Is Halifax Canada’s Most Underrated City?

The domestic citybreak is a seriously underused travel option, and Porter is probably best placed to make it happen in a way that's fun and distinctly Canadian. So I've taken to calling them Porterbreaks. Starting with direct flights from Montreal — more of which are coming in June with the opening of the MET — Halifax makes a pretty natural first candidate. Works from the rest of Canada too.

Halifax is in the running to be Canada’s most under-rated city.

The competition’s pretty fierce though, and includes pretty much every city in Canada that’s not Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver.

Except maybe Regina. I’ve only been once, when I was about 12, but I don’t remember being impressed.

But the others all have claims.

But the case for Halifax is extreme, as I found out on a recent trip with Porter, and an assist from Tourism Nova Scotia. It has two of the best cocktail bars in the country, the acknowledged best bartender in the world, far and away the best pub in Canada, and a YMCA with views that would make even the wealthiest Vancouver pied-a-terrans envious.

It’s really sort of ridiculous.

With so much going for it, I feel like I should start with what’s not great.

Like Queen’s Marque.

Their website tells us “Queen’s Marque could not exist in any other place – it is truly ‘Born of this Place’.” Ironic phrasing for a new waterfront neighbourhood with generic high-end shops, a run-of-the-mill five-star hotel, and a design that looks strikingly similar to every other new waterfront development build in the Western world in the last 20 years, from Oslo to Dublin.

RELATED: Domestic ‘City Breaks’ Are Taking Off in Canada—Thanks to Porter Airlines

The one exception of Peace by Chocolate, which I hope is getting a break on rent. The famous chocolate business started by Syrian refugees to Halifax in 2016 after their chocolate factory in Damascus was destroyed. The chocolate is great, and far away the most patriotic chocolate since Laura Secord. You can order it from anywhere, but stopping by the shop is fun, and it’s in Queen’s Marque, so there’s that.

But that five-star hotel deserves special mention. It’s really expensive. How much is determined by that hour’s algorithm, of course, but many hundreds at least (Google tells me the lowest price for a standard room this Thursday night is $620). It looks lovely, and the staff are polite to the point of obsequiousness. But like so many five-stars the world over, it’s form over function. They will treat you like royalty, right up until you ask them for something. Then, as happened several times during my stay there, I will get an extremely polite blank look, followed by an abject apology that whatever it is I’ve asked for, like extra hangers or something, is simply not possible.

They do have an excellent bar, a sort of speakeasy concept open only to guests, which is almost worth staying for a night. The drinks are creative, local and well executed, the service is good without pandering, and the room and terrace are gorgeous.

Almost, but not quite.

So please allow me to make the case for the 4.5-star hotel, here and the world over, using the example of the hotel I stayed in next, the old Lord Nelson Hotel & Suites.

From the moment I stepped up to the old wooden reception counter, the hellos were open and casually, credibly friendly, and clearly not out of an employee handbook script. It was pretty much how the whole stay here went. Unlike the Muir, which was polished and slippery, the Lord Nelson was lived-in and lovely. Still luxurious, still comfortable, less than half the price the week I was there, and in a much better location (abut 100m from that amazing Y with wraparound windows overlooking both the Halifax Common and The Citadel), surrounded as it was by parks and the actual city of Halifax rather than the Queen’s Marque confection.

Also, The Bicycle Thief. 

It’s one of the most famous restaurants in Halifax. It was packed the night I went, and I’m told it always is. They've opened another restaurant across the way which, when I stopped in, was also packed. Young and prosperous Haligonians love it, and more power to them. My meal, for one person, with one cocktail and a glass of wine I believe, was $200. And the food (and wine, and cocktail) were fine. But just fine. I had the cioppino, or seafood stew ($58). It was capably done. If the meal had been $75, I would have thought, ok, a bit pricey, but ok. At $200, despite the friendly service and friendlier patrons, nope.

But everything else, and I mean everything else, about Halifax is to die for. 

Like the brilliant, mostly Ghanaian food at Mary’s African Cuisine. No visitor to Halifax should leave without trying one of the pepper soups, especially on a cold day like the day I walked in out of the late March snows.

The best pub in town has a solid claim to being the best pub in the country, and I say with with all due respect Hurley’s and Pauper’s. 

I went to The Narrows on a Saturday night and got a seat at the bar right away. The Narrow’s famously does not take reservations, and I was told several times by Haligonians I met later that it was bordering on miraculous that I didn’t have to wait an hour. One of the benefits of going solo, though going with a friend would make an excellent night. There was a band playing trad music, well, to an enthusiastic crowd. The beer was good, and the food was better. I had the Dutch Mess, which is their seafood stew. It was $27, and it was memorably good. The service was ebullient. The room was idiosyncratically beautiful. I’m not a fan of waiting in line, for anything. But this place might be worth it.

Field Guide is known in Haligonian cocktail circles as the training ground for a generation of excellent bar people. The current dojo, Christian Palmer, concocted the current menu, which includes a Pinky Tuscadero (Blanco Tequila, Nonino, Campari, cinnamon, orgeat, grapefruit, lime, egg white, soda), a 17th-century milk punch, and a non-alcoholic 1940s Coke (Coca-Cola, spiced grenadine, lime, cherry). Everything I tried there was uniformly excellent.

And then there’s the Highwayman, a tapas restaurant that’s home to Keegan McGregor, 2024’s Diageo World Class Global Bartender of the Year. That’s a big deal, and as close to anything as being synonymous with best bartender in the world. He travels the world now as a result, but he was in the night I went, and he made me three of the best drinks I’ve had in a long time.

(Photo Credit: Bert Archer)

The conclusion I came to after this most enjoyable little citybreak (or Porterbreak) is that Halifax is best when it’s itself. I have old friends who’ve lived in or around Halifax most of their lives. When I mentioned I’d be trying breakfast at the restaurant at the Muir, they both made a little face. They’re both doctors, so it wasn’t a money face. It was a face that told me this place was not really their kind of place. And by “their kind of place,” they clearly meant the kind of place someone from Halifax, no matter what their income, would really be interested in. I went anyway, and it was terrible. So bad, in fact, I left in the middle. When they took me out for supper, they took me to Quinn’s Arms on Quinpool Road. It was friendly, it was happy, my doctor friends like the beer and the house wine, and our server was everything you’d want in a server. The food was good too.

The same goes for Tony’s donairs (1976), and diners like the Bluenose II (1964), the Ardmore Tea Room (1956) and the Armview (1951).

Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver all do fancy well. But it’s hard to find places like this in Toronto, Calgary, or Vancouver. The rents are too high, the tendency towards specific brands of metropolitan sophistication too strong. Diners, for instance, need to be cheap, or they turn into Toronto’s Avenue Diner (est. 1944), which now describes itself as “classic retro,” sells merch, and doesn’t post their menus online because their prices are so very, very un-diner-like.

So treat Halifax like you would any urban travel destination : look for the stuff that you can only get here. Let Halifax be Halifax, in other words, and it’ll be as good a time as a weekend in Lisbon, Edinburgh, Prague or Zagreb.

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