15 HOURS IN THE HALIFAX AIRPORT: A BLIZZARD-BOUND FOOD DIARY

TK TK PACKAGE DEK TO COME (TOP EDITOR CAN IGNORE)

We were flying from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, and the first fringe of the blizzard had already coated the ground. My friend and I are prudent fliers and had arrived at the airport early, giving ourselves three hours before the flight—plenty of time to check-in, plenty of time to wait, plenty of time to chew our fingernails in nervous anticipation. Our promptness was an attempt to alleviate, as much as possible, the inevitable feeling in airports that the world is against you.

But there's much you can't prepare for, and once you enter an airport you become subject to its rules; life happens in an alternate reality from the rest of the world. When that blizzard led to what ultimately totaled 15 hours in delays—made more painful by the extra time we had allowed to catch our flight—we found that the only way to pass the time was by eating our way through it, exploring everything the airport offered us as new announcements crackled over the loudspeakers.

4:45 p.m.: Burnside Brewing Toller Gold Lager

As we watched the storm brew, wary of our still-on time departure, we sought comfort at one of the airport restaurants, the Firkin & Flyer Pub. There, we nursed pints of Burnside Toller Gold while we looked alternately from the whitened window to the departures board.

5:15 p.m.: Lobster roll

The first delay came sooner than expected, pushing us back an hour, no more. It was manageable, though, by staying at the Firkin and working through some comfort food.

It was my first time on the Canadian east coast, and food hadn’t been the focus of my visit. I’d missed out on much of the local fare: lobster, râpure (a potato casserole), potato skins, blueberry grunt (cobbler), seafood chowder, deep fried Mars bars. As I was saving cod for our destination of St. John’s, all I’d had in a local sense was a late-night Halifax Donair (cousin of the döner), the taste blurred in equal parts by a smothering, sweet milksauce, and the effects of Annapolis Valley white wine.

I opted for the lobster roll, my friend the fish and chips. His sea critter came atop faux newspaper; mine came with a creamy lemon beurre blanc that turned the hanks of claw meat into something divine. The meal was enough to distract us from the buildup of claggy snow against the window, from the blinking panel of delays, from the growing sense of frustration that was in the air around us.

6:30 p.m.: Potato skins

​Around the time our original flight would have started boarding, I joined the crowd staring into the departures screen. We were still delayed by a few unlikely hours. “It’s comin’ down some bad out there,” said a man at my side. I asked him about our chances of takeoff. His answer was an inhaled shilly-shally. “Can’t rightly say. But looks none too good.”

​I returned to our place at the Firkin & Flyer pub, which at that point was our foxhole in the war zone, as other delayed travelers piled up. ​Also piling up were plates and glasses. We’d decided to run the Firkin’s gamut of Nova Scotia brewing: Tatamagouche ales, Big Spruce stout, 2 Crows IPA, Garrison sour ale, Propeller pilsner. And to help the medicine go down, potato skins: Nova Scotia’s answer to nachos, that replaces tortilla chips with slices of potato and doubles down on the jalapeño. Susan, the waitress, had become one of us, a traveler in-kind, making tracks across the incredibly busy pub.

At this point, an announcement was made. No arrivals would be coming in. And nothing would be going out, nothing at all: the highway had been closed. We were snowbound.

9:30 p.m.: Fried pepperoni

After the beer, and a round of burgers, we must have been looking glum: Susan came by with a plate of fried pepperoni. We’d been trying to eat our way through to the other side of delay—the side where movement is bodily impossible. But this pepperoni wasn’t ours, and we shook our heads at it.

“On the house,” she said. She was on her way to another table, two plates of burger and fries balanced on her one forearm, her other hand on a chucked hip. “My granny used to say ‘Feed a cold, starve a fever.’ Well, we’re feeding cold here tonight. Cold people!”

​That was Nova Scotia: accommodating, ready to commiserate in any circumstance, particularly the bad times. The peninsula was a confluence of Indigenous Mi’kmaq people, and Black Refugees from the United States, Acadian, and Gaelic cultures; a shared history of hardship formed the basis for a strong sense of community. And a snowstorm might be major, but it was nothing new. Not like the time Dan, from the next table over, dug his truck out from under six feet of wet-pack snow. Or the blizzard in which Silvia, also flying to St. John’s, had lost power to her Musquodoboit Harbour home, and decided to invite her neighbors over to eat all the ice cream in her freezer before it melted. “I know I could’ve just put it outside,” she said. “But where’s the fun in that?”

5:00 a.m.: Deep-fried Mars bar

​We kipped on the airport floor, our luggage around us as both bedding and a protective shield. We slept fitfully, the sleep of the overdue and the overindulged. I woke up in the darkness of pre-dawn, but in the working light of the tarmac, I could see the snow had stopped. The ground crew was already clearing the path for our exit. ​

We were still keen on St. John’s, of course, but there were other alternatives: Susan’s place, or Dan’s, or Silvia’s, all of whom had offered beds and a hot meal “if things went looney.”

The Firkin & Flyer was just opening, a few shadows already bent over eggs and coffee. I needed some of that myself, but there was something else, something sweeter, that could perfectly cap that endless last day in Nova Scotia. Under any other circumstance, a deep-fried Mars bar at 5:00 a.m. would have been inexcusable. But this was just dessert at the end of a very long night.

8:00 a.m.: Departure

We arrived in St. John’s late for our appointments, but happy to have arrived at all. After a few days and even more meals in the city—cod tongues, salt fish with drawn butter and a side of brewis (hard bread), and sweet toutons (fried bread dough)—we prepared to leave. The forecast wasn’t good; another blizzard was coming across the Gulf. We didn’t mind. Another delay was just just another series of opportunities.