There’s nothing I love more than a good road trip, so on a recent visit to Canada I had some time to spare and decided to drive up from Toronto to Montreal. ‘But why?’ said my friends. ‘There’s nothing to see on the way – why don’t you just fly?’ But as it turned out, these opinions were expressed by people who had never had the good fortune to visit Prince Edward County, one of the places putting Ontario on the international food and wine map.
About 170 kilometres out of Toronto, leave Highway 401 and make a right onto Highway 33 to cross the narrow spit of land that keeps Prince Edward County, a 1,000 square kilometres peninsula, from floating off into Lake Ontario. Driving into the County (as locals call it) is a little like stepping back a couple of decades in time. The towns and villages are full of pretty clapboard buildings and quirky shops. Farm stalls of all shapes and sizes, often with an unmanned honesty box for purchases, dot the tiny country roads. Locals are astonishingly friendly and more than once we were directed from one shop or wine farm to the next one on the basis of a personal recommendation from the previous establishment. There is a real sense of community and supporting each other – a sense of living in a more helpful, laidback and altogether more gracious era. And it is here that one of Canada’s newest and hippest food and drink scenes is emerging
The largest community and seat of the County’s government is Picton on the Bay of Quinte but we stayed in the quaint and centrally located village of Bloomfield, renowned for having some of the County’s finest accommodation, restaurants and quirky artisan stores. Before we even checked into our accommodation I made a pit stop to sample some ice cream at Slicker’s, a small traditional parlour where small batches are handmade daily. The flavour to have is definitely Campfire, a creamy toasted marshmallow flavoured ice cream, complete with those little charred black bits and smoky flavour that fire-roasted marshmallows have.