A search on Happy Cow turned up a decent list of veggie-friendly places, including this gem, called The Wooden Monkey.

The Wooden Monkey has been open since the summer of 2004. Housed in an old stone building on a fairly tourist-y bar and restaurant strip, their concept is good food based on local, organic, fresh ingredients, with a focus on healthy dishes. This isn’t to say that the entire menu is healthy, of course, but rather that they don’t deep fry, they don’t slather everything with oil, cream or butter, and they offer alternatives for vegans and those on a gluten-free diet.

Upon entering you’re greeted with a cute bar that has at least a dozen different monkeys around it – monkey pictures, monkey statues, monkey trinkets. It sounds pretty silly, but it’s really a lot of fun, and the pieces they’ve chosen blend in well with the rest of the decor – a nice wood bar, simple wood tables and chairs, clean white plates, and your standard glassware.

The menu contains a lot of comfort foods cooked in a healthier way. They’ve got burgers, sandwiches, pastas, soups, and other bistro type fare. They also have a fully stocked bar and several local beers on tap, including ones from Garrison and from Propeller.

Rich started with the vegetable rolls, which were rice paper rolls filled with vegetables and served with a mildly spicy peanut dipping sauce. My starter was the Japanese dumplings, filled with vegetables and tofu and served with a chili sauce. We both enjoyed our starters and found the portions to be reasonable.

Rich’s main was the fish and roasties, which is their healthier version of fish and chips. His fish was flaky and delicious, with a crispy exterior. The roasties are a good substitute for french fries – roasted potato wedges with olive oil, herbs and spices. They’re just salty and just crunchy enough to take the edge off any salt cravings you might be having. My main was their lentil burger, served on a pita made in-house with honey mustard mayo and some of those roasties. I found the burger had good flavour, but I didn’t love the bun. I think if we’re ever there again, I might ask for a more traditional bun, if they happen to have something of that sort available.

For dessert we shared their most popular item – chocolate tofu pie with a cinnamon, walnut and almond crust. The pie is non-dairy and vegan, as long as you ask for it without whipped cream; as you can see from the photo, we got ours with the whipped cream. It was delicious, and I’d happily order it again any time.

Other than the food, the real highlight of the place was our server, Matt. He was very well-versed in the menu contents, and a quick conversation with him determined he’d been a professional server for a few years; the evening we were there, Hurricane Kyle hit Nova Scotia, and he mentioned that he was working at another restaurant the night that Hurricane Juan hit back in 2003. His experience and knowledge were also evident as Rich discussed beer with him. That was our first evening in Halifax, and we had not yet learned about the local breweries. Matt was quick to tell us about the merits of some of the offerings from Garrison vs Propeller, including a discussion of IBUs (International Bitterness Units, or in other words, how ‘hoppy’ the beer is) . He even gave us a small sample of Garrison’s IPA, which has won awards for the last two years at the Canadian Brewing Awards. Nice.

I do have one small bone to pick with the place, though. Their menu is very vegan and gluten-free friendly, I don’t dispute that, but their labelling of vegan items isn’t as good as it should be. All items that are vegan are supposed to be marked with a ‘V’, however, there are items that clearly are not vegan, as they contain cheese or mayo. The reality is that those items aren’t usually vegan as written, but you can request that they be made vegan, and the chef is more than happy to do so for you.

Even with the small snags, we still highly recommend this place!

The Wooden Monkey – 1685 Argyle Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia – (902)444.3844. Dinner for two with drinks and dessert, $80. http://www.thewoodenmonkey.ca/

On Sunday, we left the Valley for Halifax, just in time for Hurricane Kyle to hit Nova Scotia.  Very unfortunate timing for our trip, but at least it did no where near the damage of Hurricane Juan a few years earlier.  It did make for some pretty empty streets and very windy conditions, so we hunkered down in local favourite pub The Old Triangle for drinks and some good old Maritime Music.

Both mornings we were in Halifax we went to an awesome cafe for coffee and breakfast.  When we first saw the sign for The Wired Monk, we figured the name had something to do with the place having internet access available.  Of course, that was pretty silly of us to assume – who has wired internet access in a cafe, anyway?  In fact, the name comes from the story of a monk who discovered coffee beans and how after he brewed them with water he found they gave him energy to get through late night prayer. Huh.

It also turns out this place is a franchise, with Halifax being the only one outside of British Columbia.  Honestly, I never would have guessed, as I found the place to have a very indie cafe feel, with funky decorations by local artists and hand-labelled signs for their food and beverages.

A big selling point for The Wired Monk is that all of their coffee and tea is fair trade.  For those of us in Toronto, that’s not such a big deal, since fair trade products are available almost everywhere these days. But for folks in Halifax, where fair trade is far less common, a place like this is a welcome addition to the city.

While we were there we tried cappuccinos and americanos.  Their cappuccinos are a bit on the wet side, but then, most places in North America make them that way.  Their americanos are quite nice, and not at all bitter.  And the food?  We stuck to the baked goods because we were usually pressed for time but also because they looked so darn tasty!  The chocolate banana scone I had on our first morning was extremely good and very filling.  I probably could have saved half of it for a snack later in the day.  The apple rolls we had on the second day were lightly sweet and also quite filling.  Sure, they were probably also 200 calories per bite, but hey, we were on vacation.

If you’re in Halifax and want to check them out, The Wired Monk is at the corner of Morris and Hollis, not far from the Via Rail station.

More Halifax-related posts coming soon!

Blueberry Grunt is a somewhat unusual dessert.  A wild blueberry sauce is topped with a sweet biscuit dough (dumplings), and the dough is steamed until puffed up and cooked through.  It is similar to a blueberry cobbler, but is never baked, so the dumplings are not browned.  The dish isn’t really well known outside of the Maritime provinces; mentioning it to the typical Ontarian will get you a strange look.  A bit of research has found that the dish may have originated with the Acadians, French settlers in the Maritimes.

In order to make it, I had to try to find wild blueberries, which was a bit of a challenge this time of year; wild blueberries are really only available fresh in the late summer and early fall.  I tried many different markets in my neighbourhood, but always found only the larger, cultivated blueberries (which we refer to as ‘tame’ blueberries in our house).  I figured that would be the case, but you can’t blame me for trying!  So instead I headed to the freezer case and grabbed a bag of frozen berries.  As I find the cultivated berries tasteless, I figured this would be the better solution.

Blueberry Grunt

Ingredients:
Blueberry sauce:
4 cups wild fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup water

Dumplings:
2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp butter or shortening
milk

For sauce: Heat berries, spices, sugar, lemon juice, and water in a skillet.  Boil gently for 5-10 minutes, until well blended and liquid has slightly reduced.

For dumplings: Sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into a bowl. Cut in butter and add milk, a few tablespoons at a time, until the mixture is a soft biscuit dough texture. Drop by spoonfuls into hot berry sauce. Cover tightly with a lid and simmer for 15 minutes.  Do not peak into the pot during this time!  After 15 minutes the dumplings should be puffed and well cooked through. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Makes 4 generous servings.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

For those who read us for the restaurant reviews, I’ve got a couple coming soon.

I had some trouble deciding exactly what I wanted to do this time around.  Usually you have to bake or cook something yourself, but because the theme isn’t ingredient-based, they allowed entries to be about anything food related, as long as it says ‘Mmm… Canada!’ to you.  Then today it hit me – why not make some of my old Maritime favourites, the stuff I can’t find here in Ontario?

When I moved to Ottawa back in 1997, I was shocked to find that no one seemed to know what a garlic finger was.  Garlic bread, garlic cheese sticks, and various other garlic-and-dough-concoctions were easy to find, but my old childhood favourite was not. When I relayed this information to my high school friends still living in Nova Scotia, they were shocked.  “How can you live without garlic fingers?” they asked, eyes wide, as if I were saying Ottawa had no water.

What’s so special about these garlic fingers as compared to other garlic-dough recipes?  Well, they’re essentially garlic bread pizza: pizza dough, garlic butter, mozzarella, and sometimes bacon bits.  Dipped into donair sauce (not to be confused with doner sauce).  We’d usually order them from one of our favourite pizza places on a Friday night and eat them while watching some silly movie.

These days most Canadians can find garlic fingers in the freezer section next to the pizzas.  McCain, a well-known Maritime food company, now produces them and sells them outside the Maritimes.  Even so, the frozen ones are just not the same, and they don’t come with any donair sauce. So when I get a craving for these, I just make my own.

Garlic Fingers:

Pizza dough to make one large pizza (recipe below if you need one!)
1/4 cup garlic butter
1/2 cup to 1 cup mozzarella cheese (depends on how cheesy you like them; I used 1 cup)

Prepare dough as needed. When ready to bake, spread out on a pizza stone or round pizza pan.  Cover with garlic butter and top with cheese.  Bake in 425F oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until the crust is browned.  Then put under the broiler for 2-5 minutes to brown the cheese.  Watch carefully, as it browns quickly!  Cut into fingers and eat dipped in donair sauce.

Donair Sauce:

2/3 cup canned sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 tsp garlic powder

Combine all ingredients and stir well until fully combined.  Makes a thick, sweet, garlicky sauce.

Pizza Dough:

1 cup warm water
1 tbsp quick rise yeast
1 tsp sugar
2.5 – 3 cups all purpose flour
olive oil for the bowl

Put water into a large bowl and sprinkle in sugar, then add yeast.  Allow to sit 10 minutes so yeast can start to bloom.

Mix in 2.5 to 3 cups flour, until dough has a smooth, even texture and is no longer sticky.  Cover with a bit of olive oil and then leave in a warm place to rise, about 30 minutes or until the dough doubles in volume.  Dough is then ready to use as needed.  This is enough for one thick crust pizza or two thin crust pizzas.  For garlic fingers, I recommend you use the whole thing on a single pan.

Tomorrow: another Maritime treat, but this time, a sweet one!