A MARITIME TREASURE
Order potatoes three ways — fries, baked or in soup — at the Canadian Potato Museum,
O’LEARY, P.E.I.— If you build a giant something, they will come, cameras in hand. Here at the Canadian Potato Museum, that giant something is a spud named “the Big Potato.”
It is about four metres tall and two metres in diameter. It has no gender, no face and no clothes, although it once became a “he” and was dressed for a hockey event.
The Big Potato, a Russet Burbank variety that might be packaged as a Netted Gem, used to be out where you turn into the museum, but people drove right by it.
Now, you can’t miss it by the front door. It is possible, though, that when you take a selfie, your friends will ask what the beige blob behind you is. It is a giant, but ever so humble, potato.
Even more exciting than a giant spud to some of us (the food-obsessed), is this museum’s potatothemed café.
I drove straight from the Charlottetown airport (a 90-minute journey) on the second-last day of the café’s season in September and promptly ordered potatoes three ways. Baked potato. Potato soup. Fries. I got my baked potato with sour cream and chives, feeling rather pure and turning down cheese, bacon and lobster.
The soup is straightforward, in a good way. If you want something fancier, try the chowder.
The skin-on fries are divine. I ate every single one that came served in a mini version of the wire basket that fries are fried in.
The kitchen swears by Innovators, a variety farmed locally by W.P. Griffin.
There are two more things on the menu that you shouldn’t miss — potato fudge and seaweed pie.
Nick Doucette was making the fudge while I ate, transforming mashed potatoes, icing sugar, milk chocolate chips, vanilla and a little butter into chocolate fudge.
“It’s just like kneading bread or Play-Doh,” she confides.
Doucette is also the keeper of the seaweed pie recipe. The island used to have a thriving Irish moss industry and a seaweed pie café where Doucette worked. Both went under.
“We had some bonny years,” Doucette laments, “but I guess all good things come to an end, sometimes.” The museum swooped in and hired her three summers ago so she could make the pie here. No potatoes are involved, but that’s OK.
Here is the thing you must remember if you plan your outings around food: The museum is open from midMay to mid-October, but the café only runs from mid-June to midSeptember.
Beyond its attention-seeking potato and folksy café, the museum celebrates Prince Edward Island’s thriving potato industry.
It opened in 1993 as the PEI Potato Museum (and part of a community museum) and grew organically — rebranding, upgrading the Potato Blossom Boutique gift shop and adding the kitchen in 2012.
“They decided food was going to be important,” manager Donna Rowley says.
They were right. More than 11,000 people visited last year.
“That’s 14 times the population of O’Leary, which has 860 people,” points out Bill MacKendrick, chair of the museum’s board of directors.
The Big Potato has been featured on a stamp, part of a 2011 set with Shediac, N.B.’s giant lobster; Oxford, N.S.’s big blueberry; and Glover’s Harbour, N.L.’s giant squid.
In 2015, CNN named this place one of the world’s top food museums.
“We have the headline on our web page and we don’t mind advertising it,” MacKendrick boasts.
“It’s quite a nice claim to have. We also hear the word ‘quirky’ a lot.”
When you explore the actual museum, don’t miss the 14 miniature coffins that hold diseased potatoes. Who knew that potatoes battle more than 260 viruses, bacteria, fungi and infections, such as bacterial ring rot, the potato wart, blackheart and black leg?
“Curiosity,” Rowley muses. “I think it’s key for us.
“We kind of like to think that we’re a destination now. But honestly, we have a lot of visitors come just to take a photograph with the Big Potato.” Jennifer Bain was hosted by Tourism PEI, which didn’t review or approve this story.