When arriving for dinner at The Inn at Bay Fortune in Prince Edward Island, Canada, guests aren’t immediately seated at the rustic, family-style tables in the main dining room. Instead, they’re first taken on a guided tour of the property’s staggering, eight-acre culinary farm outside. Because why sit down to read the night’s menu, says chef Michael Smith, when you can head out and physically explore where it’s all about to come from?
Running from May to October at the quaint inn-slash-restaurant, Smith and his team of chefs and foragers have developed a unique “FireWorks Feast”—an immersive, farm-to-table dining experience that starts promptly at 5 p.m., and centers around teaching guests about how and where all of the restaurant’s dishes are created (most of the night’s fare is made from fresh ingredients that have been grown and cultivated on-site). Of course, the best part about it is that guests get to taste it all too, via Smith’s contemporary dishes. “We’re trying to move people away from the idea that ‘wild food’ is a novelty,” says Smith. “These foods have been known to us for thousands of years; they may be novel to us in our contemporary food culture, but we’re trying to fix that.”
Smith—an American-Canadian Chef, whose star rose on programs such as Chef at Home and The Inn Chef—has longstanding roots on the island. “I’ve been here over 30 years,” says Smith. “I grew up as a chef here cooking in the ’90s.” When he and his wife Chastity took over the inn back in 2015, they saw an opportunity to use a fine-dining experience to show guests how exactly their food is cultivated and cooked—and to make it part of the whole experience. The property certainly has a lot to work with in that regard: The farm holds multiple greenhouses, herb gardens, farm beds, and even an orchard. Over 200 different fruits and vegetables are produced by the farm every year, and what they don’t grow—like seafood and certain meats, though they do have a chicken coop and three pigs—they source from local producers nearby. “There are a lot of places out there that claim they’re growing everything they serve, and they don’t even come close,” says Smith. “It would be a colossal miss if we had all this amazing produce just rolling through the back door. The farm might as well be 50 miles away.”
Smith’s FireWorks Feast has since become one of the island’s most coveted dining experiences, for both locals and tourists alike: In mid-July, the evening’s dining room was—as usual—completely booked up. The evening began with a cocktail hour outside, where cocktails such as Aperol spritzes or gin and tonics were served. Then, it was onto the farm tour, where in-house farmer Kevin Petrie walked guests throughout the property—showcasing everything from its test gardens, where various seeds are planted and grown, to the fire garden, where PEI oysters were shucked raw or roasted on the fire with butter. Oysters are a specialty of the island, after all; sometimes Smith and his team shuck as many as 700 oysters a night, all sourced from local oyster farms. “Our oysters have a sweet neutrality to them,” says Smith. “We have no minerals in our groundwater.”
After learning about some of the farm’s various sustainability initiatives—it practices regenerative agriculture, among other things, ensuring that its food production also nurtures the soil it extracts from—guests are then escorted into the main dining room for the night’s full menu tasting, which changes daily. “We have a very specific system to engage with the farm, so we know what’s coming in every day,” says Smith. Inside, all of the tables are arranged family-style—a deliberate arrangement that’s meant to ignite conversation with your neighbors. “There’s just something about conversation with new people and new ways of thinking—it’s the most powerful thing you do,” says Smith. The best seat in the house, no doubt, is the long table near the open-concept kitchen, where guests can watch Smith and his team assemble each dish.
The six-course meal then began with a “bread tree”—don’t fill up on bread, though!—and Smith’s take on traditional East Coast Chowder, which generously featured halibut, scallop, salt cod, lobster, mussels, and potato. Up next was the catch of the day—a savory halibut served with zucchini, garlic scape, and a Sorrel flower. A seafood dish in PEI is always a must, says Smith. “We’re exploring the traditions of Maritime Canada,” he says.
Then, it was time to cleanse the palette with the Harvest Bowl—a leafy salad made of various stems and herbs, infused with strawberries, edible flowers, and popcorn for crunch (yes, really). “Watercress is part of our salad every night,” says Smith. “It grows wild in almost every stream around here, and it s the single most nutritionally dense food on the planet.”
Just when you thought you were getting full, Smith brings out his meat, potatoes, and vegetable course. On tap was a smoked beef brisket and fingerling potatoes, finishes off with swiss chard, parsnip, eggplant, and red beet scallion. “Everybody knows PEI grows potatoes, but what they don’t know is we have the best beef in the country,” says Smith. “We don’t have feedlots on this island—everything is pastured and small-family farms.” To end it all, naturally, was an artful dessert plate: a foraged strawberry mouse, strawberry sorbet, and wild rose whip. (Guests were also given a singular marshmallow to roast on the fire outside as they exited—a sweet touch.)
It’s a decadent experience, but a thoughtful one—knowing that all the food has been prepared with such care and intention, and sourced just steps away from your seat. For Smith, that sentiment will always remain at the heart of the establishment—in fact, it’s what he believes makes the food taste so good. “The biggest takeaway here is just the joy of the table,” he says. “That s all we’re trying to do: Bring people together, and to learn. We want to show that you can create a restaurant culture that honors and respect everything around us.”
