Side Hustle’s New Dartmouth Restaurant To Open In Time For Burger Week
DARTMOUTH—Side Hustle Snack Bar will reopen in its new, downtown-Dartmouth home before the end of the month.
The popular restaurant had been running for years out of the kitchen at North Brewing Company in Cole Harbour. But on New Year’s Eve, it shut down after serving its final meals out of the location.
Now, owners Kathy Jollimore and Brent Darbyson are just weeks away from reopening a new, expanded Side Hustle Snack Bar in its own space in the heart of downtown Dartmouth.
Jollimore says the new Side Hustle will feel much more like a conventional restaurant than the old operation. With only six beers on tap, the new space will be “not at all the pub or bar vibe.”
“Essentially, we’re moving from the concept of a taproom and to into the concept of a restaurant,” Jollimore said.
She says leaning away from pub grub provides new opportunities for Side Hustle.
Darbyson spent years managing the bar at the Agricola Street Brasserie and Jollimore says Side Hustle’s new look means he can introduce a full beverage program, featuring some unique cocktails and wine.
It will also mean she can expand the menu to include dishes that didn’t necessarily work with beer—think sashimi, or platters meant to be shared with an entire table.
But that doesn’t mean a total overhaul. Jollimore says many Side Hustle favourites will remain menu staples. That means customers will still be able to order a Smashie burger, cauliflower, and pork dumplings.
“The menu is full of food that we want to eat. We just really love food, and we love flavour, and there’s just so many incredible flavors from cuisines all over the world that we just love, and we love experimenting with those flavors,” she says.
That passion for exploring new flavours has been with Jollimore for a long time, and she says it’s always been her dream to open her own restaurant.
More than a decade ago, she and Darbyson had planned to open a café. That plan never came together, and both eventually found other jobs in the industry: Jollimore as a food writer and stylist and Darbyson as a bar manager.
“I really liked writing and I would ‘food style,’ but the thing that that I started missing after doing that for years, it was that I didn’t see people,” Jollimore says. “I was no longer making somebody happy through food, I was so far removed from that so I just needed o get back to that.”
Partnering with North Brewing to open Side Hustle Snack Bar in the taproom’s kitchen was their way in. In September of 2019, they officially opened, only to be thrown into the Covid-19 pandemic a few months later.
After rounds of lockdowns and closures, Jollimore and Darbyson began looking for a place of their own in the summer of 2021. By the fall they had signed a lease for their new home on 21 Portland Street.
It’s the same space that was at one point going to house a pub from the owners of the Canteen, before they scuttled their plan.
Jollimore says a recent, unexpected spike in equipment prices has delayed Side Hustle’s reopening and piled on more cost pressures. That’s why they recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to help cover costs. As of April 8, they had raised about $25,000 or their $40,000 goal, with 15 days left in the campaign.
But Joillimore says whatever happens with their Kickstarter or equipment, Side Hustle will be open, in some capacity, for the start of Burger Week (which has been renamed Halifax Burger Bash) on April 28.
Trevor Nichols is the associate editor of Huddle, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].