HALIFAX NOVEMBER 21: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Pop-Up Dinner exclusively for Opimian Members featuring two of Nova Scotia’s most celebrated culinary legends and Opimian's Master of Wine, Michael Palij MW!

Saturday, 21 November 2026

Banook Canoe Club, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

AN EVENING OF EXTRAORDINARY FOOD AND WINE

A Once-in-a-Lifetime

Pop-Up Dinner

 Exclusively for Opimian Members

 Featuring two of Nova Scotia’s most celebrated culinary legends,

back behind the pans together — for one night only.

CRAIG FLINN

Chef, Author & the Soul of Halifax’s Culinary Renaissance

Born and raised in Dartmouth, Craig Flinn is, quite simply, one of the defining figures of Atlantic Canadian cuisine. After training at the Culinary Institute of Canada, he apprenticed under culinary royalty — honing his craft alongside Michael Smith at the legendary Inn at Bay Fortune on Prince Edward Island, before crossing the Atlantic to work under Anton Edelmann at The Savoy Hotel in London and in the kitchens of Switzerland.

In 2001, Craig returned to his roots and opened Chives Canadian Bistro on Halifax’s Barrington Street — a restaurant that would go on to become a nationally celebrated institution and a standard-bearer for locally sourced, seasonal Maritime cooking. With menus built almost entirely around Nova Scotia’s farmers, fishermen and artisan producers, Craig became the province’s most passionate and eloquent champion of cooking from the land and sea around him.

A prolific cookbook author with five acclaimed titles to his name, Craig brought that same devotion to the page — capturing the flavour and character of Maritime Canada for readers across the country, most recently in The Maritime Celebrations Cookbook. After more than two decades building one of Halifax’s most beloved restaurant families, Craig stepped away from the kitchen. He has not cooked for the public since.

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MICHAEL HOWELL

Chef, Visionary & Keeper of the Slow Food Flame

Michael Howell has lived many lives, and cooked in most of them. Trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago, he built a career that took him through the finest kitchens of New York, Boston, Detroit, Toronto and the Bahamas — before his home province called him back.

In 2003, Michael settled in Wolfville, in the heart of the Annapolis Valley, and opened Tempest World Cuisine — a restaurant that would rapidly earn its place among the most respected fine dining establishments in Atlantic Canada. His philosophy was simple and radical at once: marry the very best of Nova Scotia’s extraordinary local larder with the cooking techniques and flavour instincts of a genuinely world-class chef.

The accolades followed. In 2011, Michael was named the Province of Nova Scotia’s Local Food Hero. In 2012, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contributions to the food movement and community in Canada. As Co-Chair of Slow Food Canada and founder of the internationally renowned Devour! The Food Film Fest — the largest culinary film festival in the world — Michael’s influence has extended far beyond the kitchen.  Michael is currently the Principal of Tempestuous Culinary Institute. He sold Tempest in 2012. He has not cooked publicly in Nova Scotia since.

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ONE NIGHT. TWO LEGENDS. TOGETHER AGAIN.

On Saturday 21 November 2026, Craig Flinn and Michael Howell will return to the kitchen together — not in any restaurant, but in a single, intimate pop-up dinner for a small group of Opimian members. These are two retired chefs at the peak of their powers, men who walked away at the top of their game, coming back for one extraordinary night. There will not be another occasion like this.

The menu is a love letter to the ingredients and traditions that shaped both careers: smoky Maritime salmon, sweet Nova Scotia seafood, the bold comfort of braised P.E.I. beef, the earthy grace of Italian orecchiette — and a dessert that, as Michael quietly puts it, he only perfected recently. Every dish will be a conversation between two chefs who have spent their lives thinking about what food in this part of the world can truly be.

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THE WINES

Selected & matched by Michael Palij, Master of Wine

Every great dish deserves a worthy companion. The wines for this dinner have been personally selected and matched to the menu by Michael Palij MW — Opimian’s lead Master of Wine. Each pairing has been chosen not merely to complement the food, but to elevate it: to create those fleeting moments when a sip and a bite become something greater than either alone. Expect wines from Opimian’s back catalogue presented with the insight and passion of a man who has spent a lifetime in pursuit of the perfect glass.

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THE VENUE

Banook Canoe Club, Lake Banook, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

In the Mi’kmaq dialect, Banook means “First Lake” — a name that speaks to the deep, ancient history of this remarkable place. Lake Banook’s waters were navigated by the Mi’kmaq people for thousands of years, a vital strand in the waterway that connected the province’s interior to Halifax Harbour. By the late 1800s, as canoe clubs began appearing across North America, the lakes of Dartmouth proved a natural home for the sport, and the Banook Canoe Club was incorporated in 1903.

More than 120 years later, the Club remains one of Nova Scotia’s most storied sporting and community institutions, its waters having hosted Olympic-calibre athletes and, in 2022, the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships. Perched at the water’s edge, the Clubhouse offers sweeping views across the still lake, a setting that manages to feel simultaneously historic and magical — and on a November evening, lit against the darkness of the water, genuinely unforgettable.

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YOUR INVITATION

Places at this dinner are strictly limited. The event is deliberately kept small — intimate enough that every guest will feel the warmth of the kitchen, hear the stories behind each dish, and share in something that can never quite be replicated. When tickets are gone, they are gone.

If you have ever sat in Chives and felt that rare sensation of a city at its best. If you have ever driven the Annapolis Valley on an autumn evening and pulled into Wolfville for dinner at Tempest. If you simply love food, wine, and the company of people who take both seriously — this dinner was made for you.

Craig Flinn and Michael Howell are no longer cooking. Except, for one Saturday evening in November, they are. Don’t let this one pass you by.