Birthday Tour

So after the Smart Kitchen, we were to meet chef John Pritchard, a local private chef, and get a quick run around of the Island before cooking up a dinner with him. He met us at the college when our tour was over, and we followed him to drop off our van at his house. Once we were all inside one vehicle, we hopped from Charlottetown out to a small community which houses a halibut farm. On the way we learned that John was a chef in Bermuda for a couple years, as well as Toronto and PEI. We ate a spot of lunch before visiting the farm, because chowder is not to be turned down when it's served on a quay with fishing boats. After lunch, the farm beckoned.

As it turns out, this was no ordinary halibut farm. It was a really, really cool halibut farm. Jim is our madly fast talking host, and he's excited as hell about these creatures. They have an awesome facility, and give the fish tons of room each. These aren't halibut like you west coasters are thinking, though, they only grow them up to 5 lbs before slaughter. They have a nursery for the small ones, and massive holding rooms for the larges. It's a really clean plant, and they take extreme care of each fish. In fact, their mortality rate is as low as possible. Not even 1%. The most fish who die are what they call suicides. Halibut jumpers, who they find on the floor in the morning.

This plant is so cool they even have plans to put some mussels in the water filtration system, which would make their effluent cleaner than the water input. Wild scene to say the least. Plus they are working on taking shellfish scraps, such as broken or undersized mussels, and turning them into feed for the fish. Right now those mostly go to landfill. Its a really great spot and I hope they can follow through on their visions for the future.

Best of all, they fished a halibut, killed it and sold it to us, fresh before rigor, for birthday dinner that evening. Try and get fresher, try. Psyched.