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Originally Posted by Drybrain
What's funny is that it actually was written by a local freelancer. People take their own stereotypes to heart, maybe.
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I don't know much about freelance journalists and the editing process. It feels like the English-language national media, based mostly in Toronto, tends to rely heavily on the same condescending tropes over and over. The Maritimes are rural and struggling to catch up. It is acceptable to admire Quebec culturally but it is an economic basketcase with an oversized sense of entitlement and definitely not a rival of Ontario in any way. Alberta is full of hicks. BC is full of hippies; again, not to be taken seriously. Saskatchewan and Manitoba are nothing but giant farms and potash mines and the North is a place we should all feel bad about.
I like to watch French-language Canadian shows sometimes too and, while they tend to be extremely Quebec-centric, the attitude toward the rest of Canada is not as condescending. I have also noticed that articles about smaller parts of Canada from the US or UK media do not have the same tone. This suggests to me that the tone of the Toronto-based media isn't an unavoidable consequence of the larger/smaller city dynamic.
When you step back and think about restaurants in particular, it's not clear why we should be so focused on whether they're in big cities or little cities. The best-ranked restaurants in the world lately have been in small towns or cities in Spain, Copenhagen, etc. The biggest cities don't in any way have a monopoly on the best food in the world.
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(Still, that aside, I though it captures the new and rapid turnover in the dining scene pretty well.)
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I'm pretty impressed with the new restaurants in Halifax. It was not a very good food town back in the 90's, although it always had a few natural advantages. Today the quality of the better places is surprisingly high and the variety stacks up pretty well against much larger cities. It also seems like people are willing to try out foods they would not have in the past, and that it's much easier for restaurants with non-standard menus to survive. I also like the fact that the trend toward locally- or regionally-sourced ingredients has caught on there because the Maritimes are blessed with a pretty solid assortment of regional food products. Not many regions have the equivalent of an Annapolis Valley plus good seafood in close proximity.
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