Atelier
540 Rochester St., Ottawa, 613-321-3537, atelierrestaurant.ca , instagram.com/atelierottawa , thru.tickit.ca
Open: Dining room closed due to COVID-19, but the restaurant is staging drive-thru dinners on Saturdays and Sundays
Price: $100 plus tax per person for a five-course blind tasting menu with non-alcoholic drink pairings; reservations are capped at 10 cars each night

Before the coming of the COVID-19 crisis, grabbing a drive-thru snack was one of this restaurant critic’s guilty pleasures, usually involving a late-night impulse purchase of fries that would gobbled down only to precede a few fitful hours of sleep.

But on Saturday night, we put on our best going-outside clothes and buckled our seat belts in anticipation of fine dining fare, served drive-through style.

Marc Lepine, chef-owner of Atelier on Rochester Street and two-time winner of the Canadian Culinary Championships, had closed his acclaimed restaurant’s dining room in mid-March, in keeping with governmental mandates. But in early May, Lepine announced on Instagram that he would re-open, not to offer takeout or delivery orders as other upscale restaurants have done, but to serve a five-course tasting menu plus non-alcoholic drink pairings to gastronomes willing to eat in their cars.

Leave it to Lepine, who was chosen in 2018 as the country’s most innovative chef by Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants magazine, to propose this whimsical re-think of what fine dining could be during a global pandemic that has made physical distancing necessary. Following last Saturday’s inaugural go, he will be offering drive-thru Atelier dinners for the foreseeable future on Saturdays and Sundays, via tickets that even at $100 are likely to sell out quickly online.

In January, back when life was normal, I had the usual at Atelier in its cozy but stark dining room, meaning an anything-but-usual 12-course dinner of surprising, cutting-edge creations brought to our table by polished servers who could discuss the intricacies of Lepine’s food.

In front of Atelier on Saturday, we were among a lineup of 10 cars filled with people wondering how the Atelier experience would translate to in-vehicle eating.

Each of us received a bag filled with plastic cutlery, napkins and straws, and then the first of five courses in premium takeout containers we could later return to our server for recycling. Our masked and gloved server, who also prepared our drinks, handed us each course in turn with a cheery description. Then we ambled to the parking lot beside Atelier, parked, and enjoyed.

Dinner inside Atelier typically began with a course of three amuse-bouche snacks. For the drive-thru, Lepine pulled off an impressive equivalent, which consisted of a refined mini-souffle with a burst of crab and citrus flavours, a deftly seasoned chunk of wild boar belly paired with anise foam, and, most abstractly of all, a square of pea and tarragon topped with walnut and celeriac puree.

After our snacks, around the block we went, pulling up to Atelier for the second course of sockeye salmon cured with sesame and chili oil, garnished with grains of “mushroom fried” puffed rice, pickled daikon and two purees, edamame and coconut-cashew. The meltingly tender fish was practically ideal, and its accompaniments spoke to the kitchen’s deft technique and artful plating, plastic container notwithstanding.

Our third course was vegetable-heavy, showcasing asparagus, crisp strands of potato, tomatoes, bits of mushroom and a just-coagulated sous-vide-cooked egg yolk. The final savoury course featured slices of beef brisket, which had just a bit more chew to it than we would have liked but also a huge amount of charred, delectable flavour due to its glaze. A carrot-jus reduction bolstered the meat, and some roasted carrots were extraordinarily good.

Before the dessert, there was a bit of cleverness that, not to disclose too much, involved a squeegee kid who wasn’t a squeegee kid and a parking ticket that wasn’t a parking ticket, both riffing on the dinner’s drive-thru aspect. Dessert, which even required a masked Lepine to administer some liquid nitrogen, I think, to make some instant ice cream, looked like a brown mish-mash but was a chocolate-y treat teeming with textures and novelties.

Normally, I’d be tempted by the wine pairings at Atelier. The drive-thru’s non-alcoholic beverages ranged from a sparkling matcha tea on ice with yuzu and ginger to a sugar-forward rooibos and lime strawberry shrub to a cross between a tomato juice and martini to a Vietnamese sweet tea with condensed milk, sour cherry and masala chai simple syrup.

We were done eating in about 90 minutes, roughly half the time of a pre-pandemic dinner at Atelier. We were also quite full.

Given how much hardship COVID-19 has caused, it can seem privileged in the extreme to bemoan the loss of fine dining to the pandemic.

But there are reasons just the same to be glad about what Atelier has pulled off. The restaurant’s drive-thru experiment demonstrated that Lepine, like us, is up to the challenge of making the best of things in trying times, while the remarkableness of his dinner showed that even while in quarantine, we could be delighted.

phum@postmedia.com

Ayla’s Social Kitchen
338 Preston St.,  613-762-7297, aylassocial.ca , instagram.com/aylassocial
Open: dining room closed due to COVID-19, open Wednesday to Sunday from 4 to 8:30 p.m. for pick-up and delivery orders
Prices: dishes between $13 and $20, $65 for dinner for two; $5 or more for deliveries through Love Local Delivery, depending on distance
Note: menu changes weekly, check instagram.com/aylassocial for updates

Amir and Maryam Aghaei, the owners and operators of Ayla’s Social Kitchen on Preston Street, figure that in the four days that their dining room was open, they served perhaps two dozen customers.

Then, on March 13, just as the novel coronavirus’s transformation of Ottawa was beginning, their brand new restaurant on Little Italy’s main drag closed.

The basement-level eatery, which is located where Posto Locale had been, did reopen later in March to make food to go, as it continues to do five nights a week. But the Aghaeis, who had named their restaurant after their six-year-old daughter, cut their business’s staff from 12 people to just themselves.

“We spent a ton of money on renovating. I thought if we didn’t do anything, we would run into a ditch,” Maryam Aghaei says.

But having had no time at all to build a following, the Aghaeis saw little to no business soon after they reopened.

“It was horrible,” recalls Amir Aghaei. “Nobody knew us. It slowly started. We started getting one, two, three orders, some weeks nothing.”

Eventually, the internet directed more customers to them, people who stumbled onto the restaurant’s Instagram page or food-lovers such as myself who found Ayla’s because it had signed up to have Love Local Delivery, the fledgling delivery service, bring its dishes to customers. Some who knew the Aghaeis from their previous business, the Pints & Quarts pub in the Glebe, gave their new venture a try.

Last weekend, we took our own leap of faith with Ayla’s and felt pretty well rewarded.

The restaurant serves what it calls Mediterranean cuisine, with Persian twists that nod to the Aghaeis’ background. The menu that applied for my dinner — Ayla’s offerings change weekly, Maryam Aghaei says — listed a fancier dinner for two, some more casual but tweaked comfort food, and some intriguing appetizers.

If you like poutine in the first place, you probably would have liked Ayla’s creative, cross-cultural version, made with thyme-seasoned and fried halloumi cheese standing in ably for curds, as well as lamb gravy and a scattering of pomegranate seeds. Lamb also figured, with eggplant, in a dip that was like a slightly more savoury take on baba ghanoush. Egg rolls made with shredded duck and served with a orange-chili sauce held our interest, although they did lack crispness.

Among the main courses, the bacon cheeseburger made with havarti was solidly made and substantial, although a more interesting pick would likely have been the grilled cheese sandwich made with pulled lamb.

The most explicitly Persian dish we had was a mellow sweet and sour stew of chicken, walnuts and pomegranate that other Iranian restaurants in town call fesenjoon.

The showpiece of our dinner was the piping hot and massive tray meant to serve two, which was filled with a pair of lamb shanks, mushroom risotto and broccolini. The flavourful, spoon-tender lamb and the al dente broccolini were hard to improve upon. But the mushroom risotto was our meal’s big disappointment due to its punishing saltiness. When I later mentioned that to Amir Aghaeis, he apologized and attributed the gaffe to him falling behind in the kitchen and allowing the risotto’s chicken stock to become too concentrated.

Two salads — a garden salad that came with the burger and a kale salad that came with the lamb shanks — were at least a cut above, not only because of the freshness of their greens but also because of their respective dressings. The herb-tahini dressing with the former and the honey-ginger dressing with the latter were as vibrantly flavoured as anything else that Ayla’s had prepared from scratch.

Two desserts by Maryam Aghaei — slices of moist, lemony almond and fig cake and a nicely wobbly chocolate panna cotta — ended the meal on a sweet, pleasing note.

While the Ayla’s dining room is closed, I can still give two examples of service by the Alghaeis that go above and beyond. First, the afternoon following our dinner, I received a text from Amir Alghaei, who asked what we thought of his food. Second, he told me this week that while the restaurant is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, if someone calls wanting food on one of those days, he will make it. “We never say no,” he says.

That might be the promise of an entrepreneur who saw his hopes hobbled by COVID-19 just days after opening and is desperate for every dollar of business. But I think it’s more likely that the Alghaeis would simply have been just as hospitable if the pandemic had never happened.

phum@postmedia.com

Absinthe Cafe
1208 Wellington St. W., 613-761-1138, absinthecafe.ca , instagram.com/absinthecafe
Open: dining room closed due to COVID-19, takeout and delivery available Tuesday to Saturday 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., closed Monday and Sunday, check its Instagram page for takeout lunch specials
Prices: mains $19 to $25, dinners for two $80 and $90, barbecue kits $40 to $55; deliveries by Love Local Delivery for $5 or more depending on distance

Last Friday at lunchtime, we were lined up 10 deep and two metres apart outside Absinthe Cafe in Hintonburg.

Old-school sandwich-board advertising and new-fangled Instagram posts had done the trick. Both touted chef-owner Patrick Garland’s daily special of lobster rolls. The $20 price was a splurge to be sure, but who wouldn’t want a delicious reminder of seemingly long-ago vacations in P.E.I. and New England when life in quarantine too often feels like a never-ending stay-cation?

The lobster roll in my paper bag was a little less plump than the one depicted on social media, but it still satisfied with chunks of sweet, well-sauced Gaspé Peninsula lobster. For a few dollars more, some duck fat fries and chocolate chip cookies were comfortingly familiar but also notably above average in terms of flavour and texture.

In all, that lobster lunch was a fine, if necessarily casual, way for me to reacquaint myself with Absinthe, which opened in 2003 and moved to its Wellington Street West location in 2007.

I’ve long expected to be impressed by the sure-handed bistro fare served there, from a signature steak frites to duck confit to the fondue I enjoyed in late 2013. Garland even had the culinary chops to win Ottawa’s Gold Medal Plates competition in 2014. With Absinthe pivoting to takeout and delivery fare in response to COVID-19, I was curious to see if the restaurant could wow me with not just that lobster roll, but also with food brought back to my place.

Passing over mains such a burger, striploin steak and lamb shanks, we opted for the roast chicken dinner for four ($90). Happily, nearly every component of that meal was close to definitive. On the whole, Absinthe’s family meal ranked among the top takeout dinners I’ve had since COVID-19 shut Ottawa’s dining rooms almost three months ago.

The chicken was well-seasoned not only on its skin but through and through, and every bite of it, whether it was light or dark meat, was perfectly moist. While the bird really was not wanting for anything, it was even better with its mushroom gravy of equally deep flavour.

The mashed potatoes perhaps could have used a bit more buttery richness. Notwithstanding that, the vegetables, which also included roasted carrots and squash, were exemplary.

Focaccia was fine and perfect for mopping up that exceptional gravy. An otherwise laudable Caesar salad included the meal’s only small flub because some of its lardons were burnt. Better was an add-on to our dinner for four, the seared tuna Niçoise salad, augmented with fiddleheads and boosted by a thick, lemon-y vinaigrette.

For dessert, the apple and rhubarb crisp asserted its tartness while more of those cookies took care of sweeter cravings.

In addition to ready-to-eat fare, Absinthe also sells barbecue-it-yourself dinners featuring marinated meats including lemongrass chicken, chermoula striploin steaks and more. With Father’s Day approaching, this kind of meal might be just the thing to share with my son.

phum@postmedia.com

Baccanalle
595 Montreal Rd. (back of the Phenix Building), 613-859-6297, baccanalle.com
Open : for takeout and delivery Thursday to Saturday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Prices : whole roast jerk chicken dinner $45, mains $16 to $18, $5 or more, depending on distance, for deliveries through Love Local Delivery

Last week in this space, I raved about a roast chicken dinner that struck me as pretty close to definitive. That bird from Absinthe in Hintonburg was the stuff of intense cravings, moist and well-seasoned throughout and made even better by its mushroom gravy.

But at the risk of seeming fickle, I’m confessing this week to a new favourite poultry treat. I’m seeing stars over the delicious and economical roast jerk chicken from Baccanalle, a tiny but potent purveyor of Caribbean-inspired food on Montreal Road.

If my life’s last meal were to be a roast chicken, I might well order it jerked. I’m all in when it comes to that intoxicatingly savoury and sometimes incendiary marinade, powered by Scotch bonnet peppers, allspice, green onions and more. When I saw that Baccanalle offered a roast jerk chicken dinner to go for $45, it struck me as a must-order and I wasn’t disappointed.

Baccanalle’s bird wasn’t as full-on fiery as the jerk pork that I’ve had in Jamaica, or the now legendary “atomic” jerk chicken that chef Frederick White served us at the now-shuttered Flavours of the Caribbean in Lowertown. That nuclear-level dish memorably incapacitated a colleague of mine in a 2015 spicy-food duel, reducing him to a bent-over, near-heaving mess. (Pain notwithstanding, he enjoyed the chicken.)

Resa Solomon-St. Lewis, Baccanalle’s chef-owner and an Algonquin College culinary grad, made a more mellow but nonetheless complexly flavoured jerk chicken that elicited primal appreciation from all of us when we tore it apart last weekend. Its earthy, house-made marinade was slathered not just on the chicken’s exterior, making its skin something to fight over, but also inside the bird, contributing to meat that was worth picking off the bones.

Our chicken came nestled on a generously portioned bed of rice and beans (or rice and peas as they say in the Caribbean), which further contributed to the glowing heat in our mouths. Sides, chosen when I placed my order online a day in advance, included corn on the cob with spiced maple butter, packets of superior fried plantain chips from the local company Laborde Foods, and Baccanallle’s fine “Jamocha me crazy” brownies.

Solomon-St. Lewis also prepares freezable containers of cold pulled jerk chicken, a tub of which made for a fine staple in my fridge days after our al fresco dinner. I was inclined to eat its well-herbed and chili-flecked meat straight from the tub for some instant relief of my pandemic blues.

While Solomon-St. Lewis’s family is from Trinidad and Tobago, she makes some mean Jamaican-style patties, which were meaty and not greasy. We can also recommend Baccanalle’s thirst-quenching house-made sorrel drinks.

Jamaican beef patties from Baccanalle.

An order of blackened chicken underwhelmed a little bit, simply paling in comparison to the the more vibrant jerk preparations.

All that chicken aside, Baccanalle does have items to vegan customers, and even has a listing for “Baccanalle Vegan” on Uber Eats. The frozen “Anima” chickpea vegan curry that we tried was big-flavoured and teeming with vegetables, but was also on the mushy side after it had been thawed and then reheated.

Still, I would be curious to try more of Solomon-St. Lewis’s prepared items. She has grown her business steadily over the last five or so years, building a clientele through appearances at various farmers’ markets from Beechwood to Kanata. Her three-table bricks-and-mortar location, called Capital Fare Cafe, shut because of the pandemic, but she now is concentrating solely on her Baccanalle brand from that east-end kitchen.

If you’re picking up from Baccanalle rather than ordering its food to be delivered, be warned that it’s a little tricky to find. The business is at the back of the Phenix Building on Montreal Road, which has its own ticketed parking lot but is free for 15 minutes. You can phone Baccanalle to let them know you’re there to receive your food curbside.

It’s a bit of a rigmarole. But what isn’t during COVID-19? Just do it for the jerk chicken.

phum@postmedia.com

Four Ottawa-area restaurants are included in the prestigious Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants 2020 list released Thursday.

The local laureates include Riviera on Sparks Street (which ranked 26th), Atelier on Rochester Street (which came in 31st), Les Foug è res in Chelsea (ranked 61st) and Alice on Adeline Street (ranked 94th).

The list’s synopsis of Riviera describes it as “arguably the most stylish of Ottawa’s restaurants … offering magnificent updates on classic steakhouse fare” under chef Jordan Holley. Steps away from Parliament Hill, Riviera is a haunt for Ottawa’s political class.

Atelier is the cutting-edge 22-seat restaurant that chef-owner Marc Lepine, the two-time winner of the Canadian Culinary Championships, opened in 2008 to serve elaborate and innovative tasting menus. Opened in 1993, Les Fougères is the sophisticated yet rustic restaurant whose chef, Yannick LaSalle, won the Canadian Culinary Championships last year. Alice, which chef-owner Briana Kim opened in June 2019, offers a vegetable-focused tasting menu and spotlights house-made fermented ingredients.

Since COVID-19 forced the shutdown of restaurant dining rooms, the four lauded restaurants have pivoted their businesses in different ways.

Riviera and Les Fougères offer food for pickup, and the Chelsea restaurant has a store selling prepared foods that is open.

Atelier on Saturdays and Sundays offers a shortened tasting menu with non-alcoholic drink pairings, but as a “drive-thru” restaurant, with customers picking up courses in front of the restaurant, eating in their cars in the nearby parking lot, and then circling the block to pick up the next course. Alice sells different fermented products and plans to reopen in some fashion in the future.

In the 2019 edition of the list, the Ottawa restaurants cited were Atelier (24th), Riviera (51st), Stofa (98th) and Fauna (100th). In 2018, the list chose Lepine as Canada’s most innovative chef.

Topping the 2020 list, which was compiled from the polls submitted by 103 judges across the country, was the Toronto restaurant Alo, which also came in first in 2019, 2018 and 2017.

A companion list of Canada’s top 50 bars was also released this week, but no Ottawa-area bars were named on it.

phum@postmedia.com

Back to Brooklyn
81 Clarence St., 613-699-6999, backtobrooklyn.ca
Open: for takeout and patio service, Wednesday 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday 4 p.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday noon to 2 a.m., Sunday noon to midnight, closed Monday and Tuesday
Prices: mains $16 to $45
Access: steps into restaurant

One night during this past weekend’s heatwave, we decided to try a brand new restaurant as it coped with some brand new circumstances.

Normally, which is to say before the arrival in March of COVID-19, I gave a just-opened restaurant a month to work out its kinks. But since life in pandemic times is anything but normal, and because we were keen, if a little apprehensive, to dine on a restaurant’s patio, we went last Friday to Back to Brooklyn in the ByWard Market.

You have to feel for any recently opened small business that must now square its ambitions with the demands of limiting the spread of a lethal virus. Back to Brooklyn, which previously was part of the building that housed Stella Osteria, likely wanted to be another place on Clarence Street for the young and hip to congregate care-free and en masse to enjoy food, cocktails and bottle service into the weekend wee hours. Instead, its arrival has been more low-key and even a little surreal.

About a month ago, it opened to offer food to go. On June 12, it and its neighbouring businesses began serving customers on patios. At Back to Brooklyn, we walked through the narrow, empty dining room to a smaller lounge-y back patio that seated roughly 16 and felt intimate despite the required rigours of physical distancing.

In place of menus, there were QR codes on our tables to be scanned that would direct cellphone browsers to the restaurant’s online menu. There were also new bottles of hand sanitizer on each table. While we weren’t required to wear masks, the servers accessorized with PPE face shields.

“You’re rocking that visor,” one of my dining companions said to our server.

“Thanks for saying that,” the server replied.

Service, here and elsewhere, would seem to be something that needs recalibration because of COVID-19. At Back to Brooklyn, our servers were friendly, knowledgeable and attentive. To help us and our servers mutually keep our distance, we were provided with a carafe of water to use for refilling. But we were also visited by one of the restaurant’s owners who was chatty and welcoming, but also unmasked and unshielded and who got a little too close for comfort.

While Back to Brooklyn’s menu is a concise listing of perhaps a half-dozen mains and starters, it is still more interesting than a lot of the patio fare in the ByWard Market. The restaurant’s chef is Warren Sutherland, whose long career in Ottawa includes co-owning Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro in the 1990s and more recently his now-shuttered Sutherland restaurant on Beechwood Avenue. The four main courses that we tried were artfully presented, directly flavourful examples of casual fine dining, enlivened by small flourishes and accents.

“Duck rice” ($25) was not duck fried rice as I might have guessed, but rather a fine confit duck leg on a wee timbale of brown rice with tasty Asian add-ins including pickled mushrooms, bok choy and more.

The vegetarian at our table opted for and was well pleased by the pan-seared cauliflower steak ($24), which was the centrepiece of a splashy, somewhat haphazard looking plate that also included purple cauliflower puree, tempura cauliflower and pickled cauliflower.

Of the free desserts, we thought the sour cherry and blueberry cheesecakes were best by a considerable margin. Back to Brooklyn also offers two desserts that meet keto-diet standards, a cheesecake and a carrot cake. Neither made us want to convert to keto eating for pleasure’s sake, especially when compared to the outstanding classic cheesecake, whose evocations of New York ostensibly lined up with the restaurant’s loose Brooklyn theme.

The restaurant had received its liquor license just days before our visit, we were told. So far, its cocktail offerings are classic ones, and we had a standard Old-Fashioned ($14) and passable glass of sangria ($12).

When he stopped by our table, the restaurant’s owner mentioned that he hoped to convert his roof into a massive patio. I could see such a hangout being a big draw for the quarantine-weary during this anything but ordinary summer, especially for the hordes of the great unmasked that were out in force last Friday on Clarence Street.

phum@postmedia.com

Farang Thai

Email: farangthaiottawa@gmail.com

Phone: 613-884-0221

Website: farangthaiottawa.com

Instragram: instagram.com/farangthaiottawa/

Prices: frozen meals are $14 (with protein) or $12 (vegetarian); minimum order is three dishes, 15 per cent discount applies for 15 meals or more ordered at once; delivery in the Ottawa-Gatineau area is free, orders are due on Wednesdays for deliveries on Friday, Saturday or Sunday

If you’re a stickler for culinary authenticity, it might interest you to know that the Ministry of Commerce in Thailand certifies restaurants around the world that it deems to be truly Thai in terms of ingredients, recipes and even ambience.

In Ottawa, four restaurants — Khao Thai on Murray Street, Pookie’s Thai on Carling Avenue, Talay Thai in Centretown and Thai Lanna Cuisine in South Keys — have received the ministry’s Thai Select designation.

I wonder, though, what the Thai Select program would think of the frozen meals that I’ve recently enjoyed from the Ottawa-based caterer Farang Thai.

The four-year-old company, which consists of couple Cameron and Corinne Fraser, is “committed to making Thai food that tastes the way it’s supposed to taste in the region it comes from,” according to its website.

Cameron, who is the cook, developed his recipes from his own culinary exploits in Thailand, which he first visited in 2007 to study Thai kickboxing. Food won out over fisticuffs and the Frasers say they made subsequent trips to Thailand with the country’s rivetingly flavourful regional dishes as their focus.

“Now our recipes are the result of eating as much as we can handle and trying the same dish from different vendors and restaurants to try and pinpoint what we like most, and translating that inspiration into delicious food, mostly from memory, or from asking what’s in it and how it’s made whenever possible,” says Cameron. He adds that he refers to certain cookbooks, such as The Food of Northern Thailand by Austin Bush, Bangkok by Leela Punyaratabandhu and Pok Pok by Andy Ricker for added inspiration.

Apart from the fact that Farang Thai doesn’t have a location for dining in, there could be some strikes against it when it comes to a Thai Select designation. The company’s name might be seen as a little cheeky, as “farang” means “white person” in the Thai language. Also, while the Thai Select program rewards restaurants that import Thai ingredients, Farang Thai uses vegetables, meat, herbs, and spices from local vendors as much as possible.

Finally, because Cameron Fraser has celiac disease, all of his food is gluten-free, which means there have been small tweaks to recipes because soy sauce and other sauces, for starters, usually contain gluten.

However, the Frasers say on their website that they’re “not trying to ‘Westernize’ anything. It’s grassroots Thai food. No fusion, no ‘Thai style,’ no substitutions (unless requested).” Farang Thai can also accommodate allergies and sensitivities, it says.

It’s been more than two decades since I made my one trip to Thailand, and my best benchmarks for Thai authenticity have since been dishes I’ve had in New York. All that said, I’m happy to shelve any arguments about authenticity and vouch for Farang Thai’s very generously portioned food as delicious and vibrant, marked by nuances that I don’t always taste in Ottawa’s Thai restaurants.

Also, there was no meaningful degradation of Farang Thai’s food even if it had come from freezer rather than straight from a wok.

Farang Thai does require a level of commitment in terms of bulk purchasing. Buying a minimum of three meals (usually a curry or stir-fry with rice) at a time is required. But those with large freezers and a love of Thai food might spring for buying 15 meals, which would come with a 15 per cent discount.

I’ve tried single portions of a half-dozen dishes from Farang Thai’s changing menu. Chicken satay was substantial, well seasoned and its peanut sauce was persuasive. Laab pork was a properly pungent, heaping serving of minced pork, with a finishing touch of toasted rice. Pineapple red curry with chicken and a cashew chicken stir-fry delivered clear, compelling flavours.

My favourite dish was a stir-fry of curried squash with beef, which popped with the most heat and complexity.

As far as spiciness goes, Cameron Fraser says “the default for dishes that call for chilies is ‘average’ or maybe medium. There are plenty of dishes that have no chilies at all, and there are plenty of others that absolutely cannot taste the way they’re supposed to if chilies are omitted, in which case we can certainly adjust the heat level, which we’ve done whenever possible.” If you did want more of a spicy jolt to your food, the caterer’s Farang Fire hot sauce has a good kick to it, combining lime juice, shallots, coriander, chilies and the fermented funk of fish sauce.

The only Farang Thai dish I wouldn’t rush to order again was the vegetarian glass noodle stir-fry, particularly when the meatier dishes each came with plenty of rice.

The only constructive criticism I had for the Frasers was that their food should come with reheating instructions. They say they’ve since added that information.

I do miss going out to Thai restaurants during the pandemic, not only for the thrilling food but also the deep hospitality. However, one small upside to this topsy-turvy virus time is that I’ve become acquainted with Farang Thai’s tasty, convenient and economical food, and my fondness for it will persist after COVID-19 has receded.

phum@postmedia.com

Tingz Restaurant + Bar
55 York St., 613-241-6221, tingzrestaurant.com
Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 2 p.m. to midnight, Wednesday and Friday 2 p.m. to 2 a.m, Saturday noon to 2 a.m., Sunday noon to 10 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: most dishes between $13 and $22
Access: small patio, dining room is downstairs

On the one-to-10 pandemic uneasiness scale I’ve concocted, where one is “I would march in an anti-mask rally” and 10 is “I never leave the house,” I’d say I’m probably a four or five.

Take that into consideration when I say that you should visit Tingz, the new modern Caribbean restaurant on York Street, to enjoy its best dishes on its patio, but maybe you’ll want to forego eating in its just-opened dining room until service is somewhat less slack.

An exterior shot of TINGZ restaurant in the ByWard Market.Chef Jae-Anthony’s jerk chicken, deftly grilled and bathed in a definitive savoury sauce, is among the very best I’ve had in town. Hefty chicken wings, exhibiting a fine char from the grill and nicely seasoned, were winners, too. Tingz’s fish cakes brought back fond memories of the doughy salt cod treats I enjoyed a few years ago in Barbados. When featured in dishes, chunks of oxtail and goat were tamed into succulence. Mac and cheese was a rich and satisfying indulgence, even if it struck us as not so summery. By all means, give these items, which were often piquantly seasoned or garnished, a try.

For that matter, wet your whistle with a refreshing and reasonably priced cocktail or mocktail. We liked the beat-the-heat Watermelon Madness, made with vodka, watermelon juice and 7-Up, and the Moscow Mule’s gingery oomph.

But, since we’re assessing our restaurant experiences during COVID-19 times, we weigh service and ambience not just in terms of how good they make us feel, but also how safe. Call me too easily uneasy, but, of two visits last weekend to Tingz’s patio and then a Sunday night dinner in the basement restaurant’s dining room, I markedly preferred the al fresco meals.

At Friday night’s patio dinner, we liked the little bottle of hand sanitizer on the table and the fact that our server was masked. At Saturday’s lunch on the patio, we liked a little less that our servers were unmasked, and we wondered where the hand sanitizer had gone.

On Sunday night, the patio, to our surprise, was closed, perhaps because a downpour was possible. (Restaurant patios on nearby Clarence Street, however, were open.) Down the stairs we went to Tingz’s dining room, where we encountered some smaller disappointments (noisy music that forced us to lean in or speak more loudly, a lack of soap and paper towels in the men’s room) and, more frustratingly, a wait of some 40 minutes for a dessert of plantain doughnuts that ultimately was deemed by the kitchen to be unservable because, we were told, its dough was less than perfect.

That dessert would have ended an already lacklustre meal that included jerk calamari rings that did not thrum with jerk goodness, some appealing cups of fried plantain filled with ackee, the Caribbean fruit that uncannily brings scrambled eggs to mind, and a visually stunning escovitch snapper that sadly was too bland, too dry and too expensive.

Meanwhile, at Friday’s dinner, the grilled cauliflower dish showed no signs of having been grilled, and seemed more like it had been steamed and even a bit overcooked.

Because of the no-show dessert on Sunday, we received a discount on our bill. But that break was not enough to compensate us for the unease of lingering too long and unnecessarily in an indoor space during the pandemic. (There were several other tables of unmasked customers in the dining room that night.)

Yes, Ottawa entered “Stage 3” of its reopening last Friday, with the province approving the city’s restaurants to operate indoor dining rooms, provided that physical distancing exists between tables. But I would have preferred more anti-infection rigour with my indoor experience at Tingz.

In response to questions from this newspaper, owner David Amar said the restaurant had a mask policy indoors, but masks were optional outside. Servers can opt out if they have difficulty breathing, and especially if the heat is a factor.

Amar counts himself among those who may choose to not wear a mask, as he is asthmatic.

Regarding hand sanitizer, Amar said he tried to have small bottles of it available for customers when they were seated, but “we’ve had a lot of hand sanitizer go missing. People have been stealing some.”

Maybe you rank lower on my COVID-19 uneasiness scale and would have been more relaxed. But, for now at least, I’ll choose the seemingly greater safety of savouring Tingz’s jerk chicken on its patio or to go.

Arlo
340 Somerset St W., restaurantarlo.com , instagram.com/arlo.somerset
Open: Friday to Sunday 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., weather permitting
Prices: wines by the glass $13 to $15, dishes from $8 to $29
Access: some steps up and down to back patio but there are tables on Somerset Street itself, which is closed; washrooms downstairs
Note: no reservations, walk-ins only

We sat outside at a rustic table, sheltered from the evening heat by a giant tree, charmed by the just-opened restaurant Arlo’s ambience that made all thoughts of nearby Centretown fall away. Nearby were the sights and smells of good things grilling. Behind us in the leafy back terrace was a mini-bathtub filled with intriguing wines waiting to be poured. Great tunes played.

Life, despite COVID-19, seemed very good. Or rather, because staff, from servers to cooks, were masked and because they instilled confidence in us about their diligence regarding the virus crisis, we were able to let pandemic anxieties slip away and just enjoy a perfect summer evening last weekend.

Chief among Arlo’s friendly and knowledgeable cohort was owner and sommelier Alex McMahon, whose resume lists stints not only at Fauna and Riviera in Ottawa but also the fabled world-class restaurant Noma in Copenhagen. For all his vaunted pedigree, McMahon on his home turf was the most unassuming of wine experts, working the patio and making his sophisticated passion — natural wines that are made without pesticides, chemicals and other additives — more accessible via relaxed patter with his guests.

On Saturday night, McMahon, who I should say recognized me and my mission from the get-go, gave us a concise primer on natural wines that likened some of them to punk rock and others to Miles Davis. Really, it made sense, even if your ear drums aren’t connected to your taste buds.

For wine aficionados who know more than we do, Arlo has a several-page list of natural wines by the bottle. I suspect a longer list will be in the offing when the restaurant’s dining room, still under construction, opens this fall. We did just fine sampling wines by the glass, whether they were smartly chosen and well-described white, orange, rosé and red natural wines, quaffing our thirst while chef Jamie Stunt’s food, which was prepared steps away from us, ably took care of our hunger.

During two visits, we tried everything that Stunt offered on Arlo’s concise chalkboard menu, from the $8 skewer of duck hearts to the $29 plate of flank steak. As simple as his food sometimes was, Stunt’s dishes all rang true, which is as you might expect from a chef who took home silver at the 2013 Canadian Culinary Championships. (Then, he represented Ottawa and brought glory to Oz Kafe, where he worked.)

Stunt can take humble items and make them at least novel and interesting and at best marvelous. I’m thinking first of his enjoyable grilled cucumbers ($10) and his highly enjoyable and complex kohlrabi salad ($12).

There was as much whimsy as there was simplicity to Stunt’s $36 seafood “bungalow” (more modest than a seafood tower), which combined pristine oysters with a cranberry mignonette, bracing mussels escabeche and plump, winning pickled shrimp. Those with smaller cravings for seafood could have ordered the bungalow’s components separately, but then the kitchen crew would not yell “Bungalow!” upon receiving the order.

Returning on Saturday, we tried larger, meatier items, including piping hot, cheese-topped baked oysters ($14) and those tender, tasty, and barely offal-y duck hearts, dusted with a beguiling blend of spices. The menu’s most expensive and protein-heavy items were big winners, although I would rank the impeccable serving of flank steak, enlivened by an on-point, highly herbal salsa verde, just ahead of the marinated chicken cooked sous-vide and then grilled ($27), joined by a plate-filling dollop of romesco-y sauce.

Arlo is a wine bar, not a dessert bar. Thus, there was just vanilla ice cream with berries ($8) to end our night sweetly. And yet, it too was delicious and pristine, about as good as it could be.

Although we visited Arlo when it had scarcely five nights under its belt, the place had the vibe of an establishment that knows what it wants to do and how to do it. Highly experienced people such as McMahon and Stunt at the helm must have something to do with that. I cannot imagine a more convivial place to unwind with a glass of something interesting and some equally good food. And when Arlo moves from caterpillar to butterfly in a few months, it’s only natural to expect it will grow from a summer-patio infatuation to a full-fledged restaurant dining room worth the adoration of its guests.

phum@postmedia.com

98 La La Noodles
179 George St., 613-518-0239, lala-noodle.com , i instagram.com/98lalanoodles
Open: daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; dining room open, as well as small, somewhat shaded patio; takeout available
Prices: typically $12 for a small soup, $15 for a large soup, kebabs $4 to $8

Trepidation about COVID-19 forced us last week to forego one of the unique pleasures at 98 La La Noodles in Lowertown.

Were there no pandemic to worry about, we would have sat in the Chinese restaurant’s dining room, and probably walked back to the kitchen area near its entrance where a chef in full view made noodles in real time with little more than their bare hands.

For us, it never gets old to watch a demonstration of this centuries-old culinary expertise that transforms wheat-flour dough into long and impeccably fresh noodles through a series of artful twists, stretches, folds and spins.

Still, given the choice, when we twice visited 98 La La Noodles, which opened in early 2020 and replaced a similar but less-good noodle joint, we sat on the small, somewhat shaded patio only because, in general terms, al fresco dining thwarts the transmission of the novel coronavirus better than indoor dining.

In the end, there were so many solidly made and even exceptional items emerging from the restaurant’s front door bound for our table that we missed not at all a view of the noodle-making.

If you like boldly flavoured noodle dishes, be they soups or stir-fries, as well as meat and vegetable kebabs liberally seasoned with a potently spicy, cumin-y rub (these happen to be the restaurant’s secondary specialties), then you only need to know one more word from me: Go.

The restaurant’s multi-page, illustrated menu can make choosing what to eat a bit of a conundrum, especially if many of its dishes, which originate from China and are more recent arrivals on Ottawa’s dining scene, are unfamiliar. We were quite deliberate in our ordering, making beelines for what we most expected to enjoy rather than trying to construct a well-rounded, multi-course meal. Ultimately, we received at both visits a deluge of dishes, each of them arriving when they were ready, even if that meant so-called appetizers arrived after our noodles. Maybe that simply didn’t matter.

Of more than a dozen cold appetizers that tended to be chilli-spiced or pickled, we’ve had the simply dressed strips of shredded dried tofu and the sweet and sour jellyfish, which elevated toothsome chewiness to a priority. Chinese hamburger, made with shredded pork that tasted of star anise and other seasonings between a house-made fry-bread bun, was a filling snack. These small plates were fine, but I wouldn’t lose sleep over skipping them in favour of saving room for the generously portioned noodle dishes and flavour-bomb kebabs.

Of five noodle dishes, my go-to pick might be the classic beef noodle soup with pickled mustard greens, taking a small over a large to leave room for more kebabs. The just-made noodles (ordered as you please for thinness, thickness and flatness, or as per your server’s suggestion) were texturally spot-on and fresh-tasting, and the beef broth was rich and concentrated. Flecks of pickled mustard greens added a layer of sourness and the dish had pleasant chilli heat, even from its designation of one chilli from a possible three.

A more robust dish was the Sichuan classic, dan dan noodles. A big stir of the bowl’s contents coated flat, wide noodles in a thick, spicy, peanut sauce and bits of pork added a meaty accent. I’d order this dish again simply to eat half a serving and take the rest home, in one of the restaurant’s premium take-out containers, for my next-day lunch.

More bracing still were the hot and sour noodles, which coated thin glass noodles, garnished with peanuts and more, in a peppery and highly sour sauce that brought black vinegar to mind. More soothing but still strikingly savoury was the dish of cold noodles topped with minced pork. The signature noodle stir-fry, which we ordered with shrimp as its protein, was an easy-to-like, more mellow-flavoured dish. With some of these dishes, we received small bowls of a more clear broth, which we sipped for its palate-cleansing merits.

Of the kebabs, the must-have, because they are the most famous, were the skewers of tender and captivatingly spicy lamb that best represent Xinjiang, the autonomous territory in China’s far northwest. But the same treatment afforded to plump shrimps, thin morsels of bone-in beef short rib and even pods of okra made for deeply satisfying bites. Chinese eggplants, slathered with a sauce dotted with fermented beans, also benefited from time on the restaurant’s grill.

The restaurant is licensed, and accordingly serves several brands of Asian beer. But we beat the heat on the patio with Thor-sized mugs of strawberry and passion-fruit green tea, which are also as close to serving dessert as 98 La La Noodles comes.

You have to wonder about the future of Ottawa restaurants once patio season ends. In the case of 98 La La Noodles, which is simply the best restaurant of this kind that I’ve tried in Ottawa, I’ll have to overcome my current reluctance to dine indoors. The noodles and kebabs there are just too good.

phum@postmedia.com

House of Mandi
1183 Hunt Club Rd., 613-737-3200, houseofmandi.ca , instagram.com/mandi_ottawa
Open: website says it opens from noon daily, but best to call ahead
Prices: mains $20.99 to $25.99, sides $6.99 to $13.99

When you go to the House of Mandi, you must order the mandi.

For one thing, the iconic specialty from the Arabian Peninsula from which the Hunt Club Road restaurant takes its name is engrossingly tasty, bite after bite. At House of Mandi, you can have either a lamb shank or half-chicken -— both toothsome and “local and fresh,” the restaurant says — as a meaty centrepiece atop a big mound of saffron-yellowed, raisin-studded and intriguingly smoky basmati rice.

For another thing, the mandi lamb ($24.99) or mandi chicken ($20.99) might be the only available main courses of the six that are listed on the menu. At least that was what we found when we twice visited House of Mandi in the last week.

We could only imagine the enjoyable culinary discoveries that might have been after reading of Kabli lamb or chicken, dishes of “unique taste and flavour inspired by the Kabuli Palaw of Kabul (with) rice infused with orange zest among other remarkable spices,” not to mention Kabsa lamb or chicken, which mixed slowed-cooked meat later with basmati rice and topped with shredded carrots and fried onion.

But during COVID-19 times, when restaurants have to hunker down and watch their food costs, labour costs and food waste, it’s a bit churlish to get worked up about what’s unavailable due to a limited menu. Better to be grateful for what one can get. Plus, what we could order from House of Mandi, which opened two years ago in a tucked-away South Keys strip mall, was by and large very good.

At our first dinner, our non-Mandi dishes included four of 12 side dishes and one of six salads — just about one of every available item except for the green salad.

Sambosas of beef or vegetables ($7.99 for four) were exceptionally well-made and well-fried triangles of pastry stuffed with well-seasoned, distinctive fillings. They put many similar treats at other restaurants to shame.

Most interesting was jareesh ($12), an unassuming looking bowl of coarsely ground wheat that had been boiled with chicken, milk, cream cheese and spices, and topped with near-burnt fried onions and ghee (clarified butter). New to all of us, the rich and comforting dish with a light seam of smokiness brought risotto and congee to mind.

Fatteh ($11.99) featured of soft potato and softer fried eggplant with mellow garlicky yogurt, tomato sauce and the crunch of fried pita. Fatoosh salad ($8) brought tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and onions to the table, topped with more fried pita and drizzles of pomegranate molasses.

While masoob ($12) was listed as a side dish, we ate the sweet-savoury item as our dessert. It made sense to conclude dinner with this bread pudding-like dish that combined ground whole wheat bread with mashed bananas, cream, honey and ghee with a topping of shredded cheddar cheese and black sesame seeds.

After that mid-week dinner, taken in the large, modern dining room where we sat at one of just a few occupied tables, we hoped that on a follow-up visit we would try different items — one of the Kabli or Kabsa mains, some stuffed grape leaves or stuffed vegetables and the unfamiliar looking mlookia, which we guessed was a soup of granulated mallow leaves, chicken stock, herbs and spices.

Given our previous dinner, we certainly had faith in the chef, who we were told was the wife of House of Mandi’s Saudi Arabian owner. Also, a peek at the restaurant’s Instagram page showed all kinds of dishes in catering-sized portions that tempted, even if their captions were in Arabic.

But when we phoned the restaurant, which was open from 3 p.m. rather than from noon as listed on its website, we were told that it was working with the same limited menu that we had chosen from four days earlier. The good news was that more beef sambosas and more lamb and chicken mandi were barely degraded after a 25-minute trip home in their quality containers, and we enjoyed the food on our back porch.

Mindful of the pandemic, House of Mandi, which along with the Yemeni restaurant Bukhari on Carling Avenue is one of Ottawa’s few Arabic eateries, has hand sanitizer at its entrance and serves bottled water. At our first visit, our server was masked. When we picked up food to go, staff were not masked. The restaurant has discontinued its buffet service, leaving a row of empty chafing dishes as a reminder.

We hope that when the pandemic ends, if not sooner, House of Mandi can expand on what it offered last week. But until then, its core dishes are more than sufficiently alluring and satisfying.

phum@postmedia.com

Parlour
1319 Wellington St. W., 613-761-1302, parlourxdish.ca , instagram.com/parlourplace
Open: Tuesday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday 5 to 10 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday; patio service and food to go
Prices: snacks $5 to $8, burgers $10 to $14, feasts $35 and $75

When the worst that you can say about a patio is that some tables wobble on the uneven ground beneath them, you know it’s a patio worth a linger.

Parlour’s patio, which opened a month ago, has that wee drawback, but also charm to spare. Facing quiet Grange Avenue and noticeably removed from the bustle of nearby Wellington Street West, the patio is a shady, unfussy oasis of mis-matched furniture beneath a string of lights and acacia trees. If you’re lucky, a DJ will be spinning some relaxing reggae tracks.

And then there’s Parlour’s food, which during my visits last week consisted of casual yet very well-crafted summery indulgences, troubled only by quibbles that would be as easy to fix as putting a bit of styrofoam under a too-short table leg.

In all, this new al fresco hangout ought to appeal powerfully for however long (or short) patio season lasts.

Closer to Wellington Street West, there’s a counter where you check in for the patio. You order from the menu written on the Parlour’s windows, pay, and write down some information for contact tracing.

For a light dinner, we began with the addictively good potato crisps and chive dip ($5). The only reason to skip them might be because some of the pretty russet chips also come with Parlour’s burgers. Smooth, refreshing gazpacho ($8), made with tomatoes, melon and cucumber, was just as irresistible.

Two salads — a seared tuna Nicoise salad ($19) and a fried green tomato and burrata salad ($20) — put prime ingredients on good display. Our small bit of constructive criticism with both was that they would have benefited from a sharper, umami-rich or salty dressing to pull them together and give a bit more zip.

But then dinner ended with a lovely dessert of brightly tart lemon curd and berry trifle ($5) in a jar, and all was forgiven.

A few days later, lunch began with a box of fresh, crunchy veg with a thick, hearty blue cheese dip ($8.50), which set us up nicely for two exemplary burgers ($10 each). I can only shrug if asked to choose between Parlour’s crispy cod burger and sweet and hot fried chicken burger. Both were simple and simply bang-on.

Last weekend, I took three hungry teenagers to Parlour’s patio for its so-called feast offerings. We took the half-sized feasts ($35 each) of grilled chicken and grilled flank steak.

The feasting opened with small bowls of gazpacho for each of us, before plates of pre-sliced steak, lightly sweetened by its marinade and served with a mellow chimichurri on the side, and pieces of well-charred but beautifully moist chicken touched down. Accompanying them were boxes of greens and plates of the best fries that I’ve had in a long time, which were snappably crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside.

Had we wanted, we could have accessorized our feast with oysters and tuna crudo from the patio station operated by staff from Supply and Demand, the acclaimed restaurant around the block from Parlour. That seafood station is open Fridays and Saturdays.

Our only letdown for that meal was that Parlour was out of ice cream sandwiches.

Parlour is licensed and serves a limited selection of canned craft beers and wines by the bottle or the plastic glass.

Now that you know about Parlour’s patio, I should tell you more about Parlour proper.

That in-door business takes up what was formerly the eastern half of the Ottawa Bagelshop and Deli, following that space’s gutting, renovation and restoration last year. Parlour is a 4,000-square-foot event space that holds 250 (in a pre-COVID-19 measurement) and is available for corporate, social and musical gatherings, as well as community-based and social enterprise projects.

Next month, Parlour will open an indoor culinary market with six curated suppliers including a farmer, a florist, prepared food vendors and a bottle shop with an in-house sommelier. Small wine and food shows and collaborations with other chefs, restaurants and producers are also expected.

The veteran business DISH Catering, which was located on nearby Ross Avenue, is the in-house caterer of Parlour, which explains why we ate so well on the patio.

Erin Clatney, managing director of DISH and Parlour, says she sees the patio as “as an elevated food court,” which I’d say is a good thing in pandemic times.

Clatney says she will keep the patio open as long as possible.

“I’m looking forward to Oktoberfest, blankets and heaters and sausages, and having local beer companies come and pour,” Clatney says. “I would like to do a winter market. I see braised stews and soups.

“We’ll see what the community dictates, but I’d like to keep it open for as long as we can,” Clatney says.

phum@postmedia.com

Brassica
309 Richmond Rd., 613-680-7575, brassicaottawa.com , instagram.com/brassica_ottawa/
Open: Thursday 5 to 8:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday 5 to 9 p.m., Sunday 5 to 8 p.m., closed Monday to Wednesday
Prices: five-course take-out dinner for two $85, patio and dining room mains $16 to $32, appetizers $8 to $18
Access: steps to front door

If there’s one restaurant for Ottawa food-lovers to root for these days, it has to be Brassica.

Not only must the seven-month-old Westboro restaurant struggle with all of the pandemic-based challenges that trouble the city’s eateries at large, but its chef-owner, Arup Jana, and all of his team at Brassica make up a comeback crew, still committed to offering fine dishes and exceptional hospitality after Jana’s first restaurant, the long-running and much-admired Allium on Holland Avenue, was destroyed by a fire in March 2019.

While the novel coronavirus put plans to rebuild and reopen Allium on hold this spring, Brassica, operating four nights a week with just two people in the kitchen, is proof of Jana’s indefatigability.

“It’s Allium II,” our server, Jess, told us Saturday night. For anyone who recalls how good everything was at Brassica’s predecessor during its 14-year run, that’s reason to rejoice.

I confirmed that last weekend when we had dinner on Brassica’s narrow sidewalk patio, choosing from Jana’s dine-in menu that changes weekly. Jana served on-point, elevated neighbourhood-restaurant fare in a neighbourhood already blessed with impressive dining-out choices.

For those who want something familiar, Jana’s fried calamari ($15), fried chicken ($17) and yellowfin tuna crudo ($18) were definitive versions of those dishes dressed up with interesting sauces and garnishes that made their proteins irresistible.

Impeccably fried squid benefited from the richness and mellow heat of horseradish aioli. Juicy chicken pieces were bolstered by house-made pickles, blobs of green chili aioli and a scattering of peanuts, all of which seemed essential. The pristine red slices of raw fish were as pretty as a picture, supported by pieces of grapefruit and cucumber, and the dual treats of canola oil and lime aioli.

A mound of delicious duck rillettes ($14), served with all the right pickled accompaniments, demonstrated true charcuterie prowess.

Toothsome scallops and a strip of masterfully cooked pork belly ($28), brimming with rendered fat and flavour, shared a plate with succotash perked by pickled raisins and a Worcestershire sauce reduction.

The vegetable-lover at our table liked the variety and flavours on his plate of spice-roasted cauliflower ($16), a brassica vegetable dish to make its namesake restaurant proud. The florets were served with chickpeas, cucumber, feta, pomegranate seeds and roast almonds, all brought to life by a herb-y green dressing.

A slab of beef brisket ($24) was tamed and tenderized by a long sit at low heat, and was topped by a bourbon-y sauce and offset by a charred jalapeno aioli. With the meat came a perfect slab of polenta that nearly stole the show.

The award for the prettiest main course went to a plate of shrimp with cavatelli, zucchini, tomato and more, all in a lemon butter sauce ($24). Oh — the dish tasted as good as it looked.

Allium-goers will probably choose the banoffee pie ($10) not just for old time’s sake but for the signature dessert’s reliable, chocolate-enhanced delights. That said, they would then miss out on the sumptuous sour cream blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream ($11) and orange blueberry pudding ($9), neither of which disappointed in the least.

Brassica’s wine list is quite limited, but interesting and affordable. The same goes for its list of beers and cocktails.

Traffic sounds aside, eating outside Brassica was lovely, with service that was not only astute and prompt, but also extremely personable and pleasantly sassy.

Ultimately, although Brassica follows on the very hard knocks that befell Allium, it doesn’t need your sympathy. Sure, it’s yours to give, but the experience at Brassica shines brightly entirely on its own.

phum@postmedia.com

Thr33’s Co. Snack Bar
589 Bank St., thr33sco.ca
Open: Tuesday to Sunday 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., closed Monday
Prices: snacks $7 to $14
Access: One small step to front door

In my pre-restaurant reviewing days, all an eatery needed to do to keep me coming back was make one great item. I was unswervingly loyal to both the restaurant and its dish that had won my heart, and for all I cared, the rest of the menu could have been blank.

It’s in that spirit that I’ll tell you to go to Thr33’s Co. Snack Bar for the pork sliders, which mounded pulled pork tinged with Chinese five-spice powder between wee, lightly toasted buns. Bolstering the rich meat, and making those sliders sing, were slices of nicely pickled cucumber and mayo with just a hint of citrus-y brightness.

The sliders come four for $13, and let’s just say that if you brought teenaged boys like the ones I took to Thr33’s Co. last week, they would be happy stuffing themselves with slider after slider — and less happy if you made them try the grilled frog legs.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Thr33’s Co., which opened in June on Bank Street south of the Queensway, is chef Tyler Da Silva’s casual, snack-driven hangout where portions and prices are small and opening hours are long.

In what was previously the all-white brunch and dessert cafe called Indulgence, the much darkened and funkier Thr33’s Co. stays open until 2 a.m. six nights a week, and its ball-cap- and T-shirt-clad male servers offer about 20 kinds of gin and various spins on gin and tonic as well as wine, craft beer and cocktails.

As for Da Silva’s menu, I’ve tried all 11 of its items during two recent visits, and can rank what I ate from best to worst.

While those pulled pork sliders were tops, the yellowfin tuna tartare ($14) was a very close second, thanks to fine fish, a punchy miso- and Thai basil-powered sauce, and big, crisp seaweed chips.

Next, I’d rank the crisp and refreshing slaw of sorts of sliced brussels sprouts, fennel and strawberries ($8), served with a lightly ginger-y dressing and shards of crunchy vegan “bacon,” which were just fine as long as you didn’t think of them as bacon.

I have equal affection for three of Da Silva’s snacks, which respectively starred gnocchi, shrimp and tofu.

Pillowy on the inside and crisp on the outside, the gnocchi ($11) hit their textural target, although I though the dish needed more than just rich creme fraiche, tomato and the advertised but scarcely detectable cumin salt to really fly.

The shrimp ($12.50), stir-fried with cabbage and a mix of sesame, sweet hoisin sauce and chili sauce, were satisfying but not thrilling, and I kept thinking that some rice would have allowed us to enjoy all of the dish’s sauce. Cubes of gochujang-coated crispy tofu ($7) were too brashly funky and hot, but they were also redeemed by the dish’s miso-accented charred bok choy.

Meatballs (three for $9) served with a roasted red pepper sauce were pleasant, as was the menu’s only dessert — a plate of three moist banana chocolate chip cookies ($3.50).

Three dishes clearly disappointed. Drumsticks (two for $8.50) were under-seasoned and received little help from a too-thin peanut butter habanero sauce that didn’t really register. Corn ($5.50) grilled in the Mexican style was to have benefited from a tequila cilantro sauce, feta and the condiment tajin, which consists mainly of chile peppers, lime, and salt. But our cobs were so harshly grilled as to taste of little else than their char.

Finally, those frog legs ($9) briefly entertained our table with their ick factor but their harsh mustard sauce overwhelmed their delicate flavour. Ultimately, the teenagers, initially intrigued by frog legs, preferred to use them as biology class specimens rather than eat them.

“Just make chicken wings. Don’t do frog,” was one teen’s terse critique. My pro opinion is the same, at least if you stacked those overly mustard-y legs up against crispy, interestingly sauced, meaty wings.

Earlier that night, that same teen had said: “If everything’s as good as the sliders, I’m going to be very satisfied.” It’s too bad then that the food at Thr33’s Co. wasn’t excellent across the board.

Gyubee
95 York St. 613-367-5065, gyubeejapanesegrill.com
Open: Sunday to Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Prices: $32.99 for all-you-can-eat dinner Monday to Thursday, $35.99 for AYCE dinner Friday to Sunday, $22.99 for AYCE lunch Monday to Thursday,  $24.99 for AYCE lunch Friday to Sunday; children aged five to 10 pay a little less than half price, infants 0 to 4 play $3; a la carte dishes available for takeout and delivery
Access: steps to front door
Note: reservations available only for parties of six or more

Not long ago, a friend of mine wanted to try the food from Gyubee, the Japanese grill restaurant that opened on York Street in February. However, her anxieties about COVID-19 made her stop short of dining at the restaurant, and instead she ordered some thinly sliced, grilled pork belly and rice to be delivered.

“How was it?” I asked. “Just OK,” she said.

After dining this month at the Ottawa location of the Toronto-based chain, I can clarify: ordering takeout from Gyubee is a bit like watching a superhero movie on your phone.

What you really want is the thrill of cooking your dinner on the grill embedded in your table. What you want is immediate, all-you-can-eat gratification, in the form of charred but succulent morsels of beef, pork and chicken, with cooked-through shrimp, clams, squid, mushrooms and pineapple as secondary pleasures.

Indeed, when I visited Gyubee on the Friday just before Labour Day, it was packed with customers whose meaty cravings superseded any COVID-19 anxieties.

The restaurant was filled with young people, most of whom were Asian, who seemed to be enjoying themselves as if it were February 2020, boisterously flipping bits of their dinners with their tongs.

To be sure, Gyubee, which only accepts reservations for parties of six or more, follows pandemic guidelines. Staff, who are masked, take guest information for contact tracing and rigorously clean tables once guests have left.

But given how busy the restaurant was, complete with an indoor lineup as well as guests waiting outside for texts that would tell them their tables were ready at last, dining at Gyubee had an almost surreal, pre-pandemic feel to it.

Our wait for a table was a good 90 minutes, although we were told that on weekdays and at lunch, when a smaller menu is in effect, the restaurant is less busy.

Fortunately, once we were seated and our grill was activated, there was no further testing of our patience. A server arrived nearly immediately to take our order, and had we been Gyubee adepts, we would have known that the most efficient answer to “What would you like?” would have been “One of everything.”

While the menu teems with options, from marinated short rib to slices of brisket slathered in miso or sweet soy to chunks of steak to chicken thigh to sake-steamed clam to oyster mushrooms, if you came to maximize your all-you-can-eat gluttony, you could just waste no time and ask for the works. Or at least order all of the beef and pork options, which we ultimately found were the most satisfying, and then ask for repeats.

As Gyubee newbies, we ordered a little more selectively at first and even asked timidly, “Can we order more?”

“Yes, sure! This is just the start!” we were told.

Thereafter, plates of raw meats and other items (even chicken cartilage, which is a taste, or rather, a texture, to be acquired, if at all) landed at our table, and we threw ingredients onto our grill with abandon. The only limit to our dining was that we had a maximum of two hours at our table, which made for a carnivores’ race against the clock.

Soon, we grew accustomed to the sprightly rhythm of gorging at Gyubee. We lightly charred our meats and seasoned them with a sweet-salty dipping sauce or togarashi, a chili-forward Japanese spice mixture. As our plates of raw items emptied, we deliberated what to order next.

Punctual servers were always on hand to help us fulfill our all-you-can-eat dreams, and the grill was changed when it became too crusted. We paused at the sight of an empty grill, which made us sad, but soon returned to our communal, casual, culinary fun.

There were side dishes to order, too, including miniature servings of edamame, cold tofu, kimchi, rice, cold Japanese soba noodles and bibimbap, the Korean dish. Until dessert, which can be either a mini creme brulee or a frozen fruit bar, anything that was not meat felt refreshing.

Despite our ambitions, we were very pleasantly full before the two-hour mark arrived.

I don’t know when my friend will opt for the full Gyubee experience. Maybe it will take the arrival of a vaccine to make dining rooms more alluring to her. I certainly wouldn’t argue with that stance, although it bears repeating that at present, the current surge in Ottawa’s COVID-19 numbers comes mostly from large private gatherings and not from more generalized community spread.

If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, Gyubee would basically be hellish. If you are uneasy about indoor dining, then Gyubee, especially at full occupancy, would best be avoided for now.

But if fun, carnivorous eating is your thing, then Gyubee, later if not now, deserves your attention.

phum@postmedia.com

Dal Moro’s Fresh Pasta To Go
8 ByWard Market Square, 613-680-2019, dalmoros.ca
Open: Monday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday 11 a.m. to midnight, Sunday noon to 10 p.m.

The Burger’s Priest
1365 Baseline Rd., 613-422-1111, theburgerspriest.com
Open: Monday to Wednesday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Royal Paan
1943 Baseline Rd., 613-421-9010, royalpaan.com
Open: Sunday to Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m. to midnight

Back when the novel coronavirus was something happening on the other side of the world, several new-generation franchises and chains were planning to jump into the Ottawa market.

Related

• Rise of Ottawa's modern franchises

They could not have predicted that quarantining, physical distancing and social bubbles would become aspects of our new normal. Among the pandemic’s countless disruptions is the impact it has had on restaurants that satisfy casual cravings.

One anticipated new arrival, Hot Star Chicken, never arrived, leaving its Dalhousie Street address with signage that whetted appetites above papered-up windows. At least one other chain, The Burger’s Priest, delayed its expansion into Ottawa by a few months.

Ultimately, despite all of the pandemic’s uncertainties, new chains and franchises are now hawking their wares, and indeed, their food-to-go ethic works for restaurant fans who aren’t keen on dining rooms.

Among the new franchises and chains I’ve recently tried are two that attempt to tweak and improve upon the familiar, plus a third that brings to Ottawa its first tastes of some boldly flavoured Indian street foods.

In the ByWard Market, Dal Moro’s Fresh Pasta To Go, which opened in February, lived up to its name and the promise of the commercial pasta machine in its window.

The narrow little franchise eatery’s fare, served in cardboard cartons, is not as pretty as the nicely plated servings of pasta you might find at other ByWard Market restaurants. But the freshness of the spaghetti, rigatoni and linguine I tried was admirably apparent, and the pasta was prepared to a proper al dente.

Using recipes and processes developed by its namesake Venetian chef, Gabriele Dal Moro, and scaled up by its Toronto-based owners, the eatery served sauces that were a cut above at their price point ($12.25) in terms of flavour and texture. A pesto sauce was vibrant and its scattering of pine nuts was generous. Tomato-based sauces skewed a touch sweet, but had richness, and when called for, pleasing meatiness, going for them. The beef and chicken used here is halal.

For those who find desserts obligatory, the alcohol-free tiramisu ($5) should be good enough.

The eatery has a small patio plus a few indoor tables. If you’re taking its pasta to go, and have a ways to go, you can get separate cartons for your pasta and its sauce to avoid a mushy meal. Dal Moro’s also sells its house-made pastas, uncooked and bagged, to go.

Ottawa’s burger buffs anticipated the arrival of The Burger’s Priest for quite some time before the Toronto-based chain finally touched down in July on Baseline Road near Merivale Road, after a three-month delay.

When I interviewed him earlier this year, Alex Rechichi, CEO of the Crave It Restaurant Group in Oakville, called The Burger’s Priest, a chain in his group’s portfolio, “the anti-corporate corporate brand” because its practices, such as using “ultra, ultra fresh” meat ground from whole muscle rather than lesser cuts, are rooted in the award-winning and tiny original Burger’s Priest that opened in Toronto in 2010.

I’ve been a few times to the Ottawa outpost and found that the burgers here did live up to the hype. For a franchise burger, I’d recommend the patties from The Burger’s Priest or Ottawa’s own Burger n’ Fries Forever.

I’m not so keen on the chicken burgers here, because I’ve had breading come off them in big chunks, making for some unwieldy bites. Also the chicken, while moist, wasn’t flavourful on its own. Nor have the fries or shakes rocked my world enough to make me want more.

The franchise I’m most keen to return to, motivated as much by curiosity as by hunger, is Royal Paan.

Since the first Royal Paan opened in 2001 in Mississauga, the vegetarian Indian street food franchise has grown to include 28 locations as far-flung as Surrey, B.C. and Edison, New Jersey in the U.S. The Ottawa franchise opened in July.

More than any other new eatery in Ottawa, Royal Paan disproves the common wisdom that franchise fare has to be familiar, bland and boring.

While in recent years I have come across the occasional Indian street food item such as samosa chaat (chopped samosa pastries topped with chutney and yogurt) and pani puri (crisp, hollow, savoury stuffed dough balls), the long list of choices on Royal Paan’s menu made my head spin a little.

Across the board, the intense and intermingling flavours of the food, seemingly not dialled down for Canadian palates, were also dizzying — in a good, novel way.

There were dishes I and some vegetarian pals shared on my patio, after a 15-minute ride back from Royal Paan. Sev batata puri topped crisps of dough with potatoes, red onions, tomatoes, spiced peanuts, chickpea-flour noodles, tamarind sauce and coriander chutney. Aaloo tikki chaat topped potato patties with chickpeas, onions, and more tamarind sauce, coriander chutney and whipped yogurt.

Other choices such as aaloo tikki wrap (potato patties in a flatbread, mingling with chickpeas, chopped onions and a trio of sauces), pav bhaji (vegetable curry with a soft bread roll) and Bombay vada pav (spicy potato fritters served with bread) were handheld treats.

The biggest revelations were the paans — betel leaves wrapped around combinations of various tiny items including areca nuts, fennel seeds, preserved rose petals, coconut and more, which guaranteed a punch of lingering and even jostling flavours. Trying them made me feel like a flavour neophyte.

Perhaps you’re experienced when it comes to Indian street food, and paan pav bhaji are no less new for you than burgers and pasta. For our part, Royal Paan’s items, as franchised and formulaic as they may be, were thrilling discoveries, and we’ll go back for more.

phum@postmedia.com

Kitchen Maroo
710 Gladstone Ave., 613-234-2945, instagram.com/kitchen_maroo
Open:  Monday to Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Prices: mains up to $14, fried chicken $30 or $18 for a half order. Food is available for take-out and Uber Eats delivery only
Access: steps upon entrance to dining area

In the early days of fusion cuisine, that term referred to Caucasian chefs borrowing heavily from other culinary traditions with impunity, if not always great effectiveness.

More recently, the use of the fusion label has waned, and dishes that once might have been deemed fusion fare have been subsumed into a more omnivorous and diversely seasoned, modern Canadian cuisine. I call that progress.

Still, there are still real dilemmas to be confronted regarding the cultural appropriation of food. I can direct you if you’re interested to look into what happened when the award-winning Montreal restaurant Le Mousso earlier this year decided to stage a “Seoul Train” pop-up. Let’s just say that some Montreal foodies scoffed when Le Mousso proposed that “the menu will be nothing like what we know of typical Korean dishes, but rather offer a creative experience, revisited and rich in flavours, as Le Mousso knows so well.”

All of this is a roundabout introduction to the food I’ve eaten in the past week from Kitchen Maroo, a tiny, three-month-old restaurant on Gladstone Avenue west of Bronson Avenue. The restaurant, whose chef and front-of-house person are Korean, bills itself as a Korea n fusion restaurant. Leaving politics aside momentarily, I would call Maroo’s most self-evidently mashed-up efforts — think bulgogi sandwiches, bulgogi pasta and Korean fried chicken — casual but flavourful successes that I would happily eat again.

Maroo is a very humble eatery that until this week seated 16 at four well-spaced tables while pop music played on the sound system. On Tuesday it announced on its Instagram page that it would offer food to go only. Its menu consists of about 20 items, with a good amount of repetition, such that cutlets of pork, chicken or vegetables can appear in sandwiches, in wraps, or with sauces and starch on the side.

In all, Maroo knows how to be practical and hits its marks in terms of flavours, textures and consistency. Kimchi here is made in house, as are sauces and salad dressings, I was told.

Maroo’s bulgogi sandwich ($13) — why not call it a bulgogi hoagie? — has quickly become a new favourite sandwich for myself and my son. On my own, I might not have combined bulgogi’s sweet-salty beef with cheddar cheese, grilled mushrooms, garlic butter and mayo. That would definitely have been my loss, as Maroo has shown me.

The cutlet sandwiches, which featured crisp, breaded meat, were very fine too. That said, I was most keen on the chicken cutlet with a curry sauce, served with baby potatoes and house salad ($13). Again, the cutlet was crisp and not greasy, and its white meat was pleasantly moist. The curry sauce was mellow and sweet, as Asian interpretations of Indian curry — a now classic fusion move — typically are.

Maroo offers two kinds of noodle dishes. The more Italian-Korean pasta choices come with seafood mixes, either spicy or not, or bulgogi or tofu. The spicy seafood linguine ($14) featured shrimp, squid rings and mussels, all toothsome, in a moderately spiced sauce. Much punchier, I thought, was the stir-fry of chewy udon noodles with spicy pork and potent kimchi ($14). The spice-averse could opt for the beef udon stir-fry ($14) and be well satisfied.

Maroo also makes Korean fried chicken, that most fetishized of fusion dishes. Our full serving ($30) was shared among five people along with other dishes. Small chicken pieces were admirably crisp and moist while the two potent sauces, spicy-sweet and garlic-soy, did most of the lifting flavour-wise.

Only one dessert was available when we visited. Tofu cheese cake ($5) was a light, smooth and sweet winner.

For a cheap and no-fuss place like Maroo, it’s too bad that many international students at Ottawa’s universities are living in their Asian homelands this fall rather than in Ottawa. They would be perfect customers for the limited but satisfying short-order cooking here that mixes East and West. But if you don’t flinch at the phrase “culinary fusion,” and as long as you’re OK with a Korean chef appropriating buns and pasta, you might be Maroo’s perfect customer too.

phum@postmedia.com

Carben Food + Drink
1100 Wellington St. W., 613-792-4000, carbenrestaurant.com , instagram.com/carbenrestaurant
Open: Tuesday to Sunday 5 to 9 p.m., plus Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Prices: plates ranging from $14 to $36, eight-course tasting menu $75, small plates $10 or less on Tuesday, Thanksgiving dinner for two to go $80

Last Friday was one of those nights when we felt like giving the middle finger to the novel coronavirus and our latest feelings of growing dread.

That’s not to say we’re Trumpian pandemic deniers. We’d like to think we’re not foolhardy. We practice physical distancing. We wear masks in public. We wash our hands.

But after the day’s glut of bad news — that Ottawa’s health system was in crisis because of COVID-19, that restaurants, bars, gyms and event spaces would further limit their capacities, that social circles would be retired — we wanted to do something other than submit and be hermits.

We wanted a meal out as a morale booster, the more celebratory the better, but not at a break-the-bank price. We put our faith in Carben Food + Drink and were happily rewarded.

I lauded the Hintonburg restaurant in the fall of 2015, a few months after it opened. But I’d not been back since. My visit last week found its owners and chefs, the husband-and-wife team of Kevin Benes and Caroline Ngo, serving fine dining practically on the cheap. At least, that’s what I’d call an eight-course tasting menu for just $75. The parade of dishes delivered a steady flow of surprises and satisfactions and just one dish that fell short.

The courses came from Carben’s 12-item menu of plates ranging from $14 to $36, and diners wanting a scaled-down version of the tasting-menu experience could visit Carben on Tuesday nights, when small plates are $10 or less. If COVID-19 rules out dining-room visits for you, Carben does offer its dishes to go, although some degradation due to the increased time from its kitchen to your table would likely be unavoidable.

Of course, the restaurant takes measures to help quell the pandemic’s spread and anxieties. It maintains a contact tracing list. Its cool, narrow, minimalist interior, which seated 40 before the pandemic, now holds 26 people at eight well-spaced tables.

That said, during our two-hour stay, just two other tables were occupied. But if Carben was feeling blue over such a sparse turnout on a Friday night, its servers, personable and knowledgeable, weren’t letting on.

While complimentary bread service seems like an outdated notion these days, Carben treated us to a Hokkaido milk roll that was puffy, warm and tender and a rosette of butter enriched but not overwhelmed by miso, which lent some subdued but discernible funk.

Our first course proper starred slices of raw tuna, set apart from many similar dishes in the city by its crispy enoki mushrooms and and smoked, powdered coconut oil — two garnishes attesting to Carben’s fondness for playful culinary transformations.

The kitchen’s take on fried Brussels sprouts was also a winner, with vegetables smartly perked by a zesty walnut gremolata and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast.

Next came one of Carben’s signature dishes, which I recall wowed me five years ago. The dish made an unlikely star of smoked wood ear mushrooms, supporting the squidgy-textured fungus with a savoury miso glaze and rich turmeric aioli. Bok choy and edamame added as much colour as flavour to the pretty, edible arc of food, served on dishware by Ottawa’s LOAM Clay Studio.

A big bowl contained a perfectly tender morsel of Humboldt squid, tamed with low, slow, sous-vide cooking and then grilled. Dehydrated olives and the jolting heat of pickled cherry bomb peppers dressed up the squid, which sat on a mound of diced, soft, comforting eggplant.

Sea bass, mild, moist and crisp of skin, was well supported by its turmeric cream, fingerling potatoes, subtle hint of shrimp oil and bits of pickled cucumber.

The final savoury course was the only letdown. The wee serving of short rib, while tender, underwhelmed. The jus mentioned in the menu was absent, and the thin slices of beef paled when compared to the more robust satisfaction of a long-braised slab of on-the-bone short rib.

Two desserts made up for the short-rib misstep. The first starred a big scoop of sweet-tart elderberry ice cream offset by cubes of lemon sponge cake and a scattering of poppy seed crumble. And if we were not yet feeling full, the second dessert, a cream tart with light fruity accents, put a definite stop to our appetites.

This then is why we go out for dinner — not just to feel full, and not just to spare ourselves the effort of cooking, but to treat ourselves to deliciousness, novelty and hospitality, all of which remain strong suits at Carben, five years on and despite the pandemic.

With next weekend’s Thanksgiving dinner at home looking like a more scaled-down affair, I’m even considering leaving the cooking to Carben. COVID-19 has prompted Carben and other smaller restaurants such as the Wellington Gastropub on Wellington Street West, two six {ate} on Preston Street and Town on Elgin Street to offer takeout Thanksgiving dinners for two, while the kitchens at the National Arts Centre, the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata and NeXT in Stittsville, among others, are preparing turkey feasts for pickup that will serve larger families.

phum@postmedia.com

Aroy Thai
1 Rideaucrest Dr. (inside the Quickie convenience store), 613-823-2224, aroythaibarrhaven.ca
Open: Tuesday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., 4 to 8 p.m. closed Monday

Pinn-To Thai Food Truck
4100 Albion Rd. S., 613-617-1881, pinntothaifood.ca
Open: Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., 4:30 to 7:30p.m., Saturday 4:30 to 7:30 p.m., closed Sunday

For me, Thai cuisine counts as comfort food, even if the kitchen’s gone heavy on the bird’s eye chilies. That explains why last week I sought some boldly flavoured curries, stir-fries and noodles to lift spirits that were sagging due to the second wave of COVID-19.

Had the Ontario government not banned indoor dining for 28 days starting on Oct. 10, I might have eaten at one of my Thai favourites such as Nana Thai Cuisine or Wandee Thai Cuisine, both in Little Italy, or Thai Flame, in Bells Corners. I like the hospitality at those three places, as well as their willingness to dial up the heat.

But with dining out forbidden, I decided to try some more far-flung specialists in takeout Thai food to see how they fared.

My travels took me to Aroy Thai, which is tucked inside a Quickie convenience store in Barrhaven, and to the Pinn-To Thai Food Truck, which is in an Albion Road parking lot. I went looking for tasty Thai dishes in some unlikely places, you might say, hoping that tiny operations staffed by one or two cooks might yield some gems.

For the most part, what I ate was pleasing and well-made, if less fiery or pungent than I would have liked (the menus I consulted showed one or even three chili symbols beside dishes). Perhaps it’s significant that both Aroy Thai and Pinn-To Thai Food Truck seem to rely on ground chili peppers rather than fresh chilies for heat — I associate the jolt of heat I like with the latter.

The tastiest item I had from either restaurant was the chicken satay from Pinn-To, which was moist, nicely seared and taken to the next level by a superior peanut-y sauce. Alas, Aroy doesn’t offer chicken satay, so there’s no comparison I can make.

I’d say the soups from both eateries — whether it was tom kha gai, mellowed with coconut milk or tom yum goong, in which tender shrimp bobbed in a mildly sour and hot broth — ran neck and neck with one another.

We appreciated the depth of flavour and richness of all the curries we tried, from the peanut-y panang curry and yellow chicken curry from Aroy to the red curry with pineapple from Pinn-To. We tried beef curries from both kitchens and found the thinly sliced beef a little tough. With that in mind, I’d lean more to chicken and shrimp curries in the future.

Pad Thai from both purveyors won us over with toothsome shrimp and noodles. We had the chicken basil stir-fry from both Aroy and Pinn-To, but I thought both were too subdued in terms of heat and basil-y goodness.

From a downtown Thai restaurant, I’d hope for mango with sticky rice for dessert. But if you order from Aroy or Pinn-To, then you’ll be left with whatever’s in your fridge or freezer for your meal’s sweet finish.

Even if I would have liked more complex and chili-powered dishes from Aroy and Pinn-To, I’m glad they’re around to offer their nonetheless enjoyable food to the south end of Ottawa. Residents there shouldn’t have to drive downtown and back to get their Thai food fix. Perhaps all they need is some bird’s eye chilies at home to perk the dishes up a bit.

phum@postmedia.com

Chili Chili Restaurant
706A Somerset St. W., 613-421-6789, restozone.ca/ottawa/chilichili
Open: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday; closed Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday
Prices: main courses $13.99 to $17.99 if ordered online, large shareable items $32.95 to $79.95 if ordered online (dishes are cheaper if orders are phoned into the restaurant and picked up by customers)
Access: Restaurant is downstairs

The Chinatown restaurant Chili Chili is easy to miss. There’s a street-level sign for the two-year-old business, but no windows to peer into, as the eatery is entirely downstairs. Eventually I spotted Chili Chili, and it piqued my interest. Finally, I popped by in mid-February for a meal that was as surprisingly pleasing as it was fiery.

A buddy and I each ordered a customized spicy stir-fry. Each plate was heaped with impeccably cooked proteins or vegetables that we had asked for, and was as tongue-teasing as we had hoped for. Each bite delivered not only the heat that lived up to the restaurant’s name but also the numbing stimulations of Sichuan peppers galore. We assuaged the thrilling sting of those orders with mouthfuls of softshell crab fried rice that did not skimp on the crab.

I left Chili Chili resolving to return with some optimism and then write about it. Then, the coronavirus descended.

Eight months later, and Chili Chili has since pivoted to offer food to go only. That’s too bad for a few reasons. For the restaurant, there’s the gloom of working in the brightly coloured and once lively setting that previously drew Chinese students for tastes of their homeland. Also, it’s unfortunate that some Chili Chili dishes that taste best fresh from the wok now degrade a bit during the trip from kitchen to home dining table.

Still, my conclusion after two recent takeout dinners from Chili Chili is that its chef concocts some splendid and authentic Chinese dishes, whether they are Sichuanese and spicy or Cantonese and comforting.

I’m going to blame COVID-19 for making me a bit timid in my ordering from Chili Chili’s interesting menu of roughly 30 items. We passed on the pork intestines with hot peppers, and also on dishes made with unshelled, head-on shrimps. Nor was our party large enough to tackle the grilled whole fish for six ($79.95).

Still, the more familiar Sichuanese and Cantonese dishes we tried were for the most part very appealing winners.

The combo stir-fry of three proteins and three vegetables, ordered medium spicy, was punchy enough to make us think it would have been punishing to have had it any spicier. Its thinly sliced chicken, lamb and pork had grown tough while in transit for 15 minutes, I think, but that too I will blame on COVID-19 rather than a cook’s mistake.

Mapo tofu was invigoratingly spicy and complex, with big chunks of tofu and minced pork swimming in a bracing brown sauce. To us, it tasted like one of the best versions of this dish in the city.

Braised eggplant with chili and garlic sauce, also known as “fish-fragrant eggplant” on some menus was also exceptional, melding its salty, sweet, spicy and sour tastes in well-calibrated harmony.

Eating diced chicken and chilies involved fishing out crisp but meaty bits of bone-in, free-range chicken from an intimidating backdrop of red chilies. But the dish did not scream with heat and made for pleasant nibbling.

Stir-fried pork belly with green peppers intrigued, but did involve considerable chewing of somewhat tough pork. Next time for pork belly, I might opt for the braised or twice-cooked preparations.

The Cantonese dish of scrambled eggs and shrimp was blessed with soft, rich, fluffy eggs and tender, shelled shrimp. While the wok-scrambled eggs might have been transcendently silky if eaten in Chili Chili’s dining room, we would still order it again for home enjoyment.

Fried rice was un-greasy and satisfying, whether it starred chunks of softshell crab, or minced pork and plenty of chili. Shanghai noodles were solidly made and easy to like.

If you’re looking to eat more cheaply, here’s a tip. Get your food the old-school way by phoning your order in to the restaurant and then picking it up yourself. Every dish that way is a few dollars cheaper, while the online prices are marked up to offset the commissions of the delivery services. Why not commend yourself not just for your love of spicy food but also your frugality?

phum@postmedia.com