Rick J.'s Profile

This place had been well recommended prior to my arrival by a friend who knew just how much I love real coffee. No, not Tim Horton's, I'm talking real coffee here. Just Us have built a business around ethics, producing a product that's fair from top to bottom. This is admirable but those of us who frequent such places know that good intentions don't always spill out into the cup or onto the plate.

I ordered a plain black coffee and a morning glory muffin to start my day off. The coffee is excellent, a well-roasted dark roast that wasn't so burned as to provide no character (I'm looking at you, Starbucks) but head and shoulders above the Canadian chains one may experience on a daily basis. The muffin was terrific, a little divergent from the traditional but baked properly and assembled from good, tasty ingredients.

I'm sad I live so far away, but those of you nearby would be hard pressed to find a better cafe in the area. Good stuff!

Rockbottom shares an entrance with Your Father's Moustache - walk in the door and head up for Moustache, down for Rockbottom. The look is reminiscent of a Milestone's with lots of dark colours and large booths, finely dressed and friendly waitstaff awaiting your arrival.

They brew their own beers and offer flights if you're into them. They alerted me right off the bat that their Brown was no longer  in stock, replaced with a Jalapeno beer(!?) instead. I opted to try it alongside the Stout, Ale, IPA, Wheat and Red. None particularly stood out as anything incredible, but all were adequate and better than your standard macro fare anywhere else. The Jalapeno beer is worth noting simply for really smelling of fresh jalapenos and tasting of them as well. Not so much your face burns but you definitely know what you're drinking, what a curious and welcome addition.

The food isn't exactly cheap and I settled for a standard burger at $8.25. I'd be shocked if they make them there as I was presented with a pedestrian, perfectly machine-formed patty that I'd swear was frozen until moments earlier. Nothing bad, but nothing worth going out of your way for.

No visit to the PEI is done right without a trip to Fisherman's Wharf. Located on the north end of the Island you can book-end your trip with your choice of touristy action - Green Gables, Cavendish Beach sunsets, they're all close by.

So here's how it works: You select your main entree from the popular lobster to fish to steaks to chicken. Each meal, priced differently, comes with the famous 60-foot salad bar, mussels, chowder and bread - all unlimited. The salad bar features your traditional salads and ingredients along with oddities like hummus and pita triangles, tabouleh, garlic bread and pizza. All of it is done above what one would expect from a place like this, it's all tasty, replenished quickly and very satisfying. If you can manage room at the end you're offered a featured dessert or you can take as many trips as you want to the cold bar for pies, cakes, squares, tarts and soft serve ice cream.

You will leave morbidly obese, but you will leave fulfilled and pleased, having experienced the bounty of PEI the Island way. Don't pass up the chance, it's great.

So this review comes with a story, and a pretty rich history. Half of my family heritage comes from the Island, and throughout my life I've probably been there at least five times. Family stories from my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles often feature this oddly shaped restaurant known for having the best burgers on the Island.

First things first - the service here is horrid. The employees are foul-tempered creatures who seemed more interested in scowling at us, or each other, to actually go about taking orders and such. I'm told by our hosts that this isn't uncommon here.

And the food. The burgers are frozen patties, the buns store bought and pulled from bags. The fries are frozen. All put together, they taste fine. If they're the best on the Island it's more a commentary on the state of burgers on the Island than anything Peter Pan is doing well.

That said, do get the shakes. We tried the cherry shake and it was perfectly done, just thick enough to require some work to get it up the straw, and it tasted terrific.

Be warned, your order will likely take a while to receive (we waited about 10 minutes) and there's not much room to stand inside. Seats are limited, and you'll likely be taking it to go or saddling up to an outdoor picnic table. Good luck!

Located in the heart of downtown Charlottetown, right in front of a very intriguing old Catholic church, the Gahan House bills itself as the only brewery on the Island.

I started, as I so often do, with a flight of all the beers they'd give me. They range from pretty poor (Sir John A's Honey Wheat, Coles Cream Ale, Harvest Gold Pale Ale) to average (Island Red Amber Ale, 1772 IPA) to quite good (Sydney Street Stout, Ironhorse Dark Ale). I even stumbled in to try their new Oyster White, a strange little wheat beer that I'm fairly sure doesn't actually contain oysters, but I could be wrong.

My wife got the recommended brown bag fish and chips, and she was quite pleased with it. They're likely the single thing Gahan House is known for, outside the beers, and I didn't hear a bad word as most people in our area seemed to be getting it. I decided to go with the Foursquare tip of Curry Butter Chicken served on their fries, a strange suggestion but I'm a slave to social media. Interesting thing - it was excellent. Putting the lunacy of what I was eating aside the butter chicken was rich and tasted excellent, the fries simply worked.

Solid place, my new favourite on the Island. Can't wait to get back!

I've heard much about this place from my many friends who've hailed from Moncton over the years. Headed over there shortly after breakfast for a little morning dessert.

I should note, as we'd just had eggs and bacon, we did not eat here. I can't speak for the food, although by all accounts it's apparently more than adequate, specifically the pizzas. Perhaps one day I shall return.

On my arrival I ordered a sampler featuring everything they had to offer: Blueberry Ale (good, served with real blueberries in it), Cadian Cream Ale (poor), Fire Chief Red Ale (meh), Scotch Ale (good), SOB (very good), IPA (good), Pail Ale (ok), Raspberry Wheat (meh) and my personal favourite, the Muddy River Stout. Don't mind me, I'm a total beer snob, most of these are quite good and served by a friendly staff. Good stuff.

My wife, she's not much for breakfast. However, it's actually my favourite meal of the day. And those who agree with me know that it's also the hardest meal to find done really, really well. Yelp seemed to suggest that I may track that breakfast down here, at Hot Suppa.

We did have to wait upon arrival, this place is quite small with a few benches in the hall. Reminds me of waiting on the outside benches at Matt's Big Breakfast in Phoenix. However ,the wait wasn't too bad and we were in. I quickly ordered a coffee and the item this place is known for - the corned beef hash, sided with two eggs over easy and some recommended potatoes.

First things first - the corned beef hash is as good as you've heard. Selected by Bon Appetit as Portland's #1 breakfast item it may be more than that, it could be the best corned beef hash anywhere. Perfectly assembled with a surprising amount of real corned beef it's just perfection on a plate. Which makes the fact that everything around it was just ok. Not bad, but ok. Standard eggs, I'd be shocked if the bread was made in-house, and packaged jams. Too bad because a place this popular and busy should really be doing things just a little better.

Recommend by everything we could find, from http://ratebeer.com to the AAA book to a friend we met on the way through. We decided to drop by and try out the best beers in Portland, with a side of dinner.

So first up, the beers. This place make it themselves, and they're fairly well known for it. I started with the Lake Trout Stout, pimped as a sweet stout but really tasting more like a solid, roasty dry one. Followed that with a Frye's Leap IPA, a bit of a hop bomb, but a tasty one at that. I lucked out by happening to be there for something called the Dark Wheat Project, a dunkelweizen that was far more dunkel than weizen, but tasty nonetheless. Good beers!

Sadly, the food here is reminiscent of every other chain you can track down in America or Canada. Burgers, wraps, salads, etc.. Hungry as we could be we ordered the sweet potato fries with brown sugar dipping sauce, and they were actually quite good. I followed it up with a Black'n'Blue Burger, a half pound of Angus beef literally poured over with blue cheese dressing. It's a fine burger, but nothing I'm going to write on the Internet about.. well, you get what I mean.

This may be my first restaurant visit based on Foursquare tips. We found ourselves in Harvard Square, hungry and without an advance recommendation in the area. Foursquare seemed overly pleased with this place so in we went.

The beer selection is good with two good taps (DFH60 when I visited!) and a solid stash of bottles. I decided to go with the Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout, good beer.

This place is really all about the pizza, served in half or full sizes, and with some pretty untraditional options. I grabbed a half-sized Hot Cherry Peppers, Black Forest Ham and Manchego while my wife opted for the Potato, Fontina, Parmigiano, Romano, Rosemary, Garlic. Mine was top notch, giant slices of ham with just enough nutty Manchego and a hefty sprinkling of minced hot peppers. The potato pizza was, similarly, chock full of potatoes and cheese, perhaps slightly lacking in the promised rosemary and garlic.

All told the food is great, and the service was adequate, but the prices are a bit out of line for what you're getting. I get that the area is expensive and touristy, but $9 is $9 and I'd hope for a little more than I got for it. Still, if money's not so much your issue, you'll find an enjoyable pizza here.

My wife and I pulled in late to a bed and breakfast in Lexington and asked for some recos for dinner. A series of places were rhymed off, including this one with a caveat that "I've heard people like it but it's not for me." Unsure of what that actually meant, and without other options that seemed more inviting, we headed in to try it out.

It was a Saturday night and the place was empty, save for one single table they sat as right beside(?) and a three-person live act entertaining the masses. We then waited. And waited. We waited over 10 minutes for someone to even check on us for drinks. I was happy to find a small but adequate selection of microbrews and settled for the local-ish Peak Organic IPA, a fine but unremarkable IPA.

We then waited. And waited. There were three wait staff chatting amongst themselves and a "chef" in a Superman shirt playing games on the kitchen computer while we all hung out waiting for orders to be taken. When they finally decided to get the order I decided to go the full all-natural monty and try the Taboule Chicken Wrap with a house salad and "house dressing." The salad was limp veg absolutely coated in a "what if someone made peppercorn ranch with tofu" style dressing, just not good. The wrap, perhaps even worse. The chicken was hard to find and chalky, the combination of dressings, dips and toppings just a mish-mash of far too much. I ended up opening it up, picking at the chicken a bit and calling it a night.

Look, I buy organic and I shop at the markets. I'm all about this kind of restaurant having a place in any city. Here's the issue - Nourish just isn't that good, nor do they appear to care at all about being good. Or courteous. Two stars for being clean, having a decent menu and some live music. But I wouldn't go back.