RESTAURANTS | St. John’s
Saltwater Restaurant & Bar
all works. Keeping up the French side, they pair it with a bracing Laroche Chablis. At another table someone is cooing over cloud-like cod tongues and a salt cod cake with a corn and tomato chow and a Pommery mustard aioli. Stoneleigh Sauvignon Blanc, with more Loire style than many New Zealand versions, is the perfect foil. Earlier there was a chowder with house-smoked cod and bacon that, with the Saltwater signature Caesar – shrimp, Montreal steak spice and fresh horseradish – has you begging them to open for Sunday brunch. But the spot is too hot for that: Fridays and Saturdays are always full, and the team (they really are a team) needs some time off. They aren’t bemoaning their part 64
Occasions Winter 2013/2014
of the boisterous St. John’s scene. Adam says he wants the dining room to be noisier than the kitchen, he wants to see a few elbows on the tables. He asserts this is “shabby chic” but the room’s walls of narrow off-white plank and the economic decoration is too clean and well lit for that description. The open space could as easily be twine loft back of a fishing stage or swish digs in Tribeca. We finish with a moist, partridgeberry pudding, bursts of tartness lifting it somewhere lighter than it can be. Okay, nothing French or Croatian about that, but we’re in Newfoundland & Labrador, after all. Saltwater Restaurant + Bar 284 Duckworth Street, St. John’s (709) 754-5670 www.saltwaterrestaurant.ca