You might smell like a bonfire—in a good way, that cozy summertime way—when you leave the Salt + Ash Beach House (1741 Lower Water Street downtown Halifax). Salt + Ash opened its doors earlier this month, the sixth restaurant to launch in the Queen’s Marque district at the hands of the Freehand Hospitality group (which owns almost all of the other Queen’s Marque restaurants: Bar Sofia, Café Lunette, Daryâ, Drift and the Peacock Wine Bar, as well as the BKS Speakeasy in the Muir hotel).
Salt + Ash advertises itself as “a warm, relaxed and feel-good retreat where friends come to gather over crackling fire, delicious food and cold beer.” Its menu offers an array of fire-kissed classics and shareable snacks, all east coast inspired and locally sourced. When The Coast visited the Salt + Ash team, they were still buzzing from the rush of their first night and gearing up to do it all again (and again and again and again) for their second night.
Cooking with fire
Despite her face being only inches away from an open flame, chef de cuisine Kayla Nelson, 30, is cool and collected at the helm of Salt + Ash’s bustling kitchen. In the last 18 months, Nelson has supported Freehand openings at Drift, BKS and Daryâ, and now she’s running the show at the Salt + Ash kitchen full time.
“I'm a lot more calm than I thought I was going to be,” she tells The Coast. “Everything has its hiccups but it’s an amazing thing to have gone from sitting in a little office, because nothing was built here yet, to waiting for Drift to open, and then BKS and then coming back down to Daryâ, and then coming over here. It’s just been a wild ride and so much stuff had to happen to get to this point. I just kind of feel a sense of relief.”
Over the last six years in her career, Nelson has cut her teeth in kitchens in Toronto, England and, now, Halifax. But it was during her time in England that Nelson discovered her passions for cooking with fire, sustainable and ethical practices, and wild and foraged ingredients.
“I was working in England for two years prior to the pandemic. And while I was there, I worked in multiple fire-based environments. One was an outdoor, wood fire and foraging cookery school. There, we would literally just go to the woods and teach people how to forage for food. And then we'd bring all the stuff back and we'd cook it all over fire with little ovens with huge fire pits and things like that.”
Nova Scotia-inspired fare
The focal point of Salt + Ash is its crackling open wood-fire hearth (which Nelson helped to design) nestled behind the teak wood bar. Not only does it provide a rustic and laid-back ambiance for diners, it’s also where nearly every dish on the menu is prepared, adding deep, smoky flavours to each ingredient.
Nelson, alongside Freehand’s district executive chef Bill Osborne, has created a relaxed and approachable menu featuring east coast-inspired dishes such as cedar plank scallops, fire-roasted Brussels sprouts and a rum-and-maple-roasted cod.
Its pepperoni pizza in particular will appeal to a Maritime palate with its Brothers pepperoni-topped pie (if you, like me, grew up in Pictou County you’ll understand that Brothers pepperoni is an elite topping) and house made donair sauce (which is less sweet and more garlicky than your typical donny sauce).
It’s fun to imagine Freehand’s Queen’s Marque restaurants as a group of siblings: Bar Sofia as the chic and upbeat go-getter; Peacock Wine Bar as the clever, moody middle child; Cafe Lunette the bright and imaginative bookworm; and Daryâ and Drift, the older, wiser, well-travelled siblings. Now, Salt + Ash is the young and breezy, laid-back surfer type, rounding out the bunch.
