Driving New Brunswick’s Acadian Coast—Good Eating in Caraquet
Continuing north from the Acadian Peninsula, the town of Caraquet is best known as the home of Festival acadien de Caraquet, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary this August. The two-week event, one of the most popular festivals in the Atlantic provinces pays tribute to the vibrant Acadian culture through music, cabaret, poetry, and wild parades. Yet, there’s another event happening here the rest of the year that food lovers in particular will cherish. Thanks to chef Karen Mersereau, Caraquet has become a hotbed of gastronomy. Mersereau was a food marketing rep in Toronto when she met Gerard Paulin, the third-generation hotelier of Hotel Paulin, a Victorian-era gem perched on a hill above the water of Caraquet Bay. A dozen years later, the couple are parents of a boy, Jules, and Karen is firmly entrenched at the helm of the hotel’s kitchen. She has wisely aligned herself with the top food harvesters in the region.
The forests surrounding Caraquet are ripe with morels, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, and other goodies like the foot of the cattail. Jean Patenaude made a name for himself scouring the countryside for edibles, bringing home laundry baskets full of wild mushrooms on ideal days in summer. Out on the water, Gaetan Dugas’ Caraquet Bay oysters are a prized commodity in high demand from chefs around North America. Especially the petites, small oysters that are both succulent and briny. Dugas’ ancestors include a pirate who commandeered a ship against the British in the 1750s, but it’s his father who taught him how to oyster farm and his grandfather who taught him the traditional ways of the local Mi’kmaq people.
Mersereau takes advantage of both these men’s expertise to create a memorable wild mushroom oyster bisque. To ensure that every spoonful is chockful of meat, she throws in the native palourdes clam, similar to a quahaug. The bevy of local supplies would make most chefs weep with joy. Snow crabs, tuna, Atlantic salmon, shrimp, lobster, and halibut right off the boat, goat cheese and spring-fed lamb found in nearby farms, and blueberries and cloudberries grow wild along the coast, perfect for making a sublime pie. At Hotel Paulin, the locavore movement has reached its crescendo.
Meet Michael Shapiro like I first did on a trip to Kenya almost a decade ago and you’re immediately attracted to his zest for life and adventure. Heck, he guides his own raft down the tumultuous Colorado River for three weeks for a heavy dose of adrenalin. Once you get to know Shapiro, you also realize he doesn’t beat around the bush, asking poignant questions about your life, even taking the time to listen. These are the essential qualities of a great interviewer and Shapiro is one of the best as you’ll see in his latest work, The Creative Spark. During the past decade, Shapiro has interviewed some of our brightest luminaries for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications. They include authors David Sedaris, Barbara Kingsolver, and Pico Iyer; musicians Smokey Robinson, Lyle Lovett, and Jethro Tull lead singer and flutist Ian Anderson. He’s also spoken with director Francis Ford Coppola and comedian Joan Rivers. In these interviews, Shapiro digs deep to find the inspiration that transforms their visions into art. 
Over the years, I’ve given travel advice to friends, family, neighbors, editors, strangers, you name it. Once people know you’re a travel writer, the questions quickly follow. And believe me, I’m happy to point folks in the right direction. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. But I was stunned and delighted to get the following email:
Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry Basseches
Caraquet sounds like a beautiful place. I must visit there sometime soon.
You’d love the mix of oceanfront scenery, local food, art, and Acadian culture, Fran. It’s right up your alley!
I’m going to be in St. John at the end of July. I’ve never been there, can’t wait!
You’ll love it, Fran! We’ll have to discuss some of my favorite Bay of Fundy sites.