There are a few places on the Halifax waterfront that lean hard into their history, but McKelvie's Restaurant & Bar does it with a bit more character than most. The restaurant sits at 1680 Lower Water Street in a renovated turn-of-the-century fire hall, built in 1906 to house the horse-drawn equipment of the Halifax Fire Department. It opened its doors in 1982 and has been serving Nova Scotia seafood for over forty years now, and the building itself is well over a century old.
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The history is worth a moment before you order. The hall once held the 'Victoria', a steam fire engine delivered in 1861 that was the first of its kind in Halifax and one of the first in all of Canada. It was built by the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company of Manchester, New Hampshire, and arrived in the spring of 1861. After a successful test on April 11, when it shot a stream of water onto a three-storey building on Lower Water Street, the city officially assigned it to the Union Engine Company on April 29. By February 1912, the council sold it to Charles Brister & Son for $150 after failing to find a buyer willing to pay more. Now, instead of fire engines, the space holds diners.
As for the food, the menu is built around the freshest catch from local vendors, and it reads like a love letter to the Maritimes. The lobster is the obvious star: a lobster roll with fresh lobster and lemon herb mayo runs C$28, and the lobster dinner comes straight from the house saltwater tank. If you want a bit of everything, the fish fry piles panko shrimp, Digby scallops and crunchy haddock with fries and homemade coleslaw for C$33, and the seafood sampler brings together bacon-wrapped scallops, haddock croquettes and Cajun shrimp. Digby scallops, panko-battered and served with scented rice and Cajun tartare, are C$25, and the lobster pasta, with Nova Scotia lobster and lobster cream, is C$49.
It is not all seafood, though. There is a 'From the Land' section for when you want something other than fish: a 10-ounce New York striploin with garlic mashed potatoes and a cherry red wine reduction is C$44, duck confit with wild mushroom risotto is C$33, and a grilled bone-in pork chop with Bourbon BBQ glaze and apple compote is C$32. For something lighter, the apple'n beets salad with spinach, caramelized walnuts and goat cheese is C$15, and the white bean artichoke dip with roasted garlic and onion is C$14. And if you have room at the end, the Mile High Coconut Cream Pie is the one thing everyone points to.
A few practical notes before you go. It is casual dining, open year-round, with patio seating and a children's menu. Weekdays it opens at 11:30 am and runs until close, and on weekends it opens at noon. Takeout is available daily, so you can call ahead for the lunch, dinner and chef group menus, which come specially packaged. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and there is a global selection of wines to go with whatever you land on. With a Google rating of 4.4 from over 1,500 reviews, it is hard to go wrong here, whether you are in the mood for a full lobster dinner or just a few appetizers and a drink by the water.
