PEI offers a veritable smorgasbord of opportunities for food lovers.
Often, when I think of Prince Edward Island, I start humming the tune to “Food, Glorious Food,” from the musical, Oliver! Then I start fantasizing about what’s in store during the Island’s annual Fall Flavours Festival (fallflavours.ca). For a food lover like me, there’s plenty.
The festival started back in 2008, when Tourism Charlottetown created a six-day program featuring scores of culinary and cultural events. Folks could sign up to haul lobsters on a boat, or to dig potatoes and then have dinner with the field hands on the farm.
The success of the program took the locals by surprise. After all, if you’re slogging around a muddy potato field or freezing your butt on a lobster boat every day, it’s hard to imagine that could be considered exotic by others.
But the approach worked: visitors like me love to eat. We especially love to eat good local food. Toss in some fun learning experiences and you have a recipe for success. Fall Flavours now spans the entire month of September; it features scores of culinary and signature events and offers hundreds of unique Island experiences.
Last year, for example, my sister Carmen and I signed up for a three-hour hands-on demonstration with chef Kurtis Ellis of Simple Pleasures Intimate Catering. We minced, chopped, seared, folded, beat and seasoned our way through his kitchen, producing a meal fit for pharaohs (see “Sandra and Carmen’s Super Meal,” opposite). Afterward, we waddled our way out, promising to return.
Another day, we slipped over to the Red Sands Potato Fest at Fort Amherst National Historic Site. Along with food demos, there were events that highlighted the foods’ Acadian, British and Mi’kmaq influences. Story-telling, basket weaving, children’s pumpkin art, musket drill enactments and superb toe-tapping entertainment were just a few of the things on the program.
But Island culinary experiences are not limited to the month of September. In fact, many of these experiences are on tap from May until October. A couple of summers ago, my husband and I decided to do some Experience PEI activities. Experience PEI is a company that offers unique outings whereby you meet and interact with Islanders—from digging clams to going lobster fishing to making chocolates or candles.
Several of the activities have a food component; one of our favourites was called “Tong and Shuck,” where we ventured out in an oyster dory and tried our hand at tonging (harvesting oysters using long-handled rakes). I was hopeless, but managed to look pitiful enough for the harvester to give me an oyster-shucking lesson and several oysters to taste. As a bonus, after the excursion, we were invited inside Future Seafoods to enjoy more oysters, local wine, and one of the company’s products called “Oysters Rocky Fellas.” I was so impressed, I toyed with the idea of applying for a job on the production line, but came to my senses when it dawned on me that having unlimited access to these delicacies wouldn’t be part of the deal.
PEI offers a veritable smorgasbord of opportunity for any traveller with an interest in food. For a complete listing of the Island’s food-related activities, farmers, fishers, markets and artisan producers, visit peiflavours.ca. Your next Island experience could be, as Oliver memorably belted out, “Worth a king’s ransom.”
