elements on hollis: local food, global taste

The creative minds behind elements on hollis are hardcore locavores.  While many locavores strive for the 100 mile diet, eating only food from producers located within a hundred mile radius, the ingredients used to bring elements on hollis’ creative, enticing menu to life are sourced primarily from within a 50 mile radius of the restaurant’s location at the Westin Nova Scotian Hotel.

My eight-week old daughter Ada is the ultimate locavore:  her entire diet comes from a producer that is rarely more than 50 centimetres away (that would be yours truly).  Thinking she could identify with the elements on hollis philosophy, I brought her and my husband Dylan along for lunch on a blustery Saturday afternoon.

We joined Chef Bryan Corkery in the dining room of elements on hollis to chat about the restaurant’s commitment to local food.  A proud Cole Harbour native, Bryan describes Nova Scotia food products as some of the best in the world.  With the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market in the restaurant’s back yard, he doesn’t have far to go to buy fresh, local ingredients. 

Chef Bryan visits market vendors such as Noggins Corner Farm Market and Fox Hill Cheese House on a daily basis, and loves the opportunity this gives him to get to know where his food comes from.  Faced with the challenge of locally sourcing food during winter, elements’ culinary staff have developed an entirely new relationship with brussels sprouts, and have also challenged local producers to experiment with what they can grow during these frosty months.

Just recently, Bryan was delighted when a small harvest of spinach grown on a trial basis by one of his produce suppliers arrived in his kitchen.  elements on hollis not only secures leafy greens, succulent cuts of meat and condiments from the Seaport Market: they also bring home inspiration for their menu.  “I was buying some fresh fish one day and saw one of the vendors eating haddock with beets and peaches,” he says. “I thought we should be eating what the producers are eating, and so we added a version of the dish to our menu.”

All this talk about food has gotten me hungry for some root vegetables and maybe a brussels sprout or three.  As we peruse the menu, our server arrives with a plate that has a tin can resting on top.  She lifts the tin can to reveal an aromatic rosemary brioche.  Charmed by this unique way to bake bread, we slather sea salt topped butter onto the dense, flaky roll.  It looks as though the rosemary for the brioche has been harvested from the small pots of herbs that serve as functional decoration in the dining room’s windows.

For lunch, we decide to start by sharing the chilled roasted beet salad with torched goat cheese. Upon the chef’s recommendation, Dylan orders the Elements Beef Burger and Gouda fries.  I choose the Lobster Sweet Potato Roll with a side of onion rings.

elements on hollis offers Nova Scotia wines at cost plus $5, but Dylan opts for his favourite Garrison Nut Brown ale instead. I stick with water, which Chef Bryan explains is municipal water filtered through the restaurant’s newly acquired filtration system, allowing them to use local resources while reducing the environmental impact of outsourcing their water.

We make quick work of the roasted yellow and candy cane beets served on a bed of cabbage tossed in a light but zippy Jost Chardonnay vinaigrette.  We both carefully crumble the disc of goat cheese over the salad to ensure maximum distribution of its tastiness.  Our meal arrives soon after we devour the last shred of green cabbage.

The fresh, light sweet potato rolls on my plate are piled high with creamy lobster salad flavoured with green onion, tarragon aioli and topped with fresh micro-greens.  I jealously guard my beer-battered onion rings from Dylan’s voracious appetite.  The rings are crisp and light, balanced perfectly by a forkful of coleslaw and the tangiest, most garlic-laden dill pickles I have ever had the pleasure of crunching into.  Dylan’s burger is outstanding and I need several bites to take in the airy bun, beautifully seasoned meat, caramelized onion and smoked cheddar.

You read that right:  eating for two means I get to fend off onion ring raids AND eat large portions of my hubby’s meal.  His Gouda fries are great too: hand-cut and lightly dusted in aged Gouda, topped with green onion and sun-dried tomatoes and served with an awesome ketchup from the Seaport Market’s own Naked Pickle.

We always have room for dessert, so hubby orders the Garrison Nut Brown beer brownie and I the milk and cookies.  The latter is a decadent take on my lazy pajama-night favourite:  chewy peanut butter cookies drizzled with caramel and served with a tall glass of Fox Hill 4% milk.  Dylan’s brownie is simultaneously rich and light with oozing malted caramel countered by cold whipped cream.

Eating at elements on hollis made me feel great about supporting sustainable farming and fishing, and about eating foods that have a lesser impact on the environment than those that rely on fossil fuel and are over-packaged before landing on my plate.

I think Ada probably appreciates that her local milk supplier is fueling production with healthy, local ingredients that help to ensure that when she’s old enough to make food choices of her own, there will still be thriving Nova Scotia farmers and fishers supplying the restaurants and markets she visits. For now, we are headed over to the Seaport Market to fill up our Garrison growler and snag some of those dill pickles.