Stephen Lee, Co-owner of Mallard Cottage. Photo Credit: Joel Upshall
Every year, Air Canada’s EnRoute magazine assembles an impressive panel of food critics, journalists, cookbook authors, and more, to create a list of the best new restaurants in Canada. Our very own Mallard Cottage has made the 30-restaurant shortlist this year, and they’re the only local representative on the list.
The final Top 10 list will appear in EnRoute’s November issue, after their food writer has visited all thirty restaurants — he books a reservation under a fake name, so he can experience the restaurant as someone not getting special treatment, and the finest cuts of meat or extra-attentive service, etc.
According to the magazine, Mallard Cottage “elevates familiar Newfoundland cooking with top-notch sourcing and technique.” EnRoute want you to vote, and you can vote for Mallard right here: http://eatandvote.com/en/restaurants/mallard-cottage.
There’s incentive to deal with their annoying insistence you log in through Facebook or Twitter to vote: you can win a trip worth $4,000. A winner and guest will be flown to EnRoute’s “Best New Restaurant Gala” in Toronto.
The grand prize includes two round trip flight tickets to Toronto, two nights’ stay at a Toronto hotel, two VIP tickets to the Air Canada enRoute Canada’s Best New Restaurant Cocktail Gala, and use of a Jaguar or Land Rover during your stay, as well as access to a Jaguar or Land Rover vehicle for seven days when you get home.
Last year’s list included a Newfoundland restaurant as well: Fogo Island Inn placed 3rd. Though it was the now famous Bar Isabel in Toronto that won it.
It’s hard to believe there’s a new restaurant anywhere in the country that can match the charm, food, and genuine, terroir-tapping spirit of Mallard Cottage. The place is a Goddamn gift to local food culture. We might not have the plethora of places Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver offer the modern diner, but when the ones we do have are this remarkable, quality makes up for quantity.
