Food & Drink, Tuesday, October 31, 2006, p. B1

Barbara Ramsay Orr
The Canadian Press

Few of us can claim to have taught a famous actress new tricks, but Helen Fowlow took a dame of the British stage and screen and taught her how to bake a French baguette, how to cure a touch of respiratory infection and how to fall in love with the simple things in life.

When Lasse Hallstrom went looking for the right piece of Newfoundland coastline to film his movie adaptation of Annie Proulx's novel "The Shipping News," he discovered Trinity Bight, a small harbour of paradise on the Bonavista Peninsula.

And when filming was about to commence, the stars of the film - Dame Judy Dench, Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett - discovered the Fishers' Loft Inn and Fowlow's superb cooking.

The Fishers' Loft, one of the province's finest inns, is built in the local vernacular architectural style, using local building materials and local craftsmen. The interiors are minimalist, muted and calming. Sleeping here is a bit like sleeping in a Christopher Pratt painting. It is a kind of luxury without clutter.

Like the decor, the dining is focused on local produce and traditional dishes, with recipes that celebrate the quality of local fish, vegetables and berries, without too much fussiness.

Fowlow is the main chef at the inn, and found that cooking for movie stars, at least this particular bunch, was hassle free.

"I didn't know any of them before," she said recently. "I've led a rather sheltered life here in Ship Cove. But Dame Judy was a down-to-earth lady who demanded no special treatment and never had moods."
One day, when Dench had decided to entertain her co-workers, she appeared in Fowlow's kitchen for a lesson in bread baking. When the final loaves, brown and crusty and perfect, emerged from the oven, Dench carried them in her arms to the table to slice and serve herself.

"You'd have thought she had just given birth," says innkeeper John Fisher. "She was that pleased."

And so were her guests - Spacey, Moore, Gordon Pinsent, Hallstrom and other actors and producers whom she had invited to the inn for dinner.

When Dench's grandson came to visit and developed a respiratory infection, Fowlow's down-home remedy, "a mustard bag," cured him. And when the actress summed up her feelings about Port Rexton, Trinity Bay and English Harbour, she declared, "This must have been the way England was a hundred years ago."

Considering that most of the people who live here are the descendants of English settlers who came here in the 1700s, that is just about right.

Between takes, there were long walks with the inn's resident dog, three-legged Heike, views of big skies and rugged coastline, and the serenely isolated calm of this inn at the end of the lane in a Newfoundland outport.
And at the end of a busy day, food to satisfy.

Fowlow's style of cooking, with its emphasis on robust flavours and fresh ingredients, is typical of the hearty fare enjoyed in the area, and celebrated at Fishers' Loft.

It's one of the reasons that the inn garnered a star in "Where to Eat in Canada" - one of only two restaurants in the province to be so honoured. For more information, contact Fishers' Loft Inn at www.fishersloft.com.

Illustration(s):
Dame Judi Dench
Helen Fowlow poses with a bowl of lettuce outside Fisher's Loft Inn in Port Rexton, in this photo taken in August. -Photo by The Canadian Press