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Chapter 06South End
South End Halifax restaurants and cafés around Spring Garden Road
South End Halifax restaurants and cafés on Spring Garden Road and South Park Street: bistros, banh mi, a rooftop patio and coffee near Dalhousie.
Find your next table
Get your bearings
Spring Garden & South Park.
South End Halifax restaurants gather on two streets. Spring Garden Road is the busy shopping street that runs west from the Public Gardens, and South Park Street runs south from the gardens past the old houses toward Inglis Street. Further west, Coburg Road is the university side, with cafés full of students from Dalhousie and King’s.
The South End is quieter than downtown and more residential. It is a good part of the city for a long lunch, a coffee after a walk through the gardens or an early dinner before a show, and most of it is flat and easy to walk.
Restaurants / 4 places
South End Halifax restaurants on South Park Street and Spring Garden Road
A short list, close together. Several are open from breakfast to late, which helps when plans change.
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Public
A light-filled room that works as a café and bakery in the morning and afternoon, then turns into a bistro for lunch, dinner and late-night drinks.
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Le Bistro by Liz
A relaxed bistro at the south end of the street. It is at its busiest for weekend brunch.
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Indochine Banh Mi
Banh mi and Vietnamese dishes a few doors down from Public, useful for a quick, inexpensive lunch.
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Your Father’s Moustache
A pub that has been on Spring Garden Road since 1989. The large rooftop patio looks over the street toward the Public Gardens and is one of the best-known patios in the city.
Coffee / 4 places
Coffee between the gardens and the university
Spring Garden Road has the shoppers’ cafés. Coburg Road, toward Dalhousie, has the study cafés.
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Just Us! Café
The Spring Garden café of a fair-trade coffee co-operative from Nova Scotia, with cold brew in season.
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First Sight Coffee & Bar
A café and bakery near the library end of the road, with a bar for later in the day.
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Coburg Social
The former Coburg Coffee House, now serving drinks as well as coffee and food. The tables are usually full of students and staff from Dalhousie and King’s.
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Tart & Soul Café
A café inside a bouldering gym across Coburg Road. The opening hours are short, so check before you go.
Gardens and campuses
Gardens, universities and a park at the tip of the peninsula
The Halifax Public Gardens date from 1867 and are laid out as a formal Victorian garden, with flower beds, ponds, fountains and a bandstand built for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. They are a national historic site and open from spring until late autumn.
West of the gardens, the South End becomes a university district. Dalhousie University, founded in 1818, fills several blocks along Coburg Road and University Avenue, and the University of King’s College shares its campus. Saint Mary’s University is a little further south on Robie Street. In term time the cafés follow the student timetable.
Point Pleasant Park covers the southern tip of the peninsula. Its trails run through woods to the shore of the harbour and the Northwest Arm, and the Prince of Wales Tower, a round stone fort from the 1790s, stands near the middle of the park.
The Halifax Central Library, opened in 2014 at the corner of Spring Garden Road and Queen Street, has a café on its top floor and a terrace looking toward the harbour. It is a good place to sit out a rain shower between lunch and the gardens.
The South End is easy on foot. Spring Garden Road runs about a kilometre from Barrington Street to the Public Gardens, and the walk on from the gardens to Coburg Road and the Dalhousie campus takes another fifteen minutes. Several bus routes run along Spring Garden Road and South Park Street for the trip back downtown.
A few field notes
An afternoon in the South End
The Halifax Public Gardens sit at the corner of Spring Garden Road and South Park Street, so the easiest South End afternoon starts there. The gardens are open from spring to late autumn, and the cafés on Spring Garden Road are a minute from the gates.
Spring Garden Road is busiest on Saturday afternoons, when the shoppers, the students and the people coming out of the gardens all meet. For a quieter lunch, South Park Street and Coburg Road are a block or two away.
For a longer walk, follow South Park Street south to Point Pleasant Park at the tip of the peninsula. It takes about twenty minutes and passes many of the South End’s old wooden houses.
Find your way · South End
What are the best South End Halifax restaurants for brunch?
Le Bistro by Liz is the usual weekend choice, and Public on South Park Street serves food from the morning onward.
Which South End restaurant has a rooftop patio?
Your Father’s Moustache on Spring Garden Road has a large rooftop patio that looks toward the Public Gardens.
Where can students get coffee near Dalhousie?
Coburg Social and Tart & Soul Café are both on Coburg Road, a short walk from the main Dalhousie campus.
Is Spring Garden Road part of downtown?
The eastern end, near the library and Barrington Street, blends into downtown. West of the Public Gardens, the street belongs to the South End.