Catering to wild Sable Island
- Mar 3
- 4 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
There's a place off the coast of Nova Scotia that most Canadians have heard of but almost none will ever visit. A thin crescent of sand barely wide enough to walk across, home to wild horses, grey seals, and more shipwrecks than anywhere else on the Atlantic coast. It has no dock. No airstrip open to the public. No hotel, no restaurant, and no way in unless you're a scientist, a Parks Canada employee — or, as it turns out, a CBC film crew.
We're talking about Sable Island.
Sable Island sits roughly 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax (or a two hour helicopter ride away with Vision Air), technically a national park but one that receives only a handful of visitors each year. Parks Canada estimates that fewer than 500 people make the journey annually, and access requires a permit and a very good reason.
Yet surveys (and our customers) suggest that many of us list Sable Island as a bucket-list destination. It's not hard to understand why. The island is the stuff of legend — a sandy shape-shifter that has moved and eroded over centuries, swallowing more than 350 ships. And then there are the horses. Hundreds of Sable Island horses — stocky, shaggy, and startlingly beautiful — roam free across the dunes, descended from animals brought to the island in the 1700s. No predators. No fences. Just horses and wind and sea.
For most Canadians, Sable Island lives in the imagination: in photographs, in the poetry of Alden Nowlan, in childhood geography lessons. The dream of standing on that thin strip of sand and watching wild horses gallop through the surf is one that connects Canadians from coast to coast — even if the vast majority will only ever see it on a screen.
This past year, a CBC film crew set out to film one of Sable Island's largest wildlife events — the world's largest gathering of grey seals — spending two weeks on the island to document its remarkable pulse of life for the upcoming CBC and PBS series Life At The Edge (due to be broadcast in 2027). And Bird's Nest Cafe & Catering had the honour of keeping them fed for every single day of it.
When the production team reached out to us about catering for their Sable Island shoot, we didn't hesitate. Logistics on a remote island with no resupply options demand the kind of careful planning and quality our team lives for. We worked closely with the crew to design two weeks' worth of hearty, nourishing meals, for a mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian crew members — food that could hold up to the demands of long shooting days in a coastal environment, fuelling the kind of focus and energy a project like this requires.
Producer and Director Russell Clark, a Haligonian remarked: "Sable Island is one of the most remote and wild places I've filmed in. It's extremely windy, cold, and snowy. Our filming days are long and I need to make sure my crew are well fed. They need fuel to trek 100 pounds of gear over 10 kilometres of sand dunes, and to brave the harsh Atlantic winds from dawn until dusk. Good food is essential, not a luxury. We needed food the crew would look forward to, was nutritious, easy to cook and adhered to our strict weight limit aboard the helicopter."
It was a challenge we had fun meeting. Getting food to Sable Island isn't like dropping off a lunch order downtown. Every item had to be carefully planned, packaged, and transported via helicopter - meaning there were strict weight limits we had to meet. Every soup, lasagne and home made granola bar had to be weighed. Our team made sure the crew had the fuel they needed to do their best work — hot, satisfying meals and reliable provisions from the first day on the island to the last (plus some emergency meals in case bad weather left them stranded!).
"What Bird's Nest supplied was nothing short of amazing. Each meal was pre-prepared or pre-cooked, labelled with step-by-step instructions simple enough for even a tired film crew to follow! They were all amazing. The daily menu became a point of excitement for the crew. When you're cold and wet, having food like this warms the body, the mind, and the soul". Adds Russell.
There's something meaningful about being part of a project like this. The CBC crew was there to tell a wildlife story that most Canadians will never get to experience firsthand — and we can't wait to see what the final show! But one thing we didn't expect was the crews reaction to one of our regular cafe menu items...
"Bird's Nest make these incredible granola, fruit and nut bars. They beat anything you can buy in a store, and film crews live off these types of things. They became the high point of our day, to the extent we renamed them "Sable Bars". Every time I go past the Bird's Nest Cafe on Barrington Street, I grab one. I miss them. The other crew members still talk about them!"
At Bird's Nest Cafe & Catering, we believe that great food fuels hard work. Whether it's a film shoot on one of Canada's most isolated islands or a business event in the comfort of a warm office, we bring the same care, quality, and dedication to every order we cater to.
If you've ever dreamed of visiting Sable Island, keep dreaming — it's worth it. And if you're planning a catering project that takes you somewhere extraordinary, you know where to find us.
Bird's Nest Cafe & Catering is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We offer catering to Sable Island film crews, corporate events, gatherings, and more. Get in touch to tell us about your next project.
