Foodliner was a bit of an unexpected find for us as our original plan was to go to Barque's (BBQ) which is just down the street. We got to the restaurant at around 7:45 on a Friday night and unfortunately, like others on the street, it was fully booked with like 2 hours :( - so just as we were about to walk away, one of the servers told us about an open room in the back that is cold/raw seafood bar. It sounded good so we followed through the restaurant in to this quaint 10 tall bar table with a centre metal trough of ice - very cool looking and private room!
So we pretty much had the room to ourselves for most of the night where sampled delicious chilled/smoked seafood! With the 4 of us we tried:
Oysters on the ice (PEI and New Brunswick types)
Small neck clams
Perwinkles
Shrimp cocktail
Smoked tuna plate x 2
Lobster crudo
Wow - all of the food was fresh and flavourful - oysters tasted like they just came from the ocean! Clams (raw) are a bit stronger in flavour so just a heads up if you are a big shellfish fan. Periwinkles aka smoked sea snails were tasty little tid-bits that you pulled out of the shell - don't be intimated by them, they are good plus at 2 bucks it is a great bargain. Our group loved the smoked tuna so much we ordered it twice - hence the x 2. Finally we topped it off with some wonderful lobster crudo which to me is like a cold lobster salad with creme friache, cumcumbers, crispy rice crackers and jalapeno. Our other 2 friends shared a whole lobster cracked in front of them.
All in all, wonderful food and very friendly and knowledgaeable servers. We will definitely return to try their main menu. The back room itself makes for a great private party room. In total, the price was $180/four people which wasn't too pricey given the quality of the food. But as a warning - this was the cold bar menu so you aren't going to come away stuffed but you will be delighted satisfied by the flavoured.