Chomp: St. John's Edition

1. Rocket Bakery & Fresh Food
272 Water Street, St. John’s

Rebecca: After reading about it in a magazine on the plane, I knew I had to pay Rocket Bakery a visit during our trip to St. John’s. In the heart of the city’s downtown, Rocket is a colourful and trendy addition to the array of bakery-cafés. In fact, Rocket features a bakery, a lunch counter, a small grocery store, and a café - all equipped with a large seating area, too. The decor inside was retro and upcycled - I believe they used old church pews painted in bright colours as benches. There was also a window seat nook that was filled with pillows - I’m sure that’s a big hit with kids. The items in the grocery were all local to Newfoundland and looked interesting. Speaking of interesting, Ben and I decided to try a can of Crush brand Birch Beer, a flavour that we had never seen before in Nova Scotia. In fact, Newfoundland features a wide variety of interesting Crush flavours, such as pineapple - so make sure to give those a try if you’re visiting. The Birch Beer tasted kind of like cream soda and root beer mixed together, and even though the can was brown, the actual drink was neon pink! 

The whole spread.

Up close and personal with the Birch Beer.

I got a regular tea and a pain au chocolat. Compared to Two if By Sea’s pain au chocolat, this one was much more reminiscent of the ones we had eaten in France. It was much, much smaller, and resembled more of a flat pastry than a croissant. There were two globs of chocolate in the middle. It was flaky, buttery and chocolatey - and very, very delicious.

Ben: I got a Profiterole, which was absolutely massive – almost too massive, but not quite. The first bite caused some pretty major spillage, but after that it was smooth sailing. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves with this one.

It was bigger than it looks.

All over my shirt.

2. Piatto Pizzeria & Enoteca
377 Duckworth Street, St. John’s

Rebecca: To those of you who may be visiting St. John’s outside of the summer months, here’s a tip: most of the downtown restaurants are closed on Mondays. This proved to be very frustrating, because we had researched online some places we’d like to try - and they were all closed!

Anyway, as we wandered the streets looking for a place that was open, we stumbled upon Piatto. My aunt had mentioned this place and compared it to Halifax’s Morris East. We’re both big fans of Morris East and Piatto’s outdoor menu looked really good and cheap (there was also a cool Vespa in the window). So we headed inside.

They had a salad and personal sized pizza lunch special going on for $12.99, so we both jumped on that. I got the Noce e Arugula salad, which according to their menu is “arugula, blue cheese, candied walnuts, dried cranberries and our balsamic vinaigrette.” There was a HEFTY serving of blue cheese on the salad, which I loved, but others may find it to be overkill. I also found that the salad was a little over-dressed, as you can see from the picture.

So much cheese.

For my pizza, I went with the Della Terra (“fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, mushrooms, olives, artichoke hearts and grana padano”). This pizza was beautiful - it was so colourful and loaded with toppings (I accidentally deleted the picture I had of it from my phone - I am sorry!). The cool thing about Piatto is that there was a kind of “pizza bar” at the back, where you could watch as the cook tossed dough, added toppings, then loaded the pizzas into the wood-fired oven. 

My view of the back of the restaurant from our table.

Piatto featured a lot of pizzas that were similar to Morris East’s, such as the Stephanie, which includes caramelized pears.

Ben: I ordered the Fenghi Selvaggi ($15). This had a garlic cream sauce, mozzarella, oregano, a whole bunch of mushrooms and truffle oil. I did enjoy it, but honestly, I felt it was a little overdone – the huge amount of cheese and oil made it more than a little greasy. I tasted Rebecca’s pizza and liked it a lot more.

My heart hurts just thinking about it.

3. Yellowbelly Brewery & Public House
288 Water Street & 1 George Street, St. John’s

Ben: Now on to the beer! We each got the sampler, which is four miniature beers, brewed on-site, for around $7.50 – a pretty decent deal since they add up to a little more than a pint. They gave us a stout, an amber ale, a regular ale, and a wheat. To top it off, the bartender threw us a new hoppy ale they were trying out as well. The amber was oddly dark, so dark you wouldn’t know it was technically amber at first glance – Rebecca wasn’t a fan, but I enjoyed it. The hoppy ale was by far the favourite, so we really hope it sticks around. I imagine we’ll be returning to Newfoundland, meaning Yellowbelly’s will surely be getting another visit – you can’t go to St. John’s without hitting the bars, and this is one of the best.

Challenge accepted.