The Inn at Bay Fortune on Canada’s Prince Edward Island is a Gourmand’s Paradise
Follow the food chain to indulgence on Canada’s most bountiful island.
I’m standing in marshland staring at a boot print in the mud. It’s about 6.5 millimetres deep, probably from a men’s size 10, with a ridged sole and is completely forgettable, except for its age. This is a three-year-old print left by forager Nick Chindamo that’s seen several winters of heavy snow and even a surprise hurricane. So it goes on Prince Edward Island (PEI).
Despite the isle being home to just over 154,000 permanent residents, you’d be hard-pressed to bump into another human on its white or red sandy beaches, along its apple-strewn trails and clay roads. At 224 kilometres long, this quiet outcrop off the east coast of Canada is a cottagecore dreamscape of bramble patches, picturesque Gothic Revival houses and craggy windswept coast.
PEI also produces a remarkable amount of food. With two lobster seasons (May to June and mid-August to mid-October), regular supplies of wild-caught bluefin tuna and salmon, crabs and oysters, as well as beef and potato farming, it’s pretty much a living, breathing world-class bistro menu. Visiting at the tail end of October sees fishing boats dry-docked in front yards, though I am in time for the potato harvest. Trucks loaded with russet burbank, goldrush, Eva, superior, Atlantic, Dakota pearl, red norland, chieftain, prospect, Dakota russet and satina varieties roll by, set to become the chips, gratin and mash of the future.
While fishing and farming keep the lights on for many locals, Chindamo’s passion for foraging is turning the island’s unnoticed bounty into the everyday. Originally from northern Ontario, he moved to PEI a few years back to work with chef Michael Smith at his farm-to-table restaurant and boutique stay, The Inn at Bay Fortune. When Chindamo first started, his mornings were devoted to outdoor chores and in those early hours, he began identifying the edible plants growing between garden beds. When he had time, he’d head out into the forest for mushrooms, bringing his finds back for Smith to try.
“The term foraging is really just individual plant recognition,” he says, stopping at a scraggly patch of yellow flowers, which turn out to be sunchokes. He pulls one out at the roots to show me a cluster of gnarled tubers. Its flavour, when cooked, is like a potato crossed with a sunflower seed. “We’re meant to find food. I like to acknowledge that and now I’ve been given the freedom to bring it into the greater ecosystem of the restaurant industry.”
Not that The Inn is any ordinary restaurant. It boasts a similar sustainability focus as Australian closed-loop fine-diner Brae, the nourishing cooking style of Du Fermier, also in regional Victoria, plus the dramatic surrounds and edible gardens of Tasmania’s Agrarian Kitchen. The Canadian eatery is “different from any restaurant I’ve worked at”, says Chindamo, whose role there has evolved from chef to full-time snacking wanderer.
Unlike its Aussie contemporaries, The Inn is also something of a spectacle. The island might have lobster and potato seasons but this place has FireWorks Feast season, which runs nightly from May to October. The communal, foraged-and-farmed-to-table dining experience celebrates the 30 hectares of land where produce is grown to fuel the restaurant.
I grab a cocktail and gather on the lawn with my fellow feasters, right on the edge of golden hour. The sun catches and twinkles on Bay Fortune as it slowly sinks. A strolling tour of the farm with head gardener Kevin Petrie reveals polytunnels and greenhouses as far as the eye can see, a bed of experimental vegetables, raised herb gardens and enough firewood to last many cold winters. Out the back of the property, a pine forest is filled with mushroom varieties, including shiitake, Italian oyster and lion’s mane.
At the end of the ramble, we arrive at an open space behind the restaurant that’s filled with cooking stations; a garden party of firepits, brick ovens and parrillas, each offering a different bite to eat. There are chicken heart skewers with a mustard and stout glaze cooked over the embers and hot-smoked local salmon served on a seeded cheese cracker with black apple aïoli. Tacos al pastor are made from pork reared onsite and served with a pear salsa. Smith himself is shucking oysters faster than I can eat them – it’s overwhelmingly generous.
We eventually roll into a cosy dining room of rough-hewn timber, brick and iron. The focus is on the hearth, where Smith and his brigade of chefs are working on the next part of the meal. Somehow, despite having eaten half the island’s oyster supply, I still manage a bowl of East Coast chowder – a signature of PEI – featuring house-cured bacon, mussels, bar clams, halibut, scallop, salt cod, lobster, potato and foraged surf herbs. Next, vegetables and leaves from the farm, along with whatever Chindamo found on his daily walk.
The Inn team cooks and harvests as sustainably as possible with the resources at hand. Meat is minimal (a duo of braised brisket and grilled tri-tip is the only beef on show) and most of the energy goes into growing and serving ingredients fresh from the farm. The accommodation follows a similar ethos of respect for provenance. Designed by Smith’s partner, Chastity, the nine original light-filled Courtyard rooms – mine has a beautiful gabled ceiling and a glimpse of the garden – were once a hideaway for visiting actors and writers in the early 20th century. I’m guessing that back then the bathroom floors weren’t heated and Hunter gumboots weren’t provided for tramping around the farm. I daresay the petit fours were nowhere near as pretty as tonight’s spiced apple marshmallows, which I enjoy on the deck by a huge roaring fire before turning in.
While it’s possible to join the culinary tour and dinner without staying over, the experience really is the sum of its equally lovely parts. Not checking in for the night would also mean missing breakfast, which starts with fresh coffee and housemade yoghurt, cold-pressed juice and pastries, followed (if you’re still hungry) by a hot breakfast option. I rally for the buckwheat pancakes with bacon, fruit and cream, and regret nothing.
Like any good farmstay, waking up here is all about rising before anyone else and taking a walk around the gardens. The big inhale before the sigh. And it’s a great time to get acquainted with the plants.
