all the added chemicals it is largely undeserving. 

Sarah’s main was lamb kofta with tahini and a sea buckthorn relish. The tahini was velvety smooth and didn’t have any of the bitter undertones that often plague it. While the lam was juicy and seasoned well, it didn’t really assert itself as the star of the plate. In and of itself that’s not a bad thing, especially with the tahini being so good, but it’s not what I expected.The relish added a nice tart sweetness, but for something described as spicy it fell somewhat short of that description. She had the mixed greens salad along with her lamb, but neither of us can remember what was in it. The blueberry vinaigrette did stand out however, and nothing about it was bad. 

Of everything we had that night, the only real complaint I could muster was on the Vietnamese Iced Coffee layer cake. Maybe I ate it wrong (and that’s a weird sentence to say the least) but the cake layers were very dry. The iced coffee layer seemed to be in the middle and really didn’t add anywhere near enough coffee flavour for me. 

Sarah’s dessert was considerably better, though she liked the lemon tart a lot more than I did. The crust was somehow crunchy instead of the normal texture one would expect from a pie crust. The sumac flavour didn’t really come through in the chantilly on top, but other than that this was a very good lemon tart. 

In terms of culinary experiences, Hopscotch comes close to Raymond’s as the best of my life. Had it not been for the dessert misstep it would be a very close-run thing. Next time we are in Halifax, we will definitely be back.