I’ve lost some of my best teeth to food…

The Maritime Provinces are where the first hearty French Catholics settled in the rugged, wild untamed province of New Brunswick, Canada on the Bay De Chaleur. Keep in mind, “chaleur” means warmth or heat, and these people must have been crazy to think that these waters were warm… My mother and I prompted by whim and salty air journeyed North for an exploration. We stayed in Caraquet - the North Easternmost tip of New Brunswick.

My mother and I survived a 4 day vacation of hiking, smelling wild lilacs, gathering beautiful stones on abandoned beaches, navigating unmarked roads, biking along trails beside the bay and eating 6 course meals every night at the Hotel Paulin. Karen was our chef and the experience was an endless array of gastronomie that if it doesn’t make you stronger, will certainly kill you.

I must detail the menu, before I forget:

Sunday Night:
Mussels in saffron broth
Salad with Prosciutto and local fresh farmed blue cheese, sautéed apple slices in blackberry vinegrette
Linguine with scallops, lobster and shrimp in light champagne cream sauce

Monday Night: “tasting menu”
Little bites of…
Shrimp in homemade aioli on endive
Local sea snail (slug!) in lime, jalepeno and mango ceviche
Local Acadien goat’s cheese wrapped in Atlantic salmon sprinkled with caviar
Lobster risotto cake topped with lobster claw meat
Salad with duck and pork pate, prosciutto, Italian meat, with spring mix
Halibut topped in mango salsa on bok choy served with fiddle head ferns
Light chocolate cake topped with raspberry sauce

Tuesday Night:
Sea snail in ceviche
Lobster bisque with cream
Salad with prosciutto, local cheese
Seared local lamb chops over pasta with fiddle head ferns
Chocolate cake with berries

Then we had port and wine with a local salmon fisherman (with missing teeth) and his sexy cosmopolitan girlfriend. My mom and I are still scratching our head over that union.

I love eating. And p.s. because Caraquet, a town the size of Windsor Terrace, is the heart and soul of Acadia (the proud, French, lobster-fishing region) and is totally tiny and remote- these dinners were under $40 each!