Exploring Gros Morne + Fresh Mussels!

Sept 5, 2019

Thunder and lightning woke us up early today, but by 8:00, the sky was clearing although it was still very windy.  After a leisurely breakfast, we drove to Lobster Cove Head Lighthouse.  It is the last lighthouse to be automated.  Parks Canada has made this site a historical site and a museum. Visitors can see how the lighthouse keeper and his family lived and maintained a lifestyle when there were no roads and very few amenities. 

While speaking to a Parks employee we learned that there is a program in Gros Morne that Parks Canada is promoting called, “Chefs in Residence”. This program puts on various meals at different venues in the park, using traditional Newfoundland foods. The money raised goes to local school programs.  Today they would be serving cooked mussels at the Glass Station, a local artist gallery in Rocky Harbor.  We decided to take it in at 3:00.

We drove out to Norris Point, another tiny village tucked in at the end of a fiord in the park.  The drive was scenic and the village is another beautiful quaint setting. We then returned to Rocky Harbor to have the mussel meal. The Chefs were there, Chef Andy Rea is a visiting Irish chef and he is working with Chef Alain Bosse, an Acadian chef.  Alain is the cooking ambassador for the four Maritime Provinces.  He is well known on the East coast as the Kilted Chef.  Outside of the Glass Station, the chefs have set up a large cauldron, and boiling inside was a huge mound of mussels.  They smelled fantastic.  When they were ready, they served the mussels in small bowls that we could eat inside the Glass Station.  It was a perfect setting for the 15 of us to enjoy.  After we had enjoyed two helpings we left.  

Debbie had mentioned that she wanted to eat as much seafood as she could in Newfoundland, so we stopped in at the local fish plant and bought 3 pounds of mussels for $5.95!  We bought some fresh bread, and then went back to the campsite.  I set up the Coleman stove on the picnic table and heated up our pot for the mussels.  We sat outside, drinking wine, and eating a fantastic meal of fresh mussels, and fresh bread.  It was a wonderful way to end the day.