Cold, wet and windy. October in Newfoundland isn’t exactly the season this easterly province attracts tourists, but the first time Courtney Howell visited her partner Terrence’s hometown of Grates Cove (population 133) in the mid-2000s, she loved it instantly.

Just two hours from St. John’s, Grates Cove feels like it may as well be 1000, with its jagged coastline, windswept rocks and houses haphazardly scattered along the shores. For Courtney and Terrence, it was also the ideal place to start their restaurant business, Grates Cove Studios. But after more than a decade, the tides are turning and washing ashore a new focus for the pair.

Terrence and Courtney met in April 2004 in Ulsan, South Korea, where they were both teaching English and fell in love with the food, as well as each other. When Courtney’s contract ended a few months before Terrence’s, she headed home to Louisiana with the aim of entering the Peace Corps—a plan soon derailed by Hurricane Katrina. She became the executive director of a non-profit hurricane relief organization and Terrence soon joined her in Louisiana.

The pair decided to make the move to Grates Cove in 2008 and in the summer of 2009, when their daughter Phoenix was seven months old, they bought a home where Terrence could focus on his artwork and wood design. They then entered the culinary world with the launch of Open Studio Restaurant in 2013. The restaurant has become renowned for its unique style of cuisine, with a menu that is representative of the couple’s gastronomic history, drawing from their time together in Korea, Louisiana and Newfoundland. Open Studio is called that for good reason, as recent renovations mean Terrence can be found working away in the open art studio that literally sits in the corner of the restaurant.

Some dishes on the menu are decidedly Asian, like the Korean-style vegetable pancakes, while the Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya is a star of the Cajun culinary cannon. Others are a unique mix of Creole methods paired with Newfoundland ingredients like the Snow Crab Étouffée which shows off the bounty of the province by swapping in one of its more prized seafood into the Louisiana stew that’s typically made with shrimp—the boulettes, which are meatballs usually made with pork in the Cajun style, but made with cod here.

Terrence and Courtney, along with their daughter (and current chief tasting officer) have now been operating Grates Cove Studios for more than a decade, which consists of the restaurant, several accommodations and an artists’ studio, gripping to the shoreline of the most northerly tip of the Avalon Peninsula. During this time, they also started a skincare company, 7 Fathoms Seaweed Skin Care line, which uses local seaweed they harvest as the primary nourishing ingredient.

But businesses change like the tides, ebbing and flowing with culture shifts, economic upturn and in most recent years, a global pandemic.

“I’m finally looking back on this time now, and the pandemic helped us get to the point where we’re seeing what we’ve done. Now, when we look back on the last 14 years, I can see we were just laying the foundation. Just trying to build a structure for us to build and thrive in out here,” Courtney explains.

Courtney says it was the pandemic that shifted their perspective on their business and on their own well-being, explaining that it helped them step back, slow down and realize what’s important to them:

Seaweed.

As Terrence and Courtney age, their own health has become more important to them, and they wanted to integrate that into their business by creating more health and wellness experiences for their guests. Much of that is based on the seaweed foraged and harvested in and around Grates Cove.

The pair want to promote the health properties of seaweed not only for skin care but for consumption as well, as seaweed is incredibly sustainable when harvested correctly. In addition to the seaweed baths they offer with their 7 Fathoms skincare line—enjoyed in two side-by-side outdoor tubs with a view of the ocean—they are turning to seaweed as a functional health food product. “We have to make these businesses about our health, and in turn providing health for our customers,” explains Courtney. “It’s about the experience of taking care of yourself.”

Alongside some menu changes at the restaurant (Courtney says some will be disappointed the touton burger and fries that may be nixed), they have started to include more seaweed-based dishes. “It’s not going to just be seaweed salads, although we make an excellent seaweed salad,” she says. They are focusing on using more broths and drinks made from seaweed extraction. “This extraction is incredibly bioactive, incredibly healthy,” explains Courtney. “The focus on that whole business is to use acquiesce extract. We’re not creating products from dried seaweed, we’re making a product from an acquiesce extract that we protect as much as we can so that we are not destroying the compounds, and the goodness, in the seaweed.”

The pair imagine guests being able to sip on hot seaweed broth while hiking on the barrens or enjoying a meal in the restaurant made with seaweed stock they’ve made themselves. “Seaweed is not a big part of our history with consumption. So, our goal is to make it approachable, palpable, enjoyable. That’s one of our big missions now,” Courtney says.

Because the businesses are so intertwined (like a pile of seaweed), they rebranded this year to Grates Cove Co., which encompasses the many facets of the business—from the restaurant and the accommodations to the health and wellness side of things. They also just purchased a boat and plan on doing more boat tours and retreats. “We’re encouraging people to come for the food, but don’t just come for the food. This is about so much more. The food supports the experiences you’re going to have here,” says Courtney. “We feel like we’re in a second stage of our lives out here in Grates Cove.”

Grates Cove remains cold, wet and windy like it did when Courtney first visited—but now when you visit, you can take a seaweed bath or sip some broth to warm up the body and the soul. 🐙