The best cooking & wine travel
information & culinary experience vacations for discerning gourmets: Spain, Costa Rica, Italy, France, Nova Scotia, Turkey,
plus home to objective news about tripadvisor.com
See our Guide to Vacation Cooking & Wine Schools
divided by geographic region on the navigation bar at left, featuring the world's best culinary programs. Peruse our food,
wine, & travel articles, and web resources.
Food Market in Istanbul
Looking for a special, gourmet vacation
experience in a beautiful and relaxing destination? Consider the romatic Moorish quarter of Granada, Spain, the serene wilderness
of Nova Scotia, Canada, the gorgeous mountains of central Costa Rica in Central America, or the cultural bounty and historical
richness of Turkey. All programs from APL International Cooking Schools offer all-inclusive getaways and customized
options for groups. Our extraordinary instructors specialize in hands-on food knowledge and ingredients-based cookery. See the columns below for more information . . .
Espresso Machines: The Serious Beginner's Guide
by Charles Leary & Vaughn Perret, Chef-Proprietors of Trout Point Lodge of Nova Scotia
Coffee simply tastes better in Europe. Based on frequent travel and living abroad in Italy,
Spain, Turkey, & France as well as Canada and the coffee-producing countries of Panama, and Costa Rica, the only conclusion
we can draw is that the western European way with coffee wins out for robust flavor and drinking pleasure.
Why?
Even in France, Spain, and Italy finding the appropriate brand or kind proves difficult, involving
day after day of trying new coffees, new grinds, new roasts. Any coffee afficianado will tell you that the water is important:
the purer and better tasting the water, the better the coffee. In Costa Rica and Panama, we sample reputedly some of the world's
best coffess, locally grown, processed, roasted, and ground. The results vary considerably, and with the best, a subtle, superior
complexity of flavor shines through. But the Central American coffees are lightweights when compared with that flavorful,
transporting experience of just-made cafe au lait, espresso, or cafe con leche.
In Europe, the espresso machine has won out as the only way to make epicurean-level coffee.
Drip machines are tolerated for home use, but precise heat, pressure, and water combined and forced through a densely packed
puck of finely ground, freshly ground coffee beans produces the quintessential coffee flavor.
As restaurateurs we have long wanted to reproduce this experience for our guests. In 2001, we
had purchased what at the time was one of the best small commercial machines readily available in North America: the Pasquini
Livia 90. This compact espresso machine has held up admirably and remains in use in the Dining Room at Trout Point Lodge of
Nova Scotia.
However, new plans for a small guest cafe have steered us back into the market for a light commercial
or serious home use espresso machine, something that will truly reproduce the European coffee experience we know so well.
To say that the world of small espresso machines in North America has changed in seven years
puts it mildly.
Here's a rundown of several of the best choices we came up with after several weeks of research,
and based on our eight years of experience with the Pasquini machine:
First, there is a basic tri-partite division of these machines. 1. There are inexpensive home
machines that function without boilers or pressure—just direct steam creation. 2. There are single boiler machines that
use one boiler to produce steam for both brewing and for steaming milk or providing hot water. 3. There are double boiler
machines that have one boiler for brewing at one specific temperature, and a second boiler, usually at a higher temperature,
for producing steam and hot water. Further variables can include the voltage (i.e. 110 versus 220), the power of the heating
element(s) (i.e. 1500 watts), the size of the boiler(s), and the type of “brewing group,” the place where the
steam comes into contact with the ground coffee.
All of the machines we have chosen are commercial quality and carry a fairly hefty price tag.
Our Selections:
The Elektra A3
The Marzocco GS3
The LaSpaziale Vivaldi II
The Vibiemme Domobar
The Elektra Verticale Semi-automatica
Mediterranean Cooking School
Granada, Spain
Recommended by the London Guardian & Miami Herald!
2008 programs: Granada, Spain
Walking Food Market Tours plus Daily Food and Wine Tastings
Mediterranean Cookery, 4-day program, starting late December and early January
Morisco & Sephardic Cuisine, starting in April
Mediterranean Wine & Food during November & December
Take a gourmet vacation in Granada, Spain: stay at our comfortable bed and breakfast and cooking
school in Europe´s most scenic and historic travel destination. Relax in the Mediterranean Cooking School´s
own comfortable apartments in the historic Albaycin district of Granada, overlooking the Alhambra Palace and Church of El
Salvador. We can also arrange accommodation in nearby hotels of character for your stay during culinary programs.
The School offers a combination of detailed cooking demonstrations and hands-on culinary instruction,
and will customize programs for small groups.
APL is a member of the International Assoication of Culinary Professionals. Areas of culinary instruction
include:
Mediterranean
Creole
Spanish
Food & wine appreciation
Spanish Wines, in cooperation with Abadat Escuela in Ubeda
Spanish language instruction focusing on culinary topics
Culinary hikes into Parque San Miguel, just behind the Cooking School
Participants can also arrange gourmet lunches and dinners that will add extra spice and
interest to your time in wonderful Granada, a jewel of the Spanish Mediterranean!
The School boasts a brand-new marble & granite teaching kitchen including a traditional cave cellar
and pastry area, numerous terraces including the vine-covered front terrace, all with views of the Alhambra Palace, a rooftop
herb garden, and walking access to the wonderful ingredients of the markets at Plaza Larga and San Augustin.
Accommodations at the School can include complete apartment or house rentals,
with breakfast. Other meals can be arranged upon request. The beautiful property on Calle San Luis features broad vistas of
the famed Alhambra Palace, the Generalife, and the Sierra Nevada mountains, yet remains within walking distance of shops
and restaurants in the Albaycin and Granada´s historic center. Accommodation options include a unqiue 2-bedroom casa cueva, the
Loft View Apartment, or a complete 3-bedroom house rental next door at Calle San Luis No. 14. See www.alhambravistas.com for more information.
Eat this: food and games for the truly adventurous.
What’s that, bulrushes on the menu? Uh huh. In an old-is-new-again reversal, ‘wildcrafting’
makes a comeback in Canada.
By Kate Zimmerman
Tramping through Nova Scotia’s Tobeatic Wilderness Area, melodic birdsong as your soundtrack,
you’re keeping your eyes peeled. It’s not so much wildlife you’re after, but rich patches of black trumpet
mushrooms, Indian cucumber root, ripe blueberries and elderberry flowers. Your mission: hit pay dirt on the foodie scavenger
hunt known as “wildcrafting” — that old-fashioned, reborn trend of harvesting plants in the wild.
As you pick, you catch a fragrant whiff of spruce smoke. It reminds you that at some point in your
cooking adventure, at the haute-rustic nature retreat called Trout Point Lodge in Nova Scotia, you’ll learn
how to cold-smoke your own salmon, swordfish, scallops and tuna in an outdoor wooden smokehouse. Then, perhaps, you’ll
whip it into a finnan haddie jambalaya or some other Acadian-cum-Cajun specialty, à la seafood gumbo. Between canoeing
excursions on the Tusket River, dips in the wood-fired hot tub and stints in the outdoor cedar sauna, you’ll also learn
to make cheese. It’s no wonder Condé Nast’s online Concierge.com named this lodge 2007’s second-best place
in the entire world for a cooking vacation. (Trout Point also just snagged the Parks Canada Sustainable Tourism Award for
Nova Scotia.) www.troutpoint.com
Wildcrafting here is by no means confined to Nova Scotia, of course. Anywhere you pluck a few dandelion
greens on a roadside for salad, you’re wildcrafting. In bogs and berry patches, on beaches and front lawns, anywhere
really, in Canada, it’s spreading like — well, like fiddleheads* on Canada’s east and west coast.
For a sample, try A la Table des Jardins Sauvages in Quebec’s St. Roch de l’Achigan, run
by avid wildcrafter Francois Brouillard. There, foraged treats such as game, bulrushes and wild plants — which could
include the baby cattails chef Nancy Hinton grinds up to make savoury crepes — morph into weekend gastronomic dinners
each fall. In the fall, mushrooms (“shaggy mane” grows like crazy here) star in fungi-focused, seven-course extravaganzas.
Who knew the larch boletus, for instance, infuses a chocolate dessert with sweetness and a soupçon of mocha? www.jardinssauvages.com.
News Item: Granada, Spain Within 1 year, Granada will have more
5-star hotels than any other location in Andalusia, reports local newspaper IDEAL (August 26, 2005). These will join several
smaller, boutique hotels that have recently opened in this spectacular city, home to the Alhambra Palace, as reported in June
by magazine Travel & Leisure.
Here's how one author has desribed the city's allures:
In fact Granada has everything to offer, from the Alhambra and the Albaicin to the intimate corners of nineteenth
century Romanticism; from the enchatment of Oriental art to the dawn of the Gothic; from the flowering of the Renaissance
to the exuberant brilliance of the Baroque. And if, from the point of view of the Arts, this rich diversity is overwhelming
in its vitality without the dominance of one unilateral theme, Nature for her part provides analagous contrasts. In some places
there is ruggedness, in other a delicacy full of half-tones; here is a city neither of the mountain no of the plain. The Sierra
and the lowland intertwine in a stange arabesque and this gives the landscape both strenth and extraordinary variety. From
the foot of the mountains to their summit there is an ascent of more than three thousand meters and from the region of perpetual
snow it is possible to descend, in barely an hour, to a coast where every tropical fruit abounds. It would be difficult to
find a land richer in variety and contrasts or one evoking emotions of greater depth and diversity.
Antonio Gallego y Burin, Granada: An Artistic and Historical Guide to the City
As recent investigations by our editors and others have shown, a traveller looking for legitimate and objective information
must approach tripadvisor.com and other travel/accommodation review web sites with extreme caution, and more than a couple grains
of salt. This is depsite the fact that tripadvisor has issued assurances about its ability to filter our scammers, blackmailers, and fake reviews.
The facility and rapidity with which fake reviews--positive and negative--can be published discredits much of the information
presented on sites such as tripadvisor.com. Our own investigations have shown that tripadvisor.com has little way to detect
fake reviews, and exercises little or no editorial responsbility while still professing to do so. These "objective" review
sites sell a new kind of "entertainment" in part through sensationalistic reviews and forum chatter, and make money by selling
advertising and links to internet reservation sites. Checking on the veracity of their review content is often left
aside. TripAdvisor claims to publish "more than 5 million unbiased reviews and opinions, covering 250,000+ hotels and
attractions."
Travel writer Vijay Verghese of Bangkok has recently (September, 2007) noted the increasing trend, often perpetuated by persons he calls "Aesthete Travellers":
Aesthete Travellers have a new way to hit back at uncaring hotels. With reader-generated content all the rage on the Internet,
they simply log on and pen a review, a nasty review, preferably on a well-known site where their ramblings will reverberate
through cyberspace causing untold numbers of potential travellers to beat their wives and hang them on the wall, slightly
askew.
Times have changed. These days you don't simply call a hotel to make a reservation. You call them, bully them, hint at
legal action, threaten to leap off a high place - like from atop the toaster - and, finally, mention that dreaded "online
review", all to get $5 knocked off your bill. Sometimes it works. Despite travel giant Expedia's best efforts to filter out
scams - including complex algorithms to detect fraud - the "unbiased" hotel reviews on TripAdvisor.com are often peppered
with blackmail and stealth attacks.
Verghese's independant observations are confirmed by numerous other investigators, including the Times newspaper of London
quoted below. One small inn recently received threats of posting bad reviews to tripadvisor as a way of getting out of a cancellation
policy. Staff found their behavior so strange and threatening that they recorded more than 45 minutes of conversation with
them, including the threats of posting bad reviews. Without fail, two bad reviews full of untruths appeared on tripadvisor.com
within a month. The inn's management contacted the party to inform them that if they did not correct factual errors or remove
the reviews, that a legal action for defamation would be forthcoming. TripAdvisor learned of the communication with the
"reviewers" and wrote the following message to the inn:
Travelers rely on TripAdvisor to be an unbiased source of travel information.
TripAdvisor has reason to suspect
that you and/or others in your organization have attempted to influence your position on our site by threatening reviewers
to get them remove or edit unfavorable reviews.
pages/owner_faq.html, it is a strict violation of TripAdvisor's guidelines to attempt to manipulate our ranking system.
We have a procedure for penalizing businesses who make such attempts. (emphasis added)
This
is official notification that your property is now being actively monitored by TripAdvisor for suspicious activity. You must
discontinue any attempts to subvert our system.
Please respond to this email to acknowledge receipt of this
notice.
The inn responded by tellingTripAdviosr that it was fully within its legal rights, and in many common-law
jurisdictions mandated by law, that a party defaming another be contacted and asked to remove or correct the offending material,
no matter what TripAdvisor's "guidelines" might be. The inn also was not trying to "manipulate" a ranking system, but merely
to have defamatory material removed, material being used to defraud and blackmail them. TripAdvisor has so far not responded,
but did place the following "punishment" message on the inn's tripadvisor page:
Alert: This property has attempted to manipulate our popularity index by interfering with the unbiased nature
of our reviews. Please take this into consideration when researching your traveling plans.
Thus, a hotel property being blackmailed by defamatory material published by tripadvisor with no editorial responsbility
is then damaged and defamed further by TripAdvisor itself! Several lawyers in the United Kingdom have said that a law suit
against the web site's parent company is likely, as reported by The Times and Travolution.com. One attorney told a Times reporter that TripAdvisor's claim that it only publishes the subjective opinions of
others "may not be a strong enough defence where reviewers have defamed a hotel by making unfounded claims that could
affect its reputation."
Vijay Verghese continues his tongue-in-cheek analysis:
The power of an online smear cannot be understated and it has prompted the more vigilant general managers to
regularly scan and respond to slights. . . .
Aesthete Travellers will stop at nothing to secure a harmonious stay. Hoteliers report they'll even threaten to "blow up"
the place if the rate is not dropped. And it's not just the Hamas delegation we're talking about.
Others hint at brutal online hotel reviews with deeply disturbing outcomes fraught with bad grammar and misspellings. Guests
who have enjoyed a perfectly comfortable stay will turn up at the check-out counter complaining about trivialities hoping
to get "compensation". Usually this means a free night, or a free stay.
The Times of London has kept a keen eye on tripadvisor and other travel "review" sites:
These examples are just the tip of an iceberg. The entire industry of reviewing hotels and restaurants is in the midst
of a revolution that risks leading customers up the path to Fawlty Towers.
The traditional published guides, often
compiled by independent inspectors, are struggling, while online sites where checks are few are proliferating.
A Sunday
Times investigation has shown:
1) “Guests” who have never even stayed at a hotel can boost or depress its rating by posting fake reviews.
2) Poorly rated establishments can lift their reputations from one to four stars in a matter of hours by posting
fictional positive reviews.
3) Some establishments attempt to damage the reputations of rivals. So tough is the competition that even top hotels
and restaurants would consider placing fake reviews to maintain their status.
The best travel guides have traditionally been compiled by professional inspectors who visit hotels and restaurants incognito
and fiercely guard their impartiality. But it is a costly business and one that can no longer compete.
tripadvisor.com, owned by media magnate Barry Diller, is headquartered in Boston, Massacusshets.
This and other similar web sites pretend to have established editorial criterion and methods for catching false
postings. However, investigations have shown this is far from the truth. Competitors routinely run smear campaigns using tripadvisor.com
as a weapon. In addition, guests or potential guests can use such sites as a means of blackmail, demanding discounts or free
stays from management.
The Times continued:
Last week The Sunday Times was able to post reviews on TripAdvisor giving top ratings to six London hotels that
had consistently been criticised as “the worst ever”, “a horror” or “disgusting”.
One
hotel in west London had received consistently bad reviews on TripAdvisor, with guests describing it as a “hovel”
with “stains everywhere”. Yet when a Sunday Times reviewer awarded it top marks, no one checked on the discrepancy.
TripAdvisor, which insists that all its reviews are read by moderators, later admitted that it could not spot all
fake postings but aimed to stop concerted campaigns to raise the reputations of establishments.
Our investigators have similarly found instances at several properties in the Americas where people looking for
discounted rooms have threatened posting bad reviews on tripadvisor.com as a way to coerce management.
In one e-mail to a small inn in Costa Rica, one person who received a polite e-mail telling him that the Inn was
full, continued to demand a reservation over a long period of time and ultimately wrote the following:
I wanted you to know that I had previously given your property favorable mention on the often visited Internet
site Tripadvisor.com. I'm not sure if your familiar with the site but it provides reviews of hotels and resorts from
guests. Most of your reviews had been very good, giving your Inn a very good overall rating. I still
have know idea why you didn't respond to my inquiries but can only assume you waiting for someone to make longer
or more expensive reservations.
I will be detailing these unfortunate series of non-communication events on Tripadvisor and giving you the lowest
possible rating. Your lack of responsiveness has delayed my reservations making for three weeks while waiting for your
reply. Best Wishes, Mike
[name of inn and listing page on tripadvisor.com]
(The next one won't be too good.)
Should sites such as tripadvisor.com be able to act as weapons of blackmail for anyone with internet access?
Is it still the innkeeper's prerogative to refuse accommodation to those it considers undesirable or has no room for?
In a similar instance, a couple seeking a discount off of a stay wrote scathing reviews and posted negative comments
to forums on tripadvisor.com and travellibrary.com. They contacted the property to demand a refund, and received it! In return,
they pulled the reviews and forum postings.
Giving in to such blackmail by hotel management may seem as bad as the blackmail itself, however many innkeepers
(and increasingly restaurateurs) are at the mercy of these travel "review" sites that exercise no true editorial control over
their increasingly influential publications. Even when tripadvisor.com in Boston was contacted by the hotelier to report
the latter instance blackmail, nothing was done until the reviewer him- or herself pulled the review and forum posting. travellibrary.com
did pull the review when notified of its nature.
Recent research also shows that TripAdvisor "punishes" hotels they believe may have conducted in activity they
deem inappropriate by refusing to publish positive reviews, and only allowing negative reviews to appear on the web site.
Granada, though home to the most visited historic monument in Spain, is often overlooked in favor of
the Alhambra. This picturesque metropolisis at the center of the most geographically diverse province in Spain, and you can
sun bathe at the Costa Tropical or ski at the Sierra Nevada all in one day. Granada city hosts of wealth of music venues,
architecture from various era and style, gypsy cave dwellings, and the winding streets of the spellbinding Albaycin. Stay
in the Parador--though book well in advance--on the palace grounds or the AC Santa Paula, or for small hotel charm: Ladron del Agua, Hotel Zaguan, or the Hesperia Granada.
Accommodations at Casa Azahar
Granada, Spain
BOOK REVIEW: The Trout Point Lodge Cookbook: Creole Cuisine From New Orleans to Nova Scotia By Daniel
Abel, Charles Leary, and Vaughn Perret Random House
The three co-authors of the book come from vastly different backgrounds-Leary, for example, has a Ph.D. in modern Chinese
history-but all are foodies at heart. As the trio became friends, they began to explore the roots of their passion, specifically
in Louisiana, where Abel and Perret grew up. The more they sought the finer elements of Cajun cuisine, the more they found
that indigenous delicacies (Creole Cream Cheese, for example) and venerated methodologies like "bayou venturing" for wild
edibles had gone out of practice. Urbanization and the unrelaxed pace of modernity had sapped the Big Easy of its culinary
traditions.
In an attempt to revive what had been lost, the three men set out to build a sanctuary where they could combine Old World
principles with New World products. It started as the Chicory Farm and the Chicory Farm Café, gained extensive recognition,
then grew into The Trout Point Lodge after a trip to Acadia, Nova Scotia, near where the Lodge stands today. It serves as
a restaurant, cooking school, and vacation resort.
Most good cookbooks have some kind of hook, or gimmick. Here, something deeper is at work: sociological and historical
exploration, and renewal, through savory, accessible French-Creole cooking. The lush landscape photography by Wayne Barrett
will tempt readers to keep The Trout Point Lodge Cookbook on their coffee tables. But it will inevitably find its
way into the kitchen, where it will take chefs better than a country mile from shrimp-and-gumbo (one recipe is titled "Perfect
Risotto"), to savor exotic food at its finest. (Courtesy the Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin)
Like wine, cheese is the product of a fermentation that creates something entirely different and infinitely more complex
than the raw material. Like wine, cheese ages until it reaches a point of perfection, then goes downhill. Like wine, cheese
comes in a wide range of styles, each with its own set of characteristics, and it tastes of terroir. France, Italy,
Spain and other countries have appellations of origin for cheese, just as they do for wine. Farmstead cheese—made from
the milk of the cheesemaker’s own animals—is comparable to estate-bottled wine made from the winemaker’s
own grapes. Artisanal cheesemakers buy top-quality milk to handcraft their products, just as quality-oriented négociants use
grapes bought from serious growers.
"“If I was 20 today and I was a truly creative person, I wouldn’t do molecular
cuisine. Everybody is doing it." Hervé This, inventor of molecular gastronomy, Financial Times interview, February
16, 2008.
Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School
Trout Point Lodge May, June, July, September, 2008
Trout Point Lodge hosts the summer and fall Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School combining luxury
accommodation, gourmet meals, hands-on culinary instruction, and visits to Nova Scotia seafood destinations. Chefs and cookbook
authors Daniel G. Abel, Charles Leary, and Vaughn Perret lead and organize all Learning Vacations. These instructors specialize
in seafood cookery and wild foods in the tradition of the French New World, covering Acadian, Creole, and Cajun styles along
with the fundamentals of choosing, storing, and cooking seafood. Trout Point can also customize topics and dates to the desires
of small groups.
Named among the top 10 culinary vacations in the world by both ForbesTraveler.com
and concerge.com/Condé-Nast, these programs have also received recommendations from Food and Travel magazine (April,
2007), ATV & CTV Canada (2005), Food & Wine (June, 2001), Chatelaine (April, 2001), Canadian House & Home
(January, 2002), Harrowsmith Country Life (June, 2003) and Canadian Geographic (March, 2003) magazines. Abel,
Leary, and Perret are authors of the Trout Point Lodge Cookbook: Creole Cuisine from New Orleans to Nova Scotia, which has received rave reviews.
Participants stay at Trout Point Lodge, on the edge of the Tobeatic Wilderness
Area, about 20 miles inland from Yarmouth, where they also receive instruction in the Lodge's specially-designed
teaching kitchen. Trout Point provides spacious guest suites with water views, bar & café, the Dining Room, and numerous
public areas for relaxation. The Lodge has full facilities for outdoor recreation, including canoes, kayaks, paddle boat,
mountain bikes, outdoor hot tub & sauna, nature and hiking trails.
Visits are often made to the coast near Yarmouth, a major working fishing
port, for trecking the largest salt marsh in the province, wild blueberry fields, and mussel beds on the Chebogue River or
to a nearby oyster farm.
Customized programs are available for groups of 4-10 persons.
Trout Point Lodge was named "Best of the Best"
for worldwide culinary vacations by Food & Travel magazine
Costa Rica Creole Cooking School
Central Mountains Overlooking the Pacific Ocean
Programs starting March, 2008.
Experience the highest level of personalized culinary instruction in Costa Rica, one of the world's richest
food environments, where everything from luscious tropical fruits to the freshest seafood from two coasts lies at your doorstep.
The Costa Rica Creole Cooking School offers instruction for groups of two to eight persons. These multi-day programs will
suit the needs of everyone from curious novice cooks to true foodies.
Recommended by National Geographic Traveler, Food & Wine, and Travel & Leisure
as well as Costa Rica Luxury Hotels, the Costa Rica Creole Cooking School emphasizes the interplay between Spanish and Latin approaches
to food and cooking, which grew out of the colonial experience in the New World, Indian Ocean, and Africa.
The school operates from the Inn at Coyote Mountain in Alajuela Province, just 37 miles from the Juan Santamaria International Airport. The main Hacienda building
offers luxurious accommodations in a very private setting overlooking the Pacific Ocean, not far from the agricultural center
of San Ramon with its famous weekly farmer's market. At 4100' in elevation the Hacienda's 70 acres offer a relaxing Mediterranean
climate, tropical forests, organic gardens, fruit trees, and nature trails surrounded by neighboring coffee farms. A spacious
professional teaching kitchen makes for unparalleled hands-on learning. The Hacienda has just five rooms, ensuring an intimate
and luxurious environment for your culinary getaway.
Here’s what Travel & Leisure magazine has said about the inn and cooking school:
"Traditionally, Costa Rica hasn’t been a place known for fine cuisine. With the April opening of the
Inn at Coyote Mountain, a 90-minute drive west of San Jose in San Ramon, the country’s reputation as a food purgatory
was transformed. On a remote hilltop, Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret, the chef-owners of Trout Point Lodge in Nova Scotia,
have created an intimate retreat where aspiring chefs can join one- to three-day classes on "Caribbean-Creole" cooking (think
tropical jambalaya). Built in the Mudejar style of architecture from Spain, the five-room inn has circular windows and glass-tile
tubs, custom-made wrought iron sconces and four-poster beds, and a spectacular Observatory Suite with its own spiral staircase."
Heidi Mitchell, Travel & Leisure (June, 2004)
Named among the Top 10 Hotel Culinary Schools by Gayot.com: The Guide to the Good Life (2007)
The allure of Nova Scotia's great lodge & guide tradition
From far and wide
the
inveterate globetrotters came to Nova Scotia, Canada in the early half of the 20th century, drawn by the spirit of adventure,
exploration, and the enjoyment of pristine and uncharted nature. Bankers & industrialists joined the likes of Amelia Earhart,
Ernest Hemingway, Franklin Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Zane Grey, and America's finest adventure travel writer, Albert Paine Bigelow,
as they flocked to the southern tip of this maritime peninsula, landing at Yarmouth and then proceeding inland.
The Grand and Markland Hotels, the Lakeside Inn, and Birchdale, Braemar, and Bayview Lodges awaited their paying
summer guests who boarded the stocky Boston-Yarmouth steamers in that great age of adventure travel. Others founded private
family clubs, like the Ardnamuchan, or built secluded lodges of their own like the Argyle, where many a lobser bake and soiree
fêted the rich and famous who came to the annual World Tuna Fishing Championship on the coast.
A cabin at Birchdale Lodge
The word "lodge" itself in the sense of a "hunter's cabin" came into use in the 15
th century, with origins going back to French and German words for arbor or shelter
of foliage.Lodges were always places of attunement with nature. Akin to their southerly neighbors in the Adirondacks, the
Nova Scotia lodges were intentionally rustic but comfortable and gracious dwellings built from hand-hewn logs, stone foundations,
and rought-cut timbers. Here, without contact with the outside world of hustle and bustle, the globetrotters relaxed: "The
spell of the forest and the chase gripped me body and soul. Only these things were worth while. Nothing else mattered nothing
else existed." From: Albert Bigelow Paine, The Tent Dwellers
The heart of it all—the frontier territory—was the Tobeatic, sometime called the « empty quarter
» of Nova Scotia, a terrain left unto itself by the last glaciers. Etched, rocky, and rough with upland bogs, erratics, deadwaters,
pools, and chutes, giant boulders and granite barrens the area was always best accessible by water routes, often up the river.
Here moose, black bear, bald eagles, snapping turtles, brook trout, porcupines, and flyying squirrels far outnumber any human
denizens. Local canoeist Andy Smith describes his respect for the Tobeatic thusly:
the Tobeatic is addressed with profound reverence, in hushed, respectful tones, quietly, softly, in deference
to all the ghosts she harbors, and to all who have ever paddled her caramel waters, walked her granite face and wizened vegetation,
and felt her forbidding and sometimes inhospitable remoteness.
Some travelled further afield, to places like Milford House and Kejimikujik, however the majority centered themselves
around Yarmouth County and Argyle Muncipality with its famous Tusket River, a place where backwoods French Acadian, New England
Planters, and MicMac Indians blended culture and traditions.
Some relaxed at the
shore or the nearby woodlands & lakes, near the Town of Yarmouth itself. The brave at heart, though, ventured across the
countryside by carriage to the edge of the seemingluy impenetrable Acadian forests, where the rivers became the highways.
As Michael McAdam of the Atlantic Salmon Federation has written:
her myriad lakes and tributaries fed an ever-widening stream that flowed through muskeg-laden meadows and rolling
thickets of spruce and poplar overseen by giant flat-top pines. Shards of "old man's beard" hung from the hemlock and tamarack
that lined her granite banks and her waters took on their characteristic peat stain as she picked up each tarn and brook on
her seaward course. Moose grazed in her bogs and wetland meadows and local fishermen packed thousands of barrels of salted
gaspereau (or "kiacks" as they are known on Nova Scotia's South Shore) each year for shipment to the New England states. .
. . And from those same New England states, and New York, to southwestern Nova Scotia came tbe sports; the rich and the famous.
Baseball's legendary Babe Ruth fished her waters for the large salmon which returned, virtually unmolested, to her upstream
spawning gravel each summer.
In villages like Kemptville, guiding became a major enterprise for generations of local men, while the woman
cooked and tended to the guest quarters.These were old-time backwoodsmen who knew the rivers, lakes, and trails and fishing
was the primary pursuit, with a little hunting too. One could sportfish for tuna off Wedgeport one day, and retreat to the
Tobeatic Wilderness for fly fishing the next. As early as the 1900s, Nova Scotia had grown a reputation that drew the adventurous
spirit:
"Tell me about it, Eddie," ; I said. "Where are you going, this time?" Then
he unfolded to me a marvelous plan. It was a place in Nova Scotia he had been there once before, only, this time he was going
a different route, farther into the wilderness, the deep unknown, somewhere even the guides had never been. From: Albert Bigelow
Paine, The Tent Dwellers, 1908.
Peter and Lewis Vacon, local Acadian French guides, hosted Babe Ruth as he fished and camped on the Tusket.
Salmon and trout drew the enthusiasts for hours of fly casting, canoeing, and exploring. In a community where story-telling
is a favourite stoveside pastime, there is the oft-told tale of one of Babe's favourite wake-up exercises while ensconced
at Billy Lovitt's nearby woodland camp. After an evening of cards, yarns and Jack Daniels, Babe and the guides would retire
to be "up and at 'em" by dawn. The Babe would tiptoe outside at 3 or 4 a.m. and discharge both barrels of his 12-gauge Remington
into the air. Out would spill the guides, Peter and Louis, swearing in French and struggling to get their pants and shoes
on as they careened out of the doorway. Never a man to sleep more than a few hours at a time, Babe would then rack the shotgun,
march back into the cabin and make everyone breakfast as they waited for the dawn, muttering to themselves as the big slugger
grinned over the stove.
After World War II, the Grand Hotel, Braemar Lodge, and the Markland became, over time, distant memories, each
having suffered fires. The Boston steamers stopped running. Birchdale Lodge shifted to private hands, having most recently
served as a Carmelite Monastery, and the Lakeside Inn was converted to a retirement home.
In 1998, though, the Province of Nova Scotia declared the Tobeatic Wilderness a vast protected area. And with
the new millenium, a new Lodge opened on the banks of the very Tusket River where Babe Ruth had once sojourned with his Acadian
guides. Trout Point Lodge brings back the glory and romanticism of the Golden Era of Nova Scotia Great Lodges. An architectural
master piece made from giant Eastern Spruce logs, chiseled granite and sandstone, with full scribe notch and dovetail joinery,
Trout Point's owners built the Lodge in celebration of the local Great Lodge tradition.
Nat Decants FREE Wine E-Newsletter Wine picks, articles and humor from Natalie MacLean, named the World's Best Drink Writer at the World Food Media Awards
in Australia. Natalie is also the author of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
For more details on this book and to sign up for the newsletter, visit www.nataliemaclean.com.
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