Going Out on The Town – The Old Fish Factory, Lunenburg, NS

We ate brunch (I guess?  The meal you eat when it’s far too wet to eat any kind of breakfast at one’s campsite and you must eat something somewhere or perish) at The Old Fish Factory in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on Friday.  I must admit to having some reservations about eating someplace whose name implies that they produce elderly fish on the premises but I decided to put that aside and trust to Fate.

Sidebar:  I am writing this while sitting in the library and I just heard a little boy yell: “STELLA, DON’T EAT BOOKS,” to which (presumably) Stella replied “I was thinking!”  Perhaps she, like so many, must gnaw on cellulose to spur the brain along.  Also overheard: “The bathroom has a nice, big change table!”  Regardless, let’s continue with the main event, here.

Amy and I have a similar aversion to putting fish in our stomachs first thing in the day.  We went for a sushi lunch before consuming anything else and it did not go well.  Fortunately they had a broader fare than the name above the door would indicate.  It being terribly cold and damp out (maybe terribly is too strong a word.  It’s about 17°C and about 300% humidity.  Maybe terribly is not strong enough), I ordered a coffee to the amazement of all others present.  My feeling was that it was the hot beverage most likely to include free refills of which I only had one.  It was far from the best coffee I’ve ever had but certainly wasn’t the worst.  It was warm and that was the main thing.

Amy ordered soup and sandwich and I got the pork steak sandwich.  The soup was a sweet curried carrot affair.  It was tasty but kind of unusual in texture.  It was very definitely carrot soup, though.  It was an orange commonly associated with exposure suits used by Air/Sea Search and Rescue workers.  Her sandwich had nicely smoked ham, tomato (not smoked, fresh) and lettuce (slightly smoked).  My steak sandwich was actually open-faced.  It was more of a ‘steak on a piece of garlic bread’ than what I would call a sandwich but very tasty for all that.  There was a sort of dill mustard that went with it and very good fries with malt vinegar.

Fries and other potato dishes are done really well out here, by and large.  It probably has to do with the potatoes spending about 20 seconds on a truck rather than a couple of days.  C&B had mushroom caps and split some kind of seafood platter which they seemed to enjoy.  They had scallops which I think is sort of the tofu of seafood.  They don’t have much flavour on their own merits but tend to soak up whatever they’re cooked near.  I am planning to have bacon-wrapped scallops at some point (possibly tonight in Halifax) which is basically like eating a 2cm diameter plug of bacon without it stopping my heart right away.