St. John’s needed Jag. The marketing efforts of Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism (more than $100-million since 2006) have worked. St. John’s is packed with tourists, spending their part of the $1-billion in tourism revenues the province rakes in. The city is known for its icebergs, crayon-coloured houses, Signal Hill and a food scene that’s getting national and international attention.
Style-wise, the only folks who hadn’t seemed to get the memo were the hoteliers. Jag, a new boutique hotel that’s part of a small Newfoundland chain, has finally changed that.
Location, location
Central St. John’s is a thin strip of slightly inclined land that runs parallel to St. John’s Harbour, where all the country’s best ice-breakers hang out between gigs. The middle of that strip, between the port and the steep incline that marks the beginning of domestic St. John’s, is Water Street, which locals call the oldest street in the country. This is where you’ll find most of the best restaurants and shops, and Jag is just off Water on George Street. Nearby, you’ll find enough bars to populate a regular town, but St. John’s isn’t regular.
Design
The architect, Ron Fougere of St. John’s firm Fougere Menchenton, chose bold red for much of the façade to go with the city’s brightly coloured palette. But there’s nothing quaint about this hotel. The design is slick and sleek, and is saved from sterility by owner John Steele’s collection of rock-inspired art and memorabilia. There’s plenty of glass to let in the clear coastal sun, and the rooms are minimally styled, with large, wall-mounted headboards and spacious raindrop showers.
Eat in or eat out?
The restaurant is perfectly fine, and the bar seems a lovely place to hang out. In most other Canadian cities, I’d be happy to stay here. But this is St. John’s, home of what may be Canada’s best restaurant, Raymond’s, about a 10-minute walk down Water Street, whose chef just opened a second, less expensive and more causal spot called the Merchant, also on Water Street.
There’s also Aqua nearby, which has some Newfoundland/Korean fusion going on, and you can’t leave town without trying the peanut butter and jam chicken wings at the Celtic Hearth (they’re … interesting , but where else are you going to find something that ridiculous? You should try them).
Best amenity
I enjoyed the line of Iceberg Spa products I found in the bathroom, which are made locally with iceberg water by Ossetra. The tiny little cakes of birch bark exfoliating soap (you get a different selection of bars every night, it seems) are wrapped in basic packaging and worked great.
If I could change one thing
If you’re going to have a hotel gym, it should be big enough to accommodate two or more people at once. This one, tucked away down an otherwise unused ground-floor hallway, really can’t.
Whom you’ll meet
Guests I encountered might have, in their prime, seen the seventies rock stars, whose posters and portraits line the lobby, live on stage. Now they’re in town to try all these restaurants everyone’s talking about. There may be a few cruisers coming in off their ship for a drink. But Jag is definitely of the W.P. Kinsella school of hoteliery: They’ve built it; now the hipsters and foodies will come.
Jag Hotel, 115 George St. West, St. John’s; steelehotels.com; 1-844-564-1524; 84 rooms from $179.
The writer was a guest of the hotel.