Salt + Ash Beach House — Restaurant in Halifax

Great atmosphere with lots of natural light coming in the windows on three walls. A cozy fire in one side of the dining area would make this place very nice at night as well. Seating for at least 100 I would guess, with about half of the tables being stand-alone two seaters, some are half cushioned wall bench/half chair, and at least one six seater that I noticed, but there are probably a few of those for bigger groups. Nice, simple, modern vibe with neutral colors.

Great service.

1st visit: Feb 2024. My friend and I split several dishes to maximize what we could try. The Fire Roasted Scallops were amazing - our favorite. Not cheap at $24 for four scallops, but worth the indulgence of the perfect combination of flavors & textures. The "roasted squash (puree at the bottom), smoked butter, bacon (lardons, in my opinion), pumpkin & fennel brittle" (pepitas with sesame seeds). The Shrimp & Grits ($17 - "onion relish, lobster bay butter, everything spice") were also very good, although we found the grits themselves to be more standard, the shrimp were excellent. The Fire-roasted brussel sprouts ($14 - "honey glaze, mezcal, lemon aioli") were very good as well, as a 3rd shareable item, starting to not be as hungry, but definitely satisfied. If you wanted a light lunch, I'd stop here after sharing these three items. For dinner as we were, we added also the Grilled Maitake Mushrooms ($23 - "black truffle, potato confit, cashew cream, pumpkin seeds" - were also delicious to mix the tastes & feel, and a gorgeous presentation. We opted to add yet a 5th item to our order after finishing off these, the Jalapeno Cornbread ($8 - "tequila lime butter") - which was incredibly moist, almost greasy, but very bursting with flavor and weight, for the size of the piece served. Although not sweet, this adequately filled the place of a dessert for us.

2nd visit: for my birthday in Mar 2024. Another friend and I came because I liked it enough to come back the next month, and he was curious to try it as well. Cocktails: He tried the Warm & Fuzzy ($12 'jim beam bourbon, apple cinnamon syrup, lemon juice, cinnamon sugar rim, dehydrated apple spice" and it tasted exactly as it sounds, yummy). He then asked for a Eight O' Five cocktail, but they ran out of the chocolate & peppermint syrup for the rim, which woudl make this drink what it is, so he passed on that and tried the Backyards ($12 "lunazul blanco tequila, grapefruit & lime juice, citric acid, soda, grapefruit salt rim") the rim was a bit too salty & over-powering, but the drink still good and balanced. I tried the Crystal Crescent #3 ($12 - "blue lobster vodka soda, benjamin bridge piquette, charred citrus, grendadine, soda, drunken cherry" - which was refreshing and seemed flat, but that was ok). Food: We got the scallops again and he was just as impressed. Then we tried the Tater Tot-Chos ($14 - "sour cream, salsa, avocado, cheddar, jalapeno") - which come in a mini cast iron pan. Deep fried little cylindric tater tots were very tasty, with the sour cream drizzled all over, dollops of the avocado 'cream' as I'd call it on the side. We inhaled these. As a main, he tried the Fish & Chips ($25 - "salt & vinegar fries, slaw, tartar sauce") where I tasted a bit of it all. The piece of fish is quite large, dominating the place, cooked to perfect where you basically don't have to chew the fish, only the batter, but a good balance of each. The fries were salty but the salt & vinegar 'powder' on them, or whatever it was, was great. Then we decided to try the pizza of the week - Hawaiian. It is probably equivalent to your average medium sized at a normal pizzeria, maybe a touch under at what looked like 12 inches. Very good thin crust with a proper bubbled 'crust' on the edges, a few large pieces of bacon that looked a bit under cooked, but were fine, some small slices of pineapple, jalapeno, excellent pepperoni (perhaps Brothers?), sauce & cheese to make an overall well-rounded pie. We each ate a slice and I took the rest home.

I look forward to...

Posting the email sent to Salt + Ash from our organization as their team barely had a response to us:

We had our event at Salt + Ash on Thursday July 11. The event was planned and booked back in November 2023.

I want to bring up a couple things that happened.

We arrived a little early for our 6:30PM reservation so we were told we could sit on the outdoor patio and have a drink. The server we had outside was amazing, he deserves a 10 star review. We went to our table at 6:45PM, we understand we were a little late to sit but we were instructed we could not pay for our drinks inside and so it took time for us to all pay.

Once inside the server we had, (I believe her name was Deb) was extremely rude. She was slamming drinks on tables and didn't come in very often. We had to get up to get our own water at one point. A few people at the table only had their glass filled once.

We did not receive our appetizers until 7:35PM and our main course until 8:25PM. One of our people is gluten free and was given a salad with croutons. I guess when the server remembered she came and ripped the salad from her mid bite. Didn't even say why just put a new one in front of her.

Rochelle our event planner and our executive director went to speak with the manager (Maggie) about why we had to wait so long for food to arrive. Maggie blamed everything on the kitchen and stated that fish and chips are hard to cook because there is only one pot. I would like to know why this was even on our menu then if it is so difficult to prepare? Maggie completely dismissed what Rochelle and ED were saying and replied with "I have never got that feedback about Deb" and that our bill was being closed.

After realizing that conversation with Maggie was going nowhere Rochelle and ED sat down to eat the food that finally came out.

People were clearly still eating and the server came and started clearing plates at 8:40PM, she ripped the drink menus off the table so fast, it was clear she was not happy we were there.

At 9:04PM we were asked if we wanted coffee.

At 9:15PM dessert was brought out and at 9:35PM maggie came over to figure out the final bill and provided us with what we already had. This took her 10 minutes.

This was the worst experience we have ever had. To plan something like this for our Indigenous Physicians and have the service we had is not ok. We were 15 minutes late to our reservation because we were not allowed to pay for drinks inside, this is no excuse for poor service and extremely long wait times.

Being that we had a preplanned menu this should not have happened, if we had a reservation like everyone else and was ordering off the regular menu then I could understand a longer wait, not the time we had to wait for food though. This was unacceptable.

This experience was not something I would wish on anyone, it was embarrassing to our staff that planned this night at your location and it was traumatic to our Indigenous Physician members to be treated so poorly.

After having sent this email our event coordinator replied

"I have spent some time with the Leadership team discussing your event. We are very sorry that you had such a negative experience with us for your dinner on July 11th!

We have decided to promo any additional costs for your event, and will not be invoicing you for the outstanding amount.

Thank you again for choosing Freehand Hospitality, and I’m sorry that we did not meet your expectations.

We had already spent $750, and paid in cash for aclohol. We owed $200 on our invoice, which we were not charged for.

Read the reviews and know what may...

Update 3: came here for happy hour, great drinks! I enjoyed the strawberry sage cocktail, the beer+tequila was well liked at my table and their mini marg shots are delicious and fun. Pepperoni pizza was hot, melty and hearty. Great garlic donair sauce.

Update 2: came for dinner during happy hours and had the meat pizza and a cocktail (The Cove). Pizza crust was great, meat was good (a bit spicy) but the best pizza I tasted was the mushroom. It had a really creamy garlicky white sauce and lots of mushroom varieties. My cocktail was delicious (very sweet and too easy to drink). Wait staff was friendly. Great night

Update 1: decided to give this place a second try and went to brunch

Well… I feel more disappointed to be honest. I feel like this place is definitely a burger and fries kind of place. Location and atmosphere is great. Presentation is great. Deep fried things are the only things that do well, and everything else is just disappointing.

We had the Dutch baby, shaka shuka and the chicken and maple popovers. FYI Dutch baby and popover is the same thing and they’re not very good. Very tough - I could barely cut it, it was very tough and thick and chewy— like a failed pancake…what made it worse was our round table was not stable, as we were hacking at it the table threatened to spill all of our drinks. Maybe it needs a steak knife or scissors. Fresh blueberries and raspberries were nice, real whipped cream was also great. The cinnamon sugar along the crust (the only edible part) was good-it tasted like a donut. 3/5

The fried chciken and maple popovers had barely any sauce. So… plain chicken (to be fair this batter was good) plain taters and a plain popover/dutchbaby. We asked for more syrup which made it better but by then we already ate 3 of 4 tiny chicken pieces. 3/5

The shaka shuka was a nice flavor but the eggs were overcooked by the time it arrived. 4/5

I’m just glad I didn’t spend a fortune eating here.

But maybe just order deep fried food (fried items come out perfectly fried: crispy but not greasy) , normal pizza and burgers here, anything that requires more skill will be a letdown.

—— Beautiful restaurant, nice views would have been a great place to relax and drink during the summer. We had 2 holiday cocktails that were okay. A friend had the tot-cho which was underwhelming in flavours but it was at least nice and crunchy. 4/5 I had the holiday pork, Brussel sprout white sauce pizza and it was too… tart. I winced with every bite. 2/5 My friend had the fish taco, it was quite good, very fresh and crunchy. 5/5 Another friend had the benedict on the pizza which was cool. Benedict was normal, pizza was normal. But to have those two flavors at once was fun. 4/5 The corn bread was very oily and not great at all. 0/5 We came during the holidays so there were only 2 waitstaff for the 10 tables. Not extremely busy yet the waitress barely glanced at the table and blamed the lack of staffing for the wait. But she was friendly so that was nice 3/5

The vibes here are great but I wouldn’t come here expecting amazing food

Id only recommend...