The Halifax Bar Scene

[Dmajackson]

Looks like our Downtown is getting a few new bars and restaurants this Spring. It great to see the empty spaces be used up by Halifax's favourite activities, eating and drinking!

New eateries, bars for downtown Halifax
Some old standbys also getting facelifts
By STEVE PROCTOR Business Editor
Sat. Jan 24 - 5:37 AM

There will be a revamped menu of food and entertainment in downtown Halifax before the snow melts.

Joe McGuiness, co-owner of Durty Nelly’s Irish Pub, said Friday his new pub should be open by Feb. 16.

Located at the corner of Sackville and Argyle streets in the building the Mercury Restaurant and Bar used to call home, the 177-seat pub has interior fittings that were designed and built in Ireland and then shipped to Halifax.

"So it will be an authentic Irish pub down to the chairs around the tables and the tile on the floor," said Mr. McGuiness, who has previously worked at Fox H’rbr, Casino Nova Scotia and with the provincial food and beverage association. His partner in the business is Kyle Drake, a Saint Mary’s University business student and former Huskies football player.

A television crew from Toronto is documenting the construction effort for use as a one-hour episode in a new series scheduled to air on the Food Network this fall. Film crews will do their opening shots next week and then be on the premises from Feb. 8 to 15 with celebrity chef David Adjey offering tips to the new owners on how to make the business stand out.

Around the corner and up the street, renovations are underway to accommodate the move of the Wooden Monkey, the organic operation that opened on Argyle Street in late 2004. Lil MacPherson, the owner, is moving the restaurant to the former Beacon Securities office on Grafton Street.

"We’re doubling our seating capacity," she said Friday. "We’ll have two floors of seating, one of which will have great bar music."

The theme will be environmental, with straw and clay walls and lots of gently used fittings.

"We will have a reservations-only closing party on the 18th. We will be eating whatever is left in the fridge, and then I’m going to ask guests to take their chairs and walk them up the street to the new place. It will be a gas."

Over on Spring Garden Road, there’s renovation work underway for a new gastro pub. The owners of the Old Triangle Ale House are hoping the work will be one in time for an opening at the end of March. Called Minstrels, the 150-seat operation in the former Thirsty Duck space will have a "funky East Coast flavour" with lots of live music.

Victor Syperek, a restaurant owner who found himself in financial difficulty late last year, said changes are also afoot in his operations. He said the Seahorse Tavern will be revamped to become "one of the city’s premier live music venues" and the Marquee Club, which will close Feb. 7, will become the site of a new bar fronted by Craig Mercer, a guitarist with the Jimmy Swift Band.

Mr. Mercer, contacted on tour in Peterborough, Ont., said the bar will be called Paragon Theatre and will use most of the upstairs of the current Marquee Club, but nothing on the second floor. It will have a cafe and art gallery in the front, with a bar to accommodate 600 patrons in the rear

Partners in the project include Mark Townsend, the Marquee’s current general manager and Peter Farmer, an artist from Montreal. The trio have plans for the space ready and hope to open in early April, but they can’t start renovation until the Marquee closes.

Mr. Syperek said the losses associated with operating the Marquee Club were the root cause of problems that forced him to seek creditor protection in late December. He said development of a plan to get him out of the financial trouble is going well, and he’s hopeful creditors owed more than $500,000 will accept the plan. The details of that plan were not available Friday.