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Chapter 07Hydrostone
Hydrostone restaurants, bakeries and breweries in north Halifax
Hydrostone restaurants on Young Street and nearby: pizza, a patio dining room, a French bakery and breweries on Kempt Road, Robie and North Street.
Find your next table
Get your bearings
Young Street & the north.
Hydrostone restaurants sit on one short block of Young Street. The Hydrostone itself is a planned neighbourhood of matching stone row houses, built after the Halifax Explosion of 1917 levelled this part of the city. The shops face a narrow, grassy boulevard, and the whole market is small enough to see in ten minutes.
The block has a pizza trattoria, a dining room with a patio, a bakery and a tea and gelato shop. A few streets away, Kempt Road, Robie Street and North Street add three breweries and a donair counter that has been there since the 1970s.
Restaurants / 3 places
Hydrostone restaurants on Young Street and nearby
Everything here is within a few doors of everything else. Evenings are busy in summer, when the patios open.
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Salvatore’s Pizzaiolo Trattoria
A neighbourhood trattoria on the market block, known for thin, wood-oven style pizza and a short list of Italian classics. It is a reliable choice for a casual dinner.
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The Ostrich Club
A small dining room with a patio on the market block. It is open in the evenings for most of the week, and booking ahead is a good idea.
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Tony’s Famous Donairs & Pizza
A donair and pizza counter a few blocks south of the market that traces its roots to a shop at the corner of Robie and Cunard in 1976. It won The Coast’s Best Donair reader poll in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Bakeries / 2 places
Bakeries and cafés in the Hydrostone Market
For something sweet after a walk around the boulevards.
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Julien’s Patisserie
A French-style bakery and café at the end of the block, known for its pastries and jam-filled cookies.
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Humani-T Cafe
Tea, shortbread and gelato, with an upper floor that looks out over the Hydrostone boulevards.
Breweries / 3 places
Breweries a short walk from the Hydrostone
Several breweries have opened in the streets west and south of the Hydrostone. These three are within fifteen minutes on foot.
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Stillwell
The Kempt Road brewery of one of the city’s best-known beer names. The taproom shares its high-ceilinged room with the fermenters and is set up as a listening bar with a turntable booth.
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Good Robot Brewing
A welcoming taproom on Robie Street with a large outdoor space for warm evenings.
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Unfiltered Brewing
A North Street brewery with a strong local following for hoppy beer and a deliberately blunt attitude.
After 1917
The neighbourhood that rose after the Explosion
On the morning of 6 December 1917, the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc collided with the Norwegian ship Imo in the Narrows and caught fire. The explosion that followed destroyed much of Richmond, the part of the North End closest to the water, and killed about two thousand people.
The Halifax Relief Commission brought in the British town planner Thomas Adams to lay out a new district on the slope to the west. The Hydrostone was built in the years after the war from fire-resistant concrete blocks, with rows of houses facing tree-lined boulevards and service lanes running behind them.
The district is a National Historic Site of Canada. The houses are still lived in, so the boulevards are quiet, and the shopfronts on Young Street are the commercial part of the original plan.
Kempt Road, on the western edge, is a different world of car dealerships, warehouses and light industry. That roomier, cheaper space is where breweries have settled, and a taproom visit there is easy to combine with the market.
A visit takes about an hour without a meal: a loop of the boulevards, a coffee or a pastry on Young Street and a walk up to the memorial on Fort Needham. Add dinner at the trattoria or a stop at a taproom on Kempt Road and it fills an easy afternoon and evening.
A few field notes
Walking around the Hydrostone
The Hydrostone was designed after the 1917 Halifax Explosion as a new start for the north of the city. Its short streets of row houses face grassy boulevards, and the whole district is a national historic site. A loop of the boulevards takes about fifteen minutes.
Fort Needham Memorial Park is a few minutes east, on the hill that overlooks the Narrows. The memorial at the top marks the explosion, and the view explains why this part of the city was hit so hard.
From the North End, walk west on Young Street from Gottingen or Agricola. The Hydrostone is about ten minutes from the Agricola Street bars, so it works well as the start or the end of a North End evening.
Find your way · Hydrostone
What are the best Hydrostone restaurants?
Salvatore’s Pizzaiolo Trattoria and The Ostrich Club are the two dining rooms on the Young Street block, and Julien’s Patisserie is the bakery. Tony’s on Robie Street is a few blocks south.
Are there breweries near the Hydrostone?
Yes. Stillwell on Kempt Road, Good Robot on Robie Street and Unfiltered on North Street are all within a short walk.
Why is it called the Hydrostone?
The houses were built from a pressed concrete block called hydrostone, chosen to rebuild quickly after the 1917 Halifax Explosion.
Is the Hydrostone part of the North End?
Yes. It sits at the northwest edge of the North End, about ten minutes on foot from Agricola Street.