Nana Thai Cuisine
121 Preston St., 613-421-1777, nanacuisine.ca
Open: Monday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m., closed Sunday
Prices : shareable dishes $12.95 to $16.75
Access: steps to front door

In Thailand, a dish called boat noodles flourishes in the restaurants of several central cities, although it originated in Bangkok in the early 1940s, when, as per its name, it was first served from boats along the capital’s canals.

Somehow, during my one visit to Bangkok many years ago, I missed out on boat noodles. I wound up waiting until this spring to try the dish — which in fact is a hearty bowl of soup — when, as far as I can tell, Nana Thai Cuisine introduced Ottawa foodies to boat noodles.

The Preston Street eatery, a pretty place that seats about 26 in its two small dining areas, offers beef and pork versions of its bowls of boat noodles, which are reminiscent of pho. My boat noodles with beef struck me as clean and refined, with a broth that was beefy, salty and tinged with cinnamon, and which left a pleasant aftertaste of heat and pepper. Tender rare beef, squishy beef balls and slices of fish cake sat on a mound of rice noodles with garnishes such as fried shallots, been sprouts and green onions adding pops of flavour. In all, the soup felt well assembled and made with pride.

I can sing similar praises for the food that I subsequently sampled at Nana Thai, which takes its name from its owner-chef, Rattana “Nana” Thong-In. She and her family came to Canada in 1997, and she cooked in the kitchens of Ottawa’s Thai restaurants for the last two decades before opening Nana Thai last fall.

Boat noodles are not the only dish that Thong-In cooks that distinguishes her eatery from its peers in Ottawa. As the restaurant’s website notes, Thong-In is from Isaan, Thailand’s northeastern region, which has its own distinctive cuisine, with many dishes powered by dried red chilies and the pungency of fermented fish. While Nana Thai’s menu consists mostly of the familiar Bangkok-based staples that typify Thai menus in North America, Thong-In does cook some lesser-seen dishes from her region, and even takes special requests for them if asked a few days in advance.

After my lunch of boat noodles, I returned with a buddy to try more mid-day specials at Nana Thai. A savoury pork stir-fry stood out thanks to its combination of ground pork with pork belly chunks that were crisply fried yet tender inside, and everything was bolstered by a sauce that was salty yet complex. Pad Thai here was fine — a mix of sweet and tangy and blessed with textured noodles — although I confess I’m generally less knocked out these days by restaurant pad Thai.

My dinner visits to Nana Thai afforded my most satisfying experiences with its food and, indeed, Thong-In’s hospitality. Along with her husband, Thong-In works front of house as well as cooks, and she’s a friendly, attentive presence, keen for feedback about her food. Eating at Nana Thai really feels like dining in someone’s home, but with more brisk service.

Of the more usual dishes at dinner, tom kha gai, the beloved coconut soup with chicken, was exceptionally fresh and lively, hitting all of the right flavour notes and graced with just-cooked chicken.

Panang curry with chicken pleased with good concentrated flavour and richness, and we would have tried the less-common version of the dish with crispy chicken if my dining companion had been more in the mood for a deep-fried component. A second serving of pad Thai was no better or worse than the noodles I had tried at lunch.

Laab, the Thai dish of assertively dressed and seasoned chopped meat, hails from Thong-In’s home region and Nana Thai’s pork laab can pack an extra spicy kick if requested. In addition to ground pork, our laab contained small chewy strips of boiled pork skin, which added not only textural variety but also credibility to the restaurant’s assertions of culinary authenticity.

This week, we preceded our dinner with a call several days in advance, requesting gai yang — a whole barbecued chicken cooked in the Isaan style. The intensely savoury bird, served with a dark, earthy, intriguing, salty-herbal sauce was just one highlight of the meal.

With the off-menu chicken, we had som tum (papaya salad) — but with a difference. Nana Thai offers Thai-style som tum and Lao-style som tum (Laos borders Thong-In’s home region). Thong-In suggested we order the Lao version to go with her barbecued chicken and we found that the Lao dish was more punchy and pungent than its sweet-sour Thai counterpart, due to the presence of salty preserved fish.

For me, the night’s most memorable dish was another rare-in-Ottawa item, pla meung manao — a steamed whole tilapia, opened like a book and dressed with a thrilling mix of chilies, garlic and lime. We requested “medium” spice and the dish proved to be potent enough to set mouths alight and brows sweating. And yet, the just-cooked fish remained delectable and even mildly flavoured if the chilies were scraped away. Also, the dish’s bright savoury broth was another appealing way to flavour the fish.

We mitigated the fiery fish dish with pineapple shrimp fried rice.

The dessert choices at Nana Thai are scant, but Thong-In treated us to slices of mango, which did the trick nicely.

In the last decade or more, I’ve read with envy about the rise to the point of trendiness of northeastern Thai cuisine in New York City. As a result, I’m especially glad that in addition to its crowd-pleasers, Nana Thai can make some Isaan dishes available as well.

I’m told that given a week’s notice, the kitchen can make the Isaan sour sausages known as sai krok. Given the pleasures that Nana Thai has so far delivered, sai krok is on my wish list too.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum
Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews

Le St Laurent
460 St-Laurent Blvd., 613-909-4003, lestlaurent.ca
Open: Wednesday to Sunday 5 to 10 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday
Prices: appetizers $14 to $22, mains $27 to $42
Access: park behind the building and use rear entrance, take elevator to the penthouse

Had we not chosen to linger, I might have made a clean getaway.

Instead, we were curious, as journalists and former journalists always are, to have a peek at a few more amenities atop Gatineau-based developer Brigil’s luxurious condominium building at 460 St-Laurent Blvd. On the 15th floor, high above Beechwood Cemetery and Notre-Dame Cemetery, the building boasts a classy reading room, pool, sauna and spa and more.

The penthouse level is also home to the three-month-old destination restaurant Le St Laurent, whose chef, Ryan Edwards, approached me in the hallway before I left. “Going to call me next week?” he said, offering me his business card.

“Uh, could happen,” I replied, a little dejected at having been busted.

It’s a moot point just how much a restaurant will raise its game when it knowingly serves a critic. I’ll leave it to you to factor that in when I say that we thoroughly enjoyed Edwards’ seasonal, local menu and felt practically pampered by Le St Laurent’s black-garbed servers. (Indeed, the round of complimentary dessert wine probably laid it on a bit thick, unless everyone in the dining room received the same.)

Whether you’re a VIP or a plebe, the one constant at Le St Laurent is the spectacular view. West-facing windows look down onto treetops, the cemeteries and nearby houses. In the distance, we saw downtown Ottawa, the Peace Tower and the Gatineau Hills. Even though some fog was rolling when we had dinner there this month, Le St Laurent offered us an engrossing vista that allowed us to see our city anew.

Meanwhile, the space around us was sleek, dark and modern, attractively lit and softened by plants. We sunk into cushy green seats and banquettes, but could have chosen to sit at the long bar if cocktails rather than a full, leisurely meal had appealed.

Before Le St Laurent opened, a casual brasserie was in the condo building. Le St Laurent is a markedly upscale place, and it behooves Edwards, who was the chef at the splashy but defunct Preston Street restaurant Salt Dining and Lounge, to serve from-scratch dishes that are as wow-worthy as the view and setting. He frequently succeeded, while at the same time turning out plates that feel generous, substantial and accessible as well as fussed over.

We shared four of seven available appetizers, and found two bright-flavoured and seasonal-in-the-extreme salads were worth fighting over.

Asparagus from Acorn Creek Garden Farm starred in a salad ($16) that teemed with flavour, thanks to the pop of pickled onions, cherry tomatoes and a lemon truffle emulsion, and the savoury punch from grated confit egg yolk. A small slab of luscious house-smoked rainbow trout sent the salad over the top.

The “spring has arrived!” salad ($15) was a harmonious mix of green goodness — more asparagus, fava beans, cress and arugula, compressed cucumber — with pickled wild garlic, fried croutons, parmesan and a vinaigrette of hazelnut butter and sorrel helping to make every bite delightful.

Edwards’ slices of sous-vide beef tongue ($14) converted our table’s sceptics with their near fall-apart texture and clean flavour, contrasted with the acidity of pickled and marinated onions and a briny olive sauce.

 

Among these choices, grilled B.C. albacore tuna ($15) seemed more ordinary. The fish itself was fine, but the southeast Asian aspects of the dish — a fish-sauce vinaigrette, lime, peanuts, sesame — seemed subdued and didn’t come together.

 

From four of seven main courses, Edwards’ rabbit dish ($35) was the knockout. While I thought the dish sent to my table looked cluttered (the plate made later for this newspaper’s photographer was more streamlined and eye-catching), it was above all delicious, combining prosciutto-wrapped, mushroom-stuffed medallions with a crisp croquette of succulent braised leg meat, which was fine on its own and even better with lemon aioli or offset by some wild garlic. The dish’s seasoning was salt-forward but not overly so, while pickled and roasted carrots rounded it out.

The rabbit even wowed our table’s red-meat buff more than his steak, although that admittedly pricey and blockily presented dish ($42) was highly satisfying, too. The cast-iron-seared striploin — from an Eganville producer, Edwards told me — was nicely crusted but properly medium rare, suitably beefy and butter-basted, with morels, potato pavé and a creamy potato foam as supporting indulgences.

The women at our table went for the menu’s pasta and fish options respectively, eschewing the likely heavier beef cheek and pork belly dishes I might have ordered if I’d had an extra stomach.

A big portion of cavatelli ($27) was richer than expected with a green pea “nage” (usually a brothy sauce) that was tasty but thick and cheese-bolstered. My friend liked the dish, and ate all of the accompaniments — bits of guanciale (cured pork jowl), arugula, mild fior di latte cheese and more — but left some of the nubby pasta shells behind. Perhaps this is the problem with many a meal-sized pasta.

A large fillet of steamed pickerel ($33) came with more of spring’s best bounty — fava beans, asparagus, fiddleheads, pickled ramps, a ramp-enhanced hollandaise — and even some cured pickerel roe. My friend found the fish was the least impressive item on her dish. Maybe it was too mild of flavour compared to everything else.

While Le St Laurent’s kitchen doesn’t have a pastry chef, two desserts ($12) from Edwards and his team were complex, interesting creations.

Mildly flavoured Earl Grey panna cotta — a narrow strip of the creamy dessert, rather than a bowl of the stuff — was outdone on its fully loaded plate by great crème fraîche ice cream and coconut shortbread. The “fancy Joe Louis” chocolate cake was quickly devoured, and its sea buckthorn ice cream was its plate’s most fancy and striking element.

When we first arrived at Le St Laurent, our small talk was all about the various routes we had taken, at rush hour from Ottawa’s west end and beyond, to get there. How slow was the Queensway? How was the drive through Lowertown and along Beechwood Avenue?

If you don’t live in the east end, never mind in the building itself, the trip to Le St Laurent is worth your time and the splurge, for not only the view and ambience, but for Edwards’ commendable dishes, too.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum
Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews

Happy Fish Raw Bar
330 Elgin St., 613-656-6689, happyfishrawbar.ca
Open: Tuesday to Sunday 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., closed Tuesday
Prices: small plates $9 to $18, mains $18 to $25, seafood towers $20 to $75
Access: steps to front door

During my three dinners at the Happy Fish Raw Bar, the servers have been as happy as, let’s say, fish in a raw bar. They were certainly more chipper than I would have been in their shoes.

The four-month-old bar’s front window faces one reason for displeasure: an unsightly, much-dug-up stretch of Elgin Street. You have to feel for all of the neighbouring businesses with construction on their doorsteps, and we wondered to what extent the rubble and fences had dissuaded potential customers for Happy Fish’s seafood and cocktails. As it was, each time I was there, Happy Fish was empty except for me, my companions and servers extolling the virtues of fresh seafood that arrived at the kitchen daily.

Mind you, we might simply have been unfashionably early, based on some of the posts on the bar’s Facebook page. Given its social media, Happy Fish, which replaced Kat & Kraken, is for lovers of DJ-powered nightlife, not just fans of fish and shellfish. Judging by my meals, the bar may well please partiers more than customers seeking a memorable seafood dinner.

The signature item at Happy Fish is its seafood tower, a two-tiered platter starring many mussels, oysters, shrimp, some tuna, and a lobster tail, supported by the common accoutrements (cocktail sauce, melted butter, mignonette, lemon).

Few restaurant offerings signal a festive night out like a shareable seafood tower. But Happy Fish’s tower, which at $75 is admittedly at least a good $20 cheaper than seafood towers in Ottawa, still feels like it’s a cheaper version of a deluxe splurge.

Best among the tower’s goodies were the tender and seasoned shrimp and lobster tail. Tuna here was designated as “saku” tuna, a term that was new to me. “Saku,” I learned later, refers not to a type of tuna but to a block-shaped cut of the fish, typically flash-frozen immediately after the fish is caught. Sadly, my taste buds suggested to me that at Happy Fish, “saku” might as well be translated as “without taste.”

Meanwhile, the mussels, which made up a disproportionately large part of the tower, were just OK, and the oysters were scarcely better.

It struck us that while Happy Fish has been much renovated, with chandeliers and green and red velvet seating, there is no raw bar per se where shellfish are shucked and served. As one of my dining companions said, “I like my raw bars to be in plain view.”

That night, we also ordered one cooked item from Happy Fish’s concise, one-page menu. The lobster mac ‘n’ cheese ($25), while very buttery, was otherwise bland, under-seasoned and lacking in creaminess, while its lobster was chewy. Again, what we ordered fell short of feeling like the indulgence it should have been.

It took the kitchen so long to send out our seafood tower and lobster mac ‘n’ cheese that the server brought us a martini glass filled with bar nibbles to tide us over and later comped us an OK slab of gluten-free chocolate peanut butter cheesecake.

At my later dinners, simply prepared small plates tended to disappoint.

Seafood chowder ($9) was generously portioned and thick with shrimp. But it registered as more mushy than fresh and creamy, and it needed more seasoning. Lobster taquitos ($15) were underwhelming fried corn tortillas filled with enough lobster to add flavour without adding heft.

We liked the good-looking poke nachos ($18) — even if they are neither poke nor nachos, really — for the crispness of their fried wontons and the flavours of lime, wasabi and ponzu. But the cubes of saku tuna once again tasted like not much at all, and they seemed stingily rationed to boot.

Best of these appetizers was an order of buttery shrimp ($17), buttressed by croutons and cheese. While it seemed to have been harshly broiled and under-garlicked, the dish was still enjoyable, if not as pure and potent as classic Spanish gambas al ajillo.

Shrimp, this time battered and seasoned, starred in a po’ boy sandwich ($19) that was alright but for some avocado that had no taste and some Caesar salad on the side that felt perfunctory and excessively oily. The menu’s one nod to red-meat lovers, the “one” burger ($18), was moist enough, but lacked flavour and seasoning while its bacon verged on incinerated.

If I were a different kind of patron, I might enjoy Happy Fish Raw Bar for its patio parties, bottle service and karaoke Wednesdays. But as someone squarely focused on eating rather than partying, I’ve only left the place unhappy thanks to too much mediocre food.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum
Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews

Farinella
492 Rochester St., 613-422-6462, farinellaeats.com
Open: Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: pizza slices cut to order and sold by weight, between $2.99 and $3.60 per 100 grams
Access: no steps to front door or washrooms

Last week, a colleague of mine was in desperate need of a pizza pick-me-up.

The day before we went for lunch, she had what she said was the worst pizza of her life. Ordered from a west-end chain, its crust was tough, but also droopy in spots. The pizza was short on cheese, but also greasy from its meaty components. In short, those slices had no redeeming qualities.

I wanted to restore her faith in pizza by taking her to a pizza purveyor whose standards had not slipped so egregiously. Off we went, then, to Farinella.

Opened in mid-May in a former scooter shop on Rochester Street, this casual eatery in Little Italy has been doing brisk business thanks to impeccably made pizza and a novel-in-Ottawa business model that strives for speedy gratification. And if that weren’t enough, Farinella also turns out some strikingly fresh and varied gelato.

Before our visit, I’d eaten twice already at Farinella, joining the inevitable peak-hour lineups that fortunately are fast-moving. I’ve savoured enough examples of meaty, cheesy and vegetable-forward goodness to feel that Farinella is basically a sure thing for deep and resolutely traditional pizza satisfaction.

It didn’t take long to figure out the ordering routine here, which is common in Italy yet new to Ottawa.

When the queue brings you to one of Farinella’s counterpersons, you ask for descriptions of the day’s four kinds of pizzas — meaty, cheesy, veggie or plain — that are ready for consumption. The pizzas on display in front of you are Roman-style creations, with bread-y bases that are oblongs almost one-metre long and toppings that Farinella’s co-owner Cesare Agostini, an Ottawa-raised 27-year-old who spent four years making pizza in Rome to gain his expertise, says are “strictly traditional.”

Then you ask for as much as you want of however many pizzas. The staffer cuts that much pizza off the oblong, and your order is weighed and priced, with the most expensive, meaty pizzas going for $3.60 for 100 grams. You pay and then either head home with your box filled with assorted pizza, or take your tray to one of the counters indoors or a no-frills table outside Farinella, which if the place were fancier would be equipped with sun umbrellas.

When my co-worker bit into a slab of pizza topped with shaved asparagus and mozzarella, it washed away her pizza funk. “Mmmm,” she said. “Where have you been all my life, asparagus pizza?”

I’ve asked myself similar questions upon sampling Farinella’s potato pizza, flecked with rosemary and notably peppery, some mushroom pizza that tucked its fungus under dollops of gloriously molten whipped ricotta, pizza that played vibrant fresh tomatoes against their sun-dried cousins and some utterly simple zucchini pizza about which I wouldn’t change a thing.

All of those pizzas did just fine without tomato sauce. If the red stuff is your thing, it stars in Farinella’s basic but satisfying “rossi” pizza.

The choices for carnivores have all hit the spot, including pizzas featuring artichoke and nduja, the spicy and spreadable Italian pork product, or mellow prosciutto cotto blanketed with cheese, or the lucid punch of salami and olives.

In all, every variety of Farinella pizza that I’ve tried has put a smile on my face with forthright combinations of shining ingredients that play well with one another.

While the toppings might vary with every visit, the key constant for me is how good the sturdy crust has been. Agostini told me his pizzas are baked first for up to eight minutes at up to 600F before they are topped and then baked for a few more minutes. The results are crusts that can be deliciously crisp but with a tender crumb, somewhere between pillowy focaccia and a shatteringly hard cracker.

Meanwhile, Cesare’s 24-year-old sister and business partner Nina made her own extended trip to Italy, but specialized for four years in making ice cream rather than pizza. While Cesare plied his craft at the bakery Antico Forno Roscioli in Rome, Nina, soon after graduating from high school in Ottawa, went to Italy to study gelato making, eventually becoming the head gelato maker and general manager at Menchetti in Perugia.

You can taste Nina’s gelato-making cred in the super-fresh ice cream found in Farinella’s showcase. As much as I gravitate to dark chocolate gelato at most opportunities, I’m most likely to order vibrant flavours such as Rhone Valley apricot, Sicilian lemon, Indonesian coconut or sumptuous fior de latte when I next visit. That is, if I don’t order an affogato — a cup of vanilla gelato with a shot with excellent, potent espresso on the side.

The restaurant is licensed but does not yet serve alcohol. While customers now bake outside in the summer heat, a winterized patio is a possibility, Cesare says. Cold weather may see ice pops, cakes and “prettier, daintier things” added as dessert options, Nina says.

As easy as it is to romanticize living and working in Italy, the Agostinis say that returning to Ottawa, where food-business work was in their blood, always beckoned.

“We did not have a glamorous life in Italy,” Nina says. “It was terrible. I hated it,” Cesare adds.

It’s a good thing for Ottawa eaters that the siblings had it hard in Italy and that they returned to their hometown, where they now employ 30 and crank out as many as 150 pizzas in a day. Italy’s loss is Ottawa’s distinct culinary gain, and from now on, it will be hard for me to settle for lesser pizza here.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum

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Tamis Café
374 Bank St., 613-567-7550, tamiscafe.ca or facebook.com/tamisottawa/
Open: Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: brunch dishes up to $15, mains up to $17
Access: one step to front door

Three years ago, I learned that the word for “sweet” in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, was “tamis.”

I owed my education to several enjoyable visits to the Tamis Café, a tiny place in the Glebe that opened in early 2016 and featured unique Filipino baked goods in its showcase.

That eatery, operated by the Sare family, was tucked away on Fourth Avenue east of Bank Street. It moved late last year to Centretown, into the Bank Street space that had been The Buzz for more than 15 years. With the move has come an expanded menu with more savoury choices, and also a liquor licence that supports the array of Filipino San Miguel beers that serve as the backdrop for Tamis’s bar, as well as some exotic cocktails and a more ordinary and perfunctory wine list.

So, I’ve tried the new Tamis Café — a long, narrow, brick-walled spot that seats 40 or so in black banquettes and seats — a few times this summer to sample some of its savoury moves and investigate Filipino cuisine, which in Ottawa is in short supply. (I know only of Ka Familia in Barrhaven, the Meryenda food truck, plus a handful of grocery stores and bakery that dedicate themselves to the intriguing east-meets-west fare of the Philippines.)

New to me at the relocated, larger Tamis was its brunch menu, which is available daily and melds Western staples with Filipino items.

The most visually striking plate at brunch paired hefty buttermilk pancakes ($12) — coloured a Seussian bright green by a syrup flavoured by pandan, the Southeast Asian plant — with thick, stubby, skinless longanisa sausages, which appealed with their porky goodness perked by garlic and pineapple.

Those delectable sausages also showed up with home fries or garlicky rice, both equally good, plus eggs, cooked as we liked, and toast ($15).

We were also able to order from the regular menu during that brunch visit. That meant we could sample Tamis’s embutido ($13), a cold pork meatloaf that was mellow in flavour and slightly crumbly, served with a simple, cucumber-heavy salad, and lumpia ($13), a thin, soft, freshly made, neutral-tasting crepe stuffed with sautéed green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes, lettuce, and served with peanut sauce. Both items were humble and homey.

During two dinner visits, my friends and I tried four of Tamis’s appetizers.

Most accessible was a heaping platter ($20) of deep-fried spring rolls, wontons and chips, all served with a sweet and sour sauce that we thought needed more punchiness.

More daunting, and more oily, was the fried whole squid ($20), which was tender enough of tentacle but not as crisp as we might have liked. Overall, the squid amounted to a heavy offering that we could not polish off.

We did finish off our sizzling sisig ($16), a dish in which bits of grilled and sautéed pork belly mingled with pigs ears and a smattering of chilli peppers and red onions. While I recall having some meatier sisig during a trip to the Cayman Islands this year, the chewiness and fattiness of this dish dominated this time out.

The dish is designated as mild on Tamis’s menu, which I take as a reference to the amount of chilli peppers at play. I would have welcomed more heat on this and other dishes, but in general, Tamis’s kitchen skews to the milder side of things, even as it proffers the sour, sweet and salty aspects of Filipino cuisine.

Another revelation at Tamis Café was that cheese pimento dip is beloved by many Filipinos. A hunk of the dense, house-made stuff is available as an appetizer, and a mound of it figured as the crowning garnish on the café’s plump longanisa burger. My friend (who is not Filipino, it should perhaps be said) liked everything about that juicy burger except the cheese dip, which he found overpowering.

Among other mains, the mechado ($17), a braise of sirloin, was not as tender as I recall having had when Tamis was in the Glebe. Pancit Bihon ($12), the rice noodle stir-fry, was simple and filling.

The grilled pork chop ($17) and grilled chicken leg ($17, called chicken inasal on the specials card on our table) were appealing tangy, but also at least a little dry. But the garlicky rice and the spicy mango salad together brought the dishes up in our estimation.

The savoury items that I would happily take home from Tamis Café for later enjoyment would be the hefty empanadas, well-stuffed with chicken or beef.

In addition to those empanadas, the showcase at the cash showed off many cakes that were thick with buttery frosting. While some were North American faves such as red velvet and mocha cakes, curiosity led us to the ube cake ($7.99), made with purple yam and a dulce de leche filling, which was moist and distinctive.

Purple yam also figured in the ice cream that tops the deluxe halo halo shaved ice dessert that was fully loaded with everything from corn to kidney beans to blobs of jelly to toasted Rice Krispies.

In the Philippines, turon is a deep-fried dessert that wraps bananas and jackfruit in a crisp wrapper. At Tamis Cafe, a moist, sticky cupcake big enough to satisfy the three of us transported turon’s flavours into a baked good.

While the food at Tamis Cafe struck us as a little uneven, it’s nonetheless not surprising that it seems to draw Filipino expats craving back-home tastes. The eatery has unpretentiousness and kind service going for it, and the best dishes would lure us back for a casual and even unique meal.

phum@postmedia.com

twitter.com/peterhum

Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews

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Nikosi Bistro Pub
721 Riverside Dr., Wakefield, 819-459-3773, nikosibistropub.com
Open: Wednesday 4 to 9 p.m., Thursday 4 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday
Prices: main courses $19 to $45
Access: ramp to front door

A week ago, we got a jump on the long weekend by spending Friday afternoon in Wakefield. Some time kayaking on the Gatineau River would do us good, my wife and I thought. But first, we had lunch at Nikosi Bistro Pub.

In early 2017, this casual spot was opened by Wapokunie Riel-Lachapelle, who grew up in Wakefield. She went out west and worked in restaurants for a time, but eventually returned and launched Nikosi, where the fare is simple and from-scratch. Fish and game meat frequently star on Nikosi’s plates, and Riel-Lachapelle told me when we chatted on the phone this year that she makes a connection between the food she serves and her Métis heritage.

We ate on Nikosi’s river-facing patio, shielded from the blazing sun by big umbrellas. My wife and I enjoyed our starter of smoked salmon ($18), served on thin wedges of house-made bannock bread. The fish was luscious and maple-tinged, while fried capers added a salty pop and the side salad was fresh.

Two generously portioned mains followed. My boar burger ($20) was heftily meaty and fully loaded with caramelized onions, maple-sweetened mushrooms, bacon, aged cheddar and maple-garlic aioli. With some fine fries and a heap of salad, my order amounted to lunch and then some.

My wife, who can never get too much salmon, thought her barbecued salmon ($24), which came with the same fries and salad that I received, was just a touch too dry, but nicely flavoured. She too had leftovers, and we combined everything into a container that Riel-Lachapelle graciously kept in Nikosi’s fridge until we came back after kayaking.

At another lunch earlier this summer, a friend and I spent some time perusing Nikosi’s cocktail menu. The $10 options intrigued us, from the black currant margarita to a smokey Caesar to the “électrique powwow” made with Chic-Choc spiced rum from Quebec’s Eastern Townships, ginger ale, lime juice, berries and mint.

At Nikosi, the negroni is Canadian-ized with a bit of spruce reduction. I don’t if Anthony Bourdain would have approved of this tweak of his favourite, potent, Italian cocktail, but I did.

After that drink came a mound of elk tartare ($17), which was lean, quite mild of flavour and enhanced with pickled mushrooms and parmesan. While its seasoning could have been more bold, the tartare nonetheless disappeared quickly as we scooped the stuff up with bannock crostini.

The two main courses at that lunch were pleasant enough, but needed a bit more finesse to sparkle as they might have. Chunks of duck breast ($27) had an admirably crisp exterior, but were otherwise overcooked. Wilted kale, pickled blueberries and crisp potatoes made up somewhat for that flaw.

Pickerel, the day’s fish special ($24), was fried straightforwardly, but let down by the mix of wild rice and veg on the side, which did very little for me.

Last winter, I also ate twice inside Nikosi’s rustic, woody dining room that seats about 40. Then, some of the cooking was uneven. There was a flank steak ($27) that was fine, but the fries with them were the opposite of crisp. Confit duck wings with house-made barbecue sauce ($17), which remain on the summer menu, were under-seasoned and flaccid-skinned.

Better was Nikosi’s grilled cheese ($19), a still-available deluxe bannock-based sandwich made with some of the kitchen’s go-to ingredients (caramelized onions, maple-sweetened mushrooms, aged cheddar, spinach, maple-garlic aioli) along with chunks of duck sausage.

Duck sausage, spinach, caramelized onions and maple-sweetened mushrooms also turned in last winter’s rib-sticking mac and cheese, which was topped with a rich mornay sauce ($20). I look forward to having this dish again when the weather turns cold.

I’ve only had one dessert at Nikosi — a slice of salted caramel cheesecake that did the trick even if it wasn’t made in house.

When I spoke to Riel-Lachapelle, she told me that while she had a hand in developing the recipes at Nikosi, she is more of a do-everything general manager who has left the kitchen in other hands.

Her father, a keen hunter and fisherman, was a good cook, she continued. “I didn’t realized back then how lucky I was,” Riel-Lachapelle said. “Growing up … that impacted my life and my appreciation of food.”

Nikosi Bistro Pub, then, is an uncomplicated but distinctive eatery of which its owner and her father can be proud.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum

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Grunt
173 Hinchey Ave., 613-695-6886, gruntottawa.com
Open: Tuesday to Thursday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: Most items in the $15 range, taxes in
Access: Steps to front door

At first, when we learned of the memorably named new restaurant Grunt and its pig-themed logos, we wondered if we should brace ourselves for a celebration of swine.

It turned out that Grunt, which opened in late April in Mechanicsville, was not really a place for pigging out, literally or figuratively.

At my three lunch visits, Grunt’s chef and co-owner, Jason McLelland, served finely crafted dishes that were new takes on the familiar and likeable. Pork and pig-based products figure in the food, but not overwhelmingly so, and a vegetarian could dine happily here.

Portioned somewhere between small plates and main courses, Grunt’s dishes also come with wallet-friendly prices of $15 each, more or less, taxes in. Basically, the prices are in keeping with Grunt’s location, tucked away on a residential side street in the historically blue-collar neighbourhood north of Scott Street and east of Tunney’s Pasture.

Formerly a corner-lot pizzeria, Grunt now seats about 20 at blocky wooden tables and at the counters of its open kitchen where McLelland and his sous-chef toil. Its walls are white, the art is funky and local, the seating is hard, the vintage plates don’t match, and old-time jazz or Billy Idol can take turns on the sound system.

In all, few extravagances distract from Grunt’s pretty, tasty dishes when they quickly land in front of you. There may not be a more relaxed, human-scale, dining-out experience in Ottawa, especially if McLelland’s wife, Marie, is serving. Once, after she brought us our lunch, she gave her young daughter, Maisie, a ride on her shoulders.

McLelland, 31, most recently worked at the somewhat fancier Town on Elgin Street. Before coming to Ottawa, McLelland worked in fine-dining brigades in London, Paris, Australia and his homeland, Scotland. He even did stints in such Michelin-starred kitchens as Le Gavroche in London, and Le Jules Verne, on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower.

In Mechanicsville, McLelland still makes food for discriminating palates, even if he prioritizes, as he says, “honest and wholesome food” over haute cuisine.

The to-the-point, all-day menu — typically a one-page list of three or four savoury dishes and a dessert or two — changes every two weeks at Grunt. I spread out my visits accordingly for a longer view of McLelland’s fare.

If there’s a signature dish at Grunt, it’s McLelland’s porchetta sandwich ($14.50). The versions that I tried never followed the usual Italian preparation. McLelland preferred to dress up a slab of nicely roasted pork belly like an English Sunday dinner, with Yorkshire pudding, a mushroom demi-glace, crushed root vegetables and apple sauce.

“It needs an extra napkin,” Marie said when she dropped off a sandwich.

“Oh, that’s promising,” my dining companion said. After polishing off most of it, she said the sandwich justified a return visit to Grunt. That said, the latest menu’s version takes the sandwich in a South Asian direction, swapping in mango chutney and a spicier treatment.

We’ve equally enjoyed other savoury and starchier dishes. Butternut squash risotto ($16) was beautifully balanced and complex, with the indulgences of mascarpone and pancetta and the accents of sage and spiced almonds enlivening the dish’s on-point base of rice and veg.

Grunt’s “gnocchi” made with pâte à choux ($15.50, also known as gnocchi parisienne) featured tender, pillowy dumplings in a pleasing carbonara sauce, garnished with egg yolk, bacon, goat cheese and green onions. Bread made with bacon fat completed the dish, which despite the richness of its elements left us feeling invigorated rather than weighed down.

A kale Caesar salad topped with a fried egg ($13.50) was a more simple win, zinging with the big flavours of its creamy, anchovy-powered dressing. More novel and bracing was a salad of charred grapefruit and orange with spiced shallots, greens and pumpkin seeds ($14.50), although the intensity of its bed of turmeric yogurt could have been dialled down.

A plate of bison kofta ($15) was a little muddled visually, and the lean, tasty meat was also a touch dry. Raising the dish up was the focused pop of its sweet semi-dried tomatoes, toasted almonds, crisp onions and shavings of pig fat that McLelland dispensed table-side.

Desserts at Grunt have been more expensive than many in town, just a little cheaper than the savoury dishes. But don’t let that dissuade you — you’ll likely miss out on a treat.

in June, a strawberry shortcake ($12.50) knocked me out, even if its crumb could have been a bit more tender. Nonetheless, its fruit, cream and sauce were good enough to almost set me cussing in appreciation.

With its table-side splash of fizzing prosecco, lemon sorbet ($13.50) with torched melon, olive oil, lemon balm, zippy pink pepper and some confit lime felt like a celebration.

While the semifreddo ($14) that came with roasted strawberries, raspberry coulis and cracked black pepper had set too hard, this was one more dish whose strong points and thoughtfulness made its lapse forgivable.

Grunt is licensed, with a dozen wines mostly from the Old World priced between $40 and $65 a bottle, with five-ounce glasses also available. Beers by Beau’s Brewing Co., its offshoot Halcyon Barrel House and Stalwart Brewing Co. are available, as is coffee from a fine espresso machine that shares counter space with a miniature garden of micro-greens and a trusty immersion circulator.

If Grunt wasn’t special enough already, it is also becoming a booster for Mechanicsville, which McLelland calls “beautiful” but also “rough around the edges,” not unlike the part of Scotland where he grew up.

After a fire down the street left a family homeless last month, Grunt gave over its walls to paintings by Andrea Stokes, all of which were sold to raise money to help the family. In June, Grunt hosted a 90th birthday party for Keith Brown, the life-long neighbourhood resident and volunteer who has been dubbed “the Mayor of Mechanicsville.”

McLelland has begun giving free monthly cooking classes. He says if there are families who can’t afford a night out at a restaurant, he’s not opposed to feeding them for free if they make reservations.

McLelland, who lives in Gloucester with his in-laws, says he was happy to open Grunt in Mechanicsville. Elgin Street and Wellington Street West have enough restaurants, he says.

“I could use this as a platform to do some good,” McLelland says of his business. That’s what he’s doing, and deliciously so.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum
Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews

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Suya Palace
460 Bronson Ave., 613-619-4022, facebook.com/suyapalacegrill
Open: Tuesday to Friday 3 to 9 p.m., Saturday 3 to 10 p.m., Sunday 3 to 7:30 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: dishes up to $17.99
Access: step to front door

Suya Joint / African Grill
1383 Clyde Ave., 613-225-8584, africangrills.com , suya-joint.com
Open: Monday 3 to 9 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday noon to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to midnight, Sunday 1 to 8 p.m.
Prices: up to $20 for dishes
Access: no steps to front door

In the real world, my travels to Africa have been scant. Decades ago, I was in Morocco for an afternoon. More recently, I spent a few days playing tourist in Cape Town and its surrounding winelands, which some say hardly represents the continent.

All that to say, these days I’m feeling I’ve had more revelatory encounters with the cultures of African countries during my visits to Ottawa restaurants that serve their national dishes.

Most recently, I’ve been eating and enjoying the meat-forward fare from Suya Palace in Centretown, which serves some key Nigerian dishes and especially the grilled items called, as you would guess, suya.

I’ve also visited — and been pleased by some dishes at — Suya Joint/African Grill, which is tucked away in a Clyde Avenue strip mall. There, a chef from Lesotho serves his version of suya, plus the barbecue style known as braai, which is native to South Africa, which happens to encircle Lesotho.

These modest eateries share a dedication to authentic flavours that rely on spices imported from Africa. The dishes I liked most, and even some that I cared less for, were well-seasoned and deeply savoury. It did seem that both restaurants had been discovered by African expats.

Suya Palace, which this spring replaced African Slow Food on Bronson Avenue near Gladstone Avenue, is a tiny place more geared to take-out orders, although it does seat about 10 people.

Best here were orders of chicken and beef suya. Both were beguilingly seasoned and tasty, although those with peanut allergies should know that peanuts are usually included in suya marinades.

The chicken was all bone-in, a thigh and two drumsticks, and it was sufficiently moist, if not juicy, after its time on Suya Palace’s charcoal grill. Beef suya was tender, if not moist. Goat suya was flavourful, but its toughness turned eating into exercise for our jaws.

At Suya Palace’s counter, there’s a small metal bin filled with orange powder. Although the cook that took your order already asked you how spicy you wanted your suya, he will still add a few spoonfuls of that orange powder, which turns out to be a made-in-Nigeria chilli powder that adds some fierce, persistent, swelling heat. Try some. It’s good. But don’t say you weren’t warned.

Less pleasing at Suya Palace was its suya-spiced grilled quarter chicken, only because its white meat was dry.

I can recommend Suya Palace’s jollof rice, a Nigerian side dish that was moist, tomato-y, well-seasoned and markedly smoky. If you order plantain here, the serving will be generous, but also very chunky and a little more firm than I like.

Several Nigerian soups complete Suya Palace’s wall-placard menu. Knowing next to nothing about it, I tried the ogbonna okra soup, and found I could not get past its mucilaginous sticky-slimy texture. Had I simply consulted Wikipedia first, I would have known better.

The restaurant is not licensed. Apart from basic soft drinks, it also offers vitamalt, the non-alcoholic Caribbean malt beverage. Its meat is halal.

At Suya Joint/African Grill, which opened late last year, chef-owner Koele Khutlang, a native of Lesotho, serves his take on suya, which presents its beef, goat, chicken and gizzards in smaller morsels, closer to the street-food roots of the dish.

The suya here is heavily seasoned due its marinating, and smoky, too. But it’s not as fiery as Suya Palace’s suya. Khutlang says his suya recipe is “90 per cent authentic. My suya is two countries mixed, Nigeria and Cameroon.” Best was the toothsome goat suya. Assorted suya, a sort of chef’s choice, included chewier bits of offal and firm, meaty gizzards.

The crowd-pleaser here was Khutlang’s braai, which he says he’s been working on for two decades. Chicken braai was rounded in flavour, markedly but not overpoweringly spiced, charbroiled and then glazed with a sweet-salty finish.

Khutlang notes that peanuts figure in his suya preparation, but not in his braai, and he says he runs his kitchen to try to isolate food that comes into contact with peanuts.

The fries here were very good, but the jollof rice was dry and a little bitter. Khutlang sometimes has moi moi, a savoury Nigerian bean pudding, available as a special. We ordered it and were counselled that it would be very spicy. It was not. But it was tasty, with a salty-fishy undertone.

Tulip Restaurant & Bar
361 Queen St. (inside the Hilton Garden Inn Ottawa Downtown), 613-234-6363, tulipottawa.com
Open : Daily from noon to 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., also weekday breakfasts from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m., weekend breakfasts 7 to 11 a.m.
Prices: appetizers $7.95 to $21.95, mains $17.95 to $29.95
Access: no steps to front door, washrooms

In the fall of 2017, when David Vinoya was the chef of Wild Sage Kitchen & Bar in Regina, he won that city’s Gold Medal Plates competition after wowing judges with a striking dish that he had enigmatically dubbed “The Nest.”

Equal parts still life and small plate, it was, in the words of head judge James Chatto, “sensationally beautiful.”

In Vinoya’s dish, watercress became a gel. Black olives were turned into powder and beets were made into “soil.” Molecular gastronomy turned chicken into a crisp tuile. The dish’s star was a sphere of ice cream made with the yolks of eggs that had been cured by soaking them for a month in mud and salt, as is done in the Philippines, where Vinoya was born and raised.

These days, Vinoya cooks in Ottawa. Wild Sage was inside a DoubleTree by Hilton hotel, and more than a year ago, Vinoya moved here to become the executive chef at the Hilton Garden Inn Ottawa Downtown, where Tulip Restaurant and Bar lies beyond its Queen Street entrance.

This summer, I had two dinners and a lunch at Tulip, hoping for some medal-winning brilliance.

Tulip’s menus definitely intrigued. Vinoya has a wide-roaming curiosity about food, so that his multicultural menu makes stops in Japan, Italy, China, the Middle East, the Philippines and the rest of Canada, sometimes mashing up influences from here and there. Among the menu’s details are ingredients such as crab, sea urchin, bacon jam, black garlic aioli, and truffle oil — the stuff that makes connoisseurs and especially umami-lovers salivate.

In line with Chatto’s kudos, Vinoya’s plating is definitely a strong point. His dishes were usually pretty and exuberant, if on occasion a touch contrived.

But on the whole, our meals were uneven. Some dishes were interesting, solidly made and satisfying. Others were just OK and a few let us down. For too many dishes, some components had little to no impact, making you wonder if simpler food would not have been better.

My second dinner there was markedly my best experience at Tulip, and I wondered if who was cooking in the kitchen is as significant as what we ordered.

At my first visit, a weekday lunch, we had several appetizers that were not as tasty as they looked.

Three steamed pork belly buns ($11.95) were presented like treasures on a black stone slab in a wooden tray, with a small salad and dipping sauce on the side. But visuals aside, the bao buns needed work. The too-dry pork belly sorely lacked succulence. The odd move of dredging the buns in creole seasoning added significant heat, but unpleasantly so. The sweet-salty sauce on the side would have been better inside the bun. Overall, the kitchen’s twists on a classic snack did not improve it.

Spicy tuna ($13.95) arrived atop oblongs of deep-fried rice and, more ostentatiously, on a bed of rocks in its bowl. It was not bad, but would have been better had its rice been less crisp.

Fried flatbread ($12.95) topped with mushrooms, truffle oil, whipped goat cheese, a cloud of parmesan and pea shoots was tasty, although the bread did feel heavy.

Lunch’s heftiest item was Tulip’s doughnut-burger hybrid ($18.95), seemingly built for Instagram or for eating on a dare. Perhaps predictably, it was too massive and dulce-de-leche-drizzled to be eaten by hand, which to me is a big point of eating a hamburger. In all, this burger struck me as overladen. (To be fair, Tulip offers a “standard” burger and six sandwiches that are more streamlined.)

At a weekend dinner, three dishes were meh, while a fourth stood out.

The texture of a large slab of pan-fried falafel ($14.95) varied from cake-y to moist to mushy, and it was a little bland. The accompanying salad, which featured a lemon brûlée peanut chutney, arugula, red cabbage, avocado herb sauce, cured onions and sumac vinaigrette, could have been edited, as not every element sang.

A corn meal-crusted filet of sea bream ($27.95), a mild Mediterranean fish, had three more pin bones that we would have liked. The purple gnocchi on its plate were blobby, not light.

Our dessert, a caramel and chocolate ganache tart ($8.95) felt a little cold and tired.

Happily, my mid-week dinner last week was redemptive.

That spicy tuna appetizer seemed bigger of flavour and better texturally. I liked even more the indulgence of chicharron ($18.95), its fresh-tasting and light fried pork rinds topped as if they were nachos.

Tulip’s pork chop ($28.95) was big, juicy and worth returning for, and the veg on the plate — sweet potato purée, mushrooms, broccolini — hit the mark.

A half cornish hen ($26.95) impressed with its moist flesh, although its glaze was a touch too sweet and its polenta was too salty.

Vinoya’s dish called “Anarchy” ($ 24.95), was a (cleanly organized) plate of seafood pasta. Squid ink pasta topped with pea shoots sat beside clams, scallops and tiny shrimp in a red pepper sauce. The dish was fine and its seafood was tender, but it was a little under-seasoned.

That night, desserts were a highlight. Maja blanca ($8.95) was a mellow, refined coconut pudding with its roots in the Philippines. A block of Minoya’s calling-card salted egg ice cream ($8.95) was luscious and scarcely salty. The “tree of sweetness” dessert ($10.95) nodded to the restaurant’s name, planting purple cotton candy in rich, chocolate-soil-topped chocolate mousse.

Tulip includes both a bar and a more restrained dining area that we understood was more for breakfast guests.

As last week’s dinner finished, Vinoya emerged from the kitchen to personably check in with guests about their meals. We responded that we’d enjoyed our food.

I wish I could have told him the same about my two other visits. Vinoya clearly is a chef to watch, but at the Hilton, a little more rigour in his kitchen and menus would help.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum

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Alice
40 Adeline St., 613-733-0707, alicerestaurant.ca
Open: Tuesday to Saturday 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday
Prices: tasting menu $95 per person
Access: one step to gravelled area, steps with handrail to front door

The very first intrigue at Alice, the uniquely vegetable-focused fine-dining restaurant that chef-owner Briana Kim opened in June, involves assuring yourself that you have come to the right address.

Hers is the place on a modest residential side street in Little Italy where marc | kitchen, and before that The Rex, had been. Kim, the self-taught, award-winning chef who represented Ottawa at the 2018 Canadian Culinary Championships, now presides inside a converted house with a new wood façade and a mini-greenhouse in front, but no sign of the restaurant’s name outside. To be clear, Alice is not the neighbouring property with an InfoWars sticker on its door, which has its own mysteries.

When you enter Alice, the questions mount. Above all: What’s in those jars?

One wall of Alice’s front dining area is a clear cabinet filled with almost three dozen jars with oddly hued contents. Looking more closely, you discover that they contain the slowly fermenting materials of Kim’s cutting-edge cuisine — miso pastes made with sweet peas, chickpeas or sesame, vinegar-based creations involving crabapple flowers, Thai basil or spruce tips, concoctions made with jalapeño, morels, reindeer moss and even pine cones.

Fine-dining fans will know that fermentation is all the rage in the world’s top kitchens, from global leader Noma in Copenhagen down. With her jars, Kim shows she has gone all-in on fermentation as she takes her culinary artistry to the next level.

Kim’s previous and more casual restaurant, Café My House in Hintonburg, laid five years of groundwork for Alice.

But where Café My House, which Kim closed in January, was funky and dark, Alice, which seats 20 or so in its cosy, L-shaped, white-and-birch-coloured space, is ascetically spare. Only its jar-filled cabinet, a more artful wood wall that celebrates flowers in the rear dining area, the sleek bar that dispenses pricey but top-notch cocktails and the hubbub in the open kitchen distract from Kim’s rarefied dishes.

And where Café My House’s plant-based offerings included brunches on weekends and five-course tasting menus at dinner, Alice aims higher, serving just an eight-course, $95 tasting menu that can be paired with natural wines or alcohol-free house-made beverages for $60. (Cocktails, Burdock beer and Revel cider are also available.)

So, the investment and stakes are high for Kim’s most uncompromising project to date. I can say, though, after my meal there Saturday night, that Alice served a singular and fascinating dinner that surpassed two tasting-menu experiences I had had at Café My House.

Her food is supremely refined and arguably even virtuous, applying an ambitious chef’s devotion to highly creative and technical culinary transformations in the service of veganism and locavorism. The results are frequently visually stunning, marvellously thoughtful and not only delicious but deliciously novel.

Our dinner at Alice began with bread and snacks, with each counting as a course. But Kim’s approach made clear that Alice means to transport guests to a culinary wonderland.

Slices of warm, perfect sourdough came with a candle, which turned out to be “butter” made from creamy fermented rice, which was softening thanks to a burning walnut “wick.” For snacks, servers brought something scarcely cooked (a lightly charred summer radish, complete with its leaf, with cranberry bean miso that had been aged for three months) and an exquisite little pastry (a toasted sunflower seed and star anise butter tart with compressed plums and anise flowers).

Next came a bowl, and a table-side flourish. A sphere of coconut yogurt nestled with cranberry beans, and smoked, toasted and salted coconut flakes in a savoury broth. Kim then topped the dish with spoonfuls of an apparently supercooled powder flavoured with yuzu, the Japanese citrus fruit. Vapour, or probably nitrogen gas, billowed from the bowl.

As showy as the bowl was, it was even tastier. Bite after bite, it provided a refreshing play of sweetness, citrus, saltiness, textures and temperatures.

Alice’s elegant and visually arresting salad course will be very hard to displace from my memory. Kim had arranged assorted greens from Juniper Farms in a mini-bouquet, topped it with toasted flaxseed, other small, good things, and offset it with a ring of kohlrabi filled with sea buckthorn jelly. The salad’s dressing was fermented house-made almond milk, added in another table-side manoeuvre. The dish was simply revelatory.

The next two courses were increasingly savoury.

First came a geometric arrangement of circles and squares that starred cherry tomatoes, precisely topped with a red pepper-jalapeńo salsa, lacto-fermented basil and toasted freekeh, contrasted with a crisp, perforated smoked garlic chip and a ponzu-flavoured gel, as well as a fennel-spiced “butter” powder. If I’m right, the dish also included just enough subtle Sichuan-pepper-based oil to leave the faintest tingle on the tongue.

Eggplant was the star of the final savoury course, cooked so as to coax out its meaty mouthfeel. The slabs of eggplant were garnished with a variety of pickles and came with a deeply flavoured cucumber-based sauce. Nudging the dish over the top was a crisp ribbon that packed crunch and umami, I believe from a dusting of sea-vegetable powder.

With these dishes, I had Alice’s alcohol-free pairings and was struck by their quality and even ingenuity. Among those drinks were glasses or cups of blackberry, hibiscus and mint kombucha, lime leaf lemonade, a warm, clear, super-savoury tomato tea, and a cool cucumber-ginger-cilantro tonic.

The first of two desserts combined house-made silken tofu with viscous elderberry honey and a scattering of fresh and freeze dried strawberries. It was good on its own but better still with its pairing, the strawberry sour topped with a vanilla and tonka bean “meringue.”

The knockout dessert was the kitchen’s riff on an ice cream sandwich, that placed a quenelle of fermented-rice-based “ice cream” between shards of hyper-crisp oat cake, buttressed by berries in a charred pine cone syrup. Although I’m no fan of licorice, the licorice anise soda paired well with the dessert.

Our meal ended with a mignardise — a house-made mint chocolate candy — and a keepsake copy of the menu, which abbreviated its descriptions of the dishes. Kim told us before we left that dishes come on and off the menu continually, and that roughly every six weeks there’s a new menu, to the delight of Alice’s repeat customers. Given that long-fermenting ingredients are involved, Kim is already planning winter dishes.

In all, Alice packed a striking amount of pleasant stimulation into our 95 minutes there. In fact, it’s possible the kitchen and staff were a little too efficient. Our meal could have felt a touch more relaxed in terms of pacing and delivery, and even more warm. But then, Kim and her team knew once I arrived that I was there in a critical capacity, and perhaps they switched to an overly professional, too-cool mode.

And for all the details they dispensed, Kim and her servers could have told us a bit more about the thinking behind the dishes — the “why” as well as the “what.” I’ve experienced that kind of curated dining at a Michelin-starred place or two, and found it gave a fuller appreciation of the food and the people who made it, enriching our experience and justifying the lofty prices.

Still, Alice serves notice that Kim is not simply a fine chef on Ottawa’s arguably under-appreciated dining scene, but an important culinary trailblazer worthy of recognition nationally and beyond. There are remarkable dishes to be discovered and demystified here now, and I expect there will be many more in the future.

phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum

1 Elgin
The former Le Café inside the National Arts Centre, 613 594-5127, nac-cna.ca/en/1elgin
Open: Tuesday to Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday
Prices: starters $13 to $19, mains $28 to $42
Access: steps down to entrance

For four decades, Le Café, the National Arts Centre’s restaurant, won over innumerable fans.

Its first chef, the late and revered Kurt Waldele, was a pioneer of elevated cuisine that celebrated Canada, years before waving our flag in the kitchen became common. With its unbeatable downtown location and view of the Rideau Canal, Le Café was a prime destination for locals and tourists alike.

That said, Le Café also had its detractors. In 2010, my predecessor Anne DesBrisay wrote: “For as many years as I’ve been writing about Ottawa restaurants” — which was 17 at the time — “I have found the food at the National Arts Centre’s dining room pretty so-what-ish … It seemed to me a restaurant stubbornly determined not to outshine the shows going on above its head.” I was of a similar mind in 2013, although DesBrisay and I were reviewing restaurants overseen by different chefs.

Since then, much has changed. In the summer of 2017, Kenton Leier came on board as the NAC’s executive chef after helming kitchens at some of Ottawa’s top downtown hotels.

In the summer of 2018, a first phase of renovations revamped the kitchen and brought in new custom-made tables and chairs, installed circular booths along its back wall, and changed the carpeting.

In early June this year, the restaurant closed for more renovations. The bar that had been near the entrance was moved to the middle of the dining room, cutting its long, narrow space in half. Just as dramatically, the ceiling has been modernized, swapping in a reflective surface broken up energetically by sleek bars of light.

The NAC also bid adieu to the Le Café name. I’m not sure I like the new name — 1 Elgin — more, but as a signal of change, it’s meaningful.

Most importantly, based on my visits to Le Café earlier this year and 1 Elgin last week, I can say that recent changes have done the restaurant a lot of good.

Last Friday, which was not a show night at the NAC, we liked the half-full room’s revitalized ambience. The centralized bar adds more buzz to the place. Over all, the room feels more of today, in line with the NAC’s overall renovation in recent years that coincided with Canada’s sesquicentennial and the centre’s 50th anniversary this year.

Most dishes we ordered from the menu of six appetizers, six mains and seven desserts were more well made, better presented and even more significant than what I’d eaten at the NAC both years ago and this spring, before Le Café closed.

The extra significance was due to the fact that Leier last month teamed up with Six Nations chef Rich Francis to design the menu. Francis is the first of four resident chefs at the NAC in 2019-20. His food debuted in mid-September, coinciding with the launch of the NAC’s new Indigenous Theatre, and will be offered at 1 Elgin until Nov. 13. Francis has set the bar high for the chefs that will have residencies next January, March and May to complete the NAC’s inaugural resident chefs program.

Francis’s input has added, to varying degrees, Indigenous touches or back stories to some menu dishes, and we leaned in that direction, passing on more conventional items such as beef tartare or beef tenderloin that might have been on Le Café’s menu.

Of three appetizers, we enjoyed most of all the “three sisters soup” ($13). While I’ve since read that three sisters soup usually includes corn, beans and squash, our soup was a hearty, homey potato-fennel soup, enlivened by tender shreds of smoked duck, black olive tapenade and some hidden but zippy candied lemon zest.

Anishinaabe wild rice and Tuscarora corn salad ($ 15) was simple but refined, with ribbons of lightly pickled root veg and a creamy, intriguing vinaigrette adding breadth to the dish. 

“Medicine-cured salmon” ($19) was the night’s only dish that felt like a bit of a letdown. Its slab of fish was pleasant and restrained of flavour, but its greens were more pedestrian.

Also, when we asked our server why the dish was “medicine-cured,” his answer was more improvised than informed. He returned later to tell us that the salmon had been cured with juniper and beet juice, which was nice to know, but still didn’t answer the question.

On the whole, our servers that night were friendly, attentive and engaged. But they could also have been more knowledgeable about dishes that deserved a bit of explanation and detailed touting.

Main courses were satisfying and attractively plated.

My wife’s Arctic char ($29) was the largest piece of that fish I’d ever seen on a plate, and it was appealingly crisp-skinned and succulent. Wild rice and steel-cut oat risotto struck a comforting note and well-roasted chunky vegetables (a feature on every plate) added bulk and visual appeal.

Elk osso buco ($42) was massive, meaty and duskily-flavoured, and its roasted grapes were a nice accent. However, the marrowbone on the plate was seemingly more for show than enjoyment, as its marrow was dry and didn’t provide the requisite indulgent note.

Pan-seared and impeccably seasoned duck breast ($32) could not have been improved upon. Our table’s vegan was pleased with a colourful mushroom-based main ($28), supported by surprisingly palatable seitan “prosciutto,” a saffron coconut sauce and pumpkin purée.

Because we let 1 Elgin know in advance about birthday celebrants at our table, several appropriately decorated desserts were on the house. Tops was the dark chocolate tart ($12), especially with its sweet and grassy dollop of sweetgrass ice cream. Maple pumpkin spice cake ($11) did less for us.

Since we were told when we arrived about those free desserts, we allocated that part of the budget on house cocktails ($11) that used Canadian gin and were suitably complex and stiff. Some craft beers are on tap, and the wine list is lengthy, with most bottles in the $40 to $80 range and many wines available by the glass in five- and eight-ounce pours. To support the menu by Francis and Leier, 1 Elgin is also offering wines from Okanagan Valley’s NK’MIP Cellars, Canada’s first Indigenous winery, although the menu consistently refers to “MK’MIP Cellars.”

I won’t dwell on the meals I had at Le Café this spring, except to say I liked them less because they seemed to have been prepared with less attentiveness and were more old-fashioned in terms of taste and appearance. Better dishes included a veal chop special and the beef tenderloin tartare, and the latter is still on the latest menu.

Soon after Leier was hired, he told this newspaper he wanted to raise the level of the food at the NAC’s restaurant, which had received mixed reviews online.

“The goal is to be a great restaurant, not an average one,” he said. “It won’t happen overnight, but the effort will be there.” Consistency, he said, was an issue, especially given that on show nights, 150 to 200 guests come for a quick meal before a Southam Hall concert.

Leier is on the right track, I think, with 1 Elgin’s freshened surroundings and the best fare that he and Francis presented persuasively winning us over. We’ll hope that the executive chef and future resident chefs keep up the good work.

phum@postmedia.com
Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews

Gray Jay
300 Preston St., 613-680-0380, grayjayhospitality.ca
Open: Tuesday and Wednesday 5:30 to 10 p.m., Thursday to Saturday 5:30 p.m. till closing, closed Sunday and Monday
Prices: smaller plates $14 to $24, larger plates $25 to $50
Access: two steps to front door

The second time I ate at Gray Jay, I knew better than to ask for coffee.

Chef and co-owner Dominique Dufour’s cosy restaurant on Preston Street is as principled as it is accomplished, friendly and even intriguing. At this four-month-old restaurant named after Canada’s national bird, Canadian ingredients are a must. Because coffee beans don’t grow in Canada, Gray Jay does not serve coffee.

For the same reason, don’t expect any tropical fruit at Gray Jay, or any Canadian produce out of season unless it’s been preserved. Do expect Dufour to exercise great creativity within her constraints. She, like a growing number of au courant chefs, is pushing a vision of elevated Canadian dining aligned with the precepts and expanded bounties of new Nordic cuisine.

That’s why Dufour tops her lightly cold-smoked oysters with a sprig of foraged and then fried reindeer moss. She indulges in fermentation, following the trickle-down influence of culinary trailblazer Noma in Copenhagen. Dufour marries seaweed with roasted cod or potatoes, adds rye and oats to her savoury dishes, and favours mushrooms to the point of working them into a persuasively tasty dessert.

Before launching Gray Jay, Dufour came to Ottawa from Montreal last year to be the executive chef at the Le Germain Hotel Ottawa. She opened Norca, the boutique hotel’s sleek restaurant whose name refers — and this will sound familiar — to “Northern cuisine, Canadian ingredients.”

But if Dufour is working from a similar playbook at Gray Jay, her food here, which I enjoyed twice this month, strikes me as more personal, interesting and consistent.

Gray Jay’s taut fall menu consists of 11 items. About half of them are smaller, very well crafted, novel and vegetable-forward. Three meatier large plates round out the savoury selections and there are two desserts. Sharing is very much encouraged.

You can also order a chef’s-choice tasting menu, served family-style for $65 a person, or graze from a selection of cheeses and house-made charcuterie, which befits a place with a sophisticated and user-friendly wine list (that is, surprisingly, not exclusively Canadian).

There’s a great deal of thought and technique involved in Dufour’s dishes, all the more to deliver something complex and stimulating that a guest hasn’t eaten before.

Those succulent, hard-to-pass-up oysters ($24 for six) sat on beds of puréed cauliflower and cucumber, emulsified with hemp seeds, and topped with dollops of a zippy fennel, roasted red pepper and Tokyo turnip mignonette, not to mention the fried moss.

I’ll note here that these and a few dishes were brought to our table from the long open kitchen facing the dining area by Dufour herself, who likes to break down the distinction between front and back of house. She’s generous with the details and stories of her creations, and will tell you, for example, that she favours wild, hand-harvested P.E.I. oysters because choosing them helps to minimize damage to the oysters’ habitat.

Indeed, between them, Dufour and sommelier/server Alex Nicholson provided the most engaging and knowledgeable service that I’ve experienced this year in Ottawa.

A dish that wowed us as a distinct indulgence consisted of thinly sliced and marinated pumpkin, tossed with roasted cauliflower and garlic-oil-confit sunchokes in a caramelized onion sauce, with scoops of rye-and-sunflower-seed-topped bone marrow as a finishing touch.

Just as impressive, but more unexpected, was Gray Jay’s deliciously braised Japanese eggplant ($16) with a chickpea-based miso and loose yogurt made with soy milk driving up the umami factor, while beets that had been julienned, fried and dehydrated added crunch and novelty.

Gray Jay’s menu offers cod collar at two price points ($25 and $40). We took the smaller cutlet, and were told by Nicholson that either way, Dufour was experimenting with roasting that off-cut of fish on the bone, as if it were red meat. The slab of fish, topped with a gremolata of garlic, butter, lemon thyme and sourdough crumble, was juicy and varied in texture, quite unlike a more demure fillet.

True red meat lovers should be pleased with the steak of deer or bison, depending on availability ($50, for two people). We had significantly smoked but richly meaty bison, served with yet another perplexingly good sauce, this time made with chestnuts, fermented and caramelized apples and caramelized onions. Completing the dish was a mound of dill-flecked shoestring potatoes that were dramatically crunchy, possibly to a fault.

A bowl of rabbit dumplings ($33) was a lucid, comforting dish. Its toothsome, expertly made dumplings sat in a rich bone broth that played its salty notes with pride.

Both of Gray Jay’s desserts were winners. The more conventional (and vegan-friendly) of the two was a squash flan ($8) whose sweet, soy-milk-based sauce had notes of hay.

More startling was the dessert ($9) that paired a molten (but not overly sweet) maple cake with a semifreddo that was topped with morsels of chanterelle mushrooms that had been made more mellow, yet still savoury, by their preparation, and the semifreddo sat on a crumble of yogurt cooked down to caramelized solids. The semifreddo had a streak of tamed mushroom to it as well, thanks to the addition of sugar blended with dehydrated chanterelles.

All of these experiments happen in what was formerly a Domino’s pizzeria, which Dufour and her co-owner, Gray Jay’s general manager Devon Bionda, renovated on their own. Their restaurant, which seats 27, is a light-coloured space with concrete tabletops and concrete underfoot, cushioned banquettes and harder chairs.

There’s softer seating at the front of Gray Jay, on an older sofa, while a small bar also appeals. The open kitchen is an eye-grabber and conversation-starter, with its pale green antique fridge and other funky accoutrements. The overall vibe brings to mind some Quebec City restaurants I’ve visited that make fine-dining fun.

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Gray Jay’s fall menu will be in effect until mid-November, Dufour told me, after which a game-based winter menu will take over. Meanwhile, on Saturdays, Gray Jay serves whole-animal-based menus. Past stars have included smoked goose, a Holstein calf, brook trout, and lamb from Shady Creek Lamb Co. in Kinburn.

Dufour is clearly a chef filled with talent and ideas, stretching out successfully at Gray Jay. “This project is very personal and very much a gamble on our side,” she told me. “We are holding on with hopes, dreams and passion.”

That gamble by Dufour and her team has paid off handsomely. It’s time now for Ottawa foodies to be passionate in their support of this special place.

phum@postmedia.com
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Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews