Lola’s Kitchen
613-869-7709, lolaskitchen613.com
Open: Friday 6:30 to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. for delivery, pre-order a day ahead at least if possible
Prices: mains $15 to $30, dinners for two $49 and $59, dinners for four $89 and $110

Unfortunately, I learned too late about the meaning of “kamayan” to have enjoyed our meal from Lola’s Kitchen in the most authentic manner.

Last Saturday, the delivery person from the less-than-a-year-old Filipino food business was 10 minutes early. We were hungry, and the smells of what we had ordered practically made our hearts quicken. We devoured beef ribs, chicken drumsticks, sweet and sour shrimp and garlic fried rice with minimum conversation. Soon, we were stuffed.

Only later did I learn the dinner for four had been presented in the kamayan style, and that kamayan in Tagalog means by hand. For the full Lola’s Kitchen experience, we should have scooped up rice from the massive tray, pressed the rice into our palm, topped it with meat sauce and popped it into our mouth.

Lesson learned. Next time, we’ll skip the cutlery. But the food from Lola’s Kitchen was none the worse despite our cultural faux pas, and we were especially satisfied by the thinly sliced barbecue beef ribs that won us over with their sweet-savoury goodness.

Lola’s chicken adobo featured long-stewed drumsticks with prominent soy-based saltiness, but also a depth of flavour beyond that top note. The chicken and ribs were packaged on top of an epic portion of garlic fried rice, which was delicious on its own and not simply a starchy companion to more exciting meats. The fried plantains that also topped the rice were fantastic; we only wished there had been more of them.

In a separate container were sweet and sour shrimps that were a touch overcooked, although the dish’s pungently ginger-y sauce went some way toward redeeming it.

At work in Lola’s Kitchen is, in fact, Kim Epino, for whom the food business is a part-time job. He started it last May, when there was a lull in his day job, and he never had to close his dining room during the pandemic because he doesn’t have one — just his commercial kitchen in the City Centre building. The Instagram page for Epino’s business shows some pretty lavish feasts prepared for larger groups last summer, with food laid out on banana leaves for kamayan-style enjoyment.

In an interview, Epino told me Lola is what Filipinos call their grandmothers, and that his grandmother used to own a little cafe in the Philippines. Epino was inspired by her, and wants to offer food reminiscent of his family’s kamayan-style gatherings.

Meatings
5380 Canotek Rd., unit 23, 613- 680-6328, meatings.ca, meatings-retail.square.site/s/order
Open: Monday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Sunday
Prices: packaged meats $14 to $36, sides and sauces $8 to $15

When the tiny but potent barbecue joint Meatings opened four years ago on the main drag in Orléans, I and other discerning Ottawa carnivores were very pleasantly surprised. 

We were used to big disappointments when we ordered barbecued meats in restaurants. Their ribs and pulled pork, cooked in bulk and kept ready for reheating, couldn’t compare to what we made in our backyards, in small batches and infused with as much care and love as smoke.

But Meatings, then an offshoot of a five-year-old catering company, seemed to have cracked the barbecue code. Too bad it was so far away for more centrally located barbecue buffs, who, it must be said, nonetheless made occasional trips from Barrhaven to Orl é ans to get their meat fix.

It took a pandemic to make me discover that Meatings had relocated last August, to an industrial park almost two stops further west on the Queensway. Furthermore, in addition to hot meals, Meatings now sells refrigerated and frozen meats in vacuum-sealed bags, which, while arguably a step down from juicy, fresh-from-the-smoker fare, offer a time-shifting, convenient way to enjoy barbecue delicacies during a winter lockdown.

Finally, I learned I don’t have to go to Meatings because Meatings products can come to me. Three big food delivery services bring hot items to customers, while with certain arrangements, Meatings itself can deliver orders of its retail goods to as far west as Bronson Avenue.

All of these developments made me think it was time for a reunion with Meatings fare, pandemic-style. Last weekend, I placed a hefty order online and since then have been sampling smoked items (pork side ribs, chicken thighs, pork shoulder, beef brisket, chili, and salsa) as frequently as my colon would allow.

For starters, the meatless appetizer of smoked tomato salsa was pretty irresistible. We dunked so many corn chips into a bowl of the stuff that we barely had room for our pulled pork sandwiches topped with Meatings coleslaw.

The pork, which we reheated by simmering the bag it came in, had good, crowd-pleasing flavour but was just a bit over-manipulated and mushy. I prefer my pulled pork a little chunkier. Better were the pulled chicken thighs, which had a peppery edge to them and more defined texture.

Pork side ribs were impressively sized and coated in a fine and not overly fancy dry rub. The ribs reheated nicely in the oven, and they pleased us both without sauce and with slatherings of Meatings’ maple barbecue sauce, which balanced its sweetness and acidity nicely.

Beef brisket, the pride of Texas barbecues, is something that often frustrates judges at barbecue competitions because while it’s possible to make that massive cut of cow juicy and sublime, even seasoned competitive cooks can turn in leathery, over-salted samples that verge on unpalatable. Some restaurant versions I’ve tried in the Ottawa area over the years prefer to feature brisket overcooked to the point where it falls apart and turns into a shredded meat. That, in a word, is cheating.

But a big chunk of Meatings’ brisket yielded very enjoyable, smoky cold slices as well as the star ingredient in a hash I made of chopped brisket, onions, mushrooms, red peppers and potatoes. With an over-easy egg on top, we had ourselves a royal brunch.

My least favourite purchase from Meatings was its multi-meat chili. While it certainly didn’t lack for protein, it felt more like a leftover user-upper because the chili base itself had no depth of flavour.

We didn’t buy very many of the side dishes, as we preferred to prepare our own. But the cornbread we took home was right on the money, with good flavour and a tender crumb.

Meat maniacs would do well to follow Meatings on Facebook, where over-the-top specials such as tater tot poutine topped with curds, pulled pork, cheese sauce, rib tips and jalapeno or the cheesy brisket melt with hot peppers on a garlic butter bun should inspire cravings, and perhaps later, indigestion.

In the depth of February, I dream of warm summer weekends with my smoker belching smoke to flavour a giant piece of meat almost as much as I dream of an end to COVID-19. Until a reprieve from winter comes around, thankfully there’s Meatings.

phum@postmedia.com

Al Huda Restaurant
1644 Bank St. (in the building south of the Canadian Tire, behind Canada Care Medical), 613- 731-6000, alhudarestaurant.com
Open: noon to 7 p.m. daily

Arta Restaurant / Coffee House
425 McArthur Ave., 613-743-0666, facebook.com/artasomalicuisine
Open: 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. daily

A’Rey Tea and Coffee Shop
419 McArthur Ave., 613-695-5594
Open:  8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily

Asli Dining
2019 Bank St., 613-260-5000, instagram.com/aslidining
Open: Sunday to Thursday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Safia
1115 Cobden Rd., 613-829-1953, shifacobden.com
and 2335 St. Laurent Blvd Unit 110, 613-241-3111
Open: Sunday, Tuesday to Thursday noon to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 9 p.m., closed Monday

In the last week, I devoted several of my meals to a long overdue culinary fact-finding mission. The subject of my research: Ottawa’s Somali restaurants.

But if anything, my samplings of that East African fare generated as many questions for me as conclusions. Below are some of the queries that sprang to mind.

Why was the flavour profile of the beef suqaar from one Somali restaurant thrillingly and surprisingly spicy when another restaurant’s beef suqaar, which had its own distinct virtues, was not spicy, although I had been given the choice of ordering its spicy and said yes to that question?

Why is spaghetti on so many Somali menus?

Who made the world’s first samosas?

To be honest, my focus on Somali food is meant to address a gaping oversight in my coverage of Ottawa’s restaurants over the last nine years. Until this week, I had not visited a Somali restaurant in town. From what I can tell, neither did my predecessor in her 19 years on the beat. At least in 2012, my colleague Bruce Deachman, reviewing in an interim capacity, did consider, and positively so, the now shuttered Somali restaurant Sambuza Village. Still, this column owes Ottawa’s Somali restaurants an apology for not thinking of them sooner and more frequently.

The eateries that I visited to pick up my takeout orders were tiny, simple places located in modest neighbourhoods. Arta Restaurant and A’Rey Tea and Coffee Shop are in the same block of McArthur Avenue in Vanier South. Asli Dining is where Sambuza Village used to be, on the ground floor of an apartment building near Ledbury Park. Al Huda Restaurant is two kilometres north of Asli, on Bank Street technically but well offset from the street, hidden in the back of a building behind the Canadian Tire.  One location of Safia is in a St. Laurent Boulevard strip mall, while another is the only Somali restaurant in the Ottawa’s west end, in a humble Cobden Road strip mall.

But while some of these places are off the beaten track, their best treats from their concise, similar menus were worth the trip.

For example, the beef samosas from Al Huda were exceptional (following a re-heating at home in my air fryer), not only because of their savoury fillings but also due to their crisp pastries that made them preferable to many a doughier Indian samosa that I’ve had. If Wikipedia is correct, samosas originated in neither East Africa nor India, but in the Middle East and Central Asia, from which they spread. That was news to me, and perhaps to you, if all your samosas before this revelation came from Indian restaurants.

From Al Huda, I also took home delicious and moist chicken drumsticks that had been marinated and slow-roasted and which brought tandoori preparations to mind. On the side was enough angel’s hair pasta mixed with meat sauce for dinner plus two or three lunches. Pasta, it turns out, figures prominently on Somali menus because from the 1880s to the early 1940s, Italy had colonized part of present-day Somalia.

The internet also showed me that some Somali pasta dishes include East African spicing in their sauces. But if that was the case with Al Huda’s pasta, it didn’t really register with me.

From Asli dining, I ordered the beef suqaar, a stir-fry of beef cubes with onions, peppers and more. (Suqaar stir-fries can also be made with diced chicken or lamb.) The meat was robustly spicy, mouth-jangling in a good way, and I ordered it with a flatbread called sabaayad, which some restaurants compare to Indian chapatis or pita. Asli’s sabaayad was oily and a little leathery, not as pliant or absorbent as some Indian flatbreads. I also ordered the range of samosas from Asli, but found that they did not top the pastries from Al Huda, even with redemptive reheating.

I also tried the beef suqaar from Arta. “Would you like it spicy?” I was asked. While I said yes, the stir-fried meat, which I had on a baguette rather than with rice or spaghetti or in a wrap, had no chili heat to it. But it was juicy and filling, and closer in appearance to some beef suqaar that Google showed me.

Wanting one more take on beef suqaar to split the difference, I went to Safia in the west end, which was formerly called Shifa. The beef suqaar and the spaghetti that I ordered with it were more neutral in flavour. But the hot sauces provided with my meal kicked everything up several notches. After some reheating, the beef samosas from Safia were good and punchily flavoured, while the lamb broth in a coffee cup was piping hot and restorative — probably my favourite item from Safia.

Finally, there’s the food I had from A’Rey in Vanier South, a business whose operator is from Djibouti, just north of Somalia, and who was more comfortable in French than English. I quizzed about her menu, and ordered lamb on rice, although I could have had ground beef or chicken drumsticks, goat, or kingfish on spaghetti. In my filled-to-the brim takeout container were massive slices of bone-in lamb in a salty, onion-y gravy.

If only I could have sampled more widely of these restaurant’s menus, but I was down a few dining companions and sometimes the above eateries were out of my first choices. Regardless, my expertise in Somali cooking will be a long time coming. But at least after these initial forays, I can say that I’m a curious fan.

phum@postmedia.com

Long Long Noodles
425 McArthur Ave. Unit 5, 613-741-2531, longlong-noodles.com
Prices: most dishes between $10.99 and $16.99
Open: Tuesday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Monday

The most enjoyable dish that Long Long Noodles on McArthur Avenue serves has much going for it, beginning with its memorable name.

I mean, who could resist an item called Burning Noodles of Yibin? That goes double for yours truly, whose sheltered life was distinguished, in part, by having never tried Burning Noodles of Yibin.

Before I ordered what seems to be the only rendition of Burning Noodles of Yibin available in Ottawa, I went to the web for some information to assuage my burning curiosity. Yibin is a city in Sichuan, China, and the experts who blog or make YouTube videos about its eponymous noodle dish say that it is defined by its use of “Yibin’s famous preserved mustard-stem pickle, yacai,” crushed, toasted nuts and an “intriguing” and “elusive” sauce. (Thanks, blog.themalamarket.com .)

With that primer in mind, I felt confident placing my online order for Burning Noodles of Yibin from Long Long Noodles. I also threw in a batch of other dishes, from dumplings to snacks to stir-fries — all the better to take the overall measure of the tiny place in Vanier South, which is geared to takeout and which I only stumbled across last week because it sits next door to one of the modest Somali eateries that I reviewed last month.

But I’ve strayed from discussing those noodles, which came in their plastic container with their components separated, awaiting a good stir. The mix of wheat noodles, nuts, sesame paste, pork, vegetables and mystery sauce was very good. Calling it “burning” is a bit of poetic licence, but it was pleasantly spicy and complex of flavour.

I was reminded a bit of the noodle dish I like so much at Sula Wok on Main Street, the Guilin Noodles made by chef Sula herself as a tasty tribute to her hometown in China. I wondered momentarily if Guilin and Yibin were in close proximity, but it turns out they’re separated by about a 10-hour car ride. So much for my knowledge of Chinese geography.

All that to say, I don’t think I’ve had my last Burning Noodles of Yibin.

After inquiring, I learned that Long Long Noodles’s chef and owner, Liwei Chu, is not from Yibin, but rather is from Tianjin, near Beijing, in the northeast of China. No matter — his restaurant, which he opened in May 2018, serves dishes that Chu learned to make during his travels in his homeland, says his sister-in-law, Grace Chen, who helps out at the restaurant.

I can also recommend Chu’s versions of Sichuanese dishes, including a sour beef soup, which teemed with meat morsels, enoki mushrooms and strips of bean curd, and which apparently draws a lot of its potent flavour from pickled vegetables and white pepper. One thing I will note, though, is that the photo of the soup on Long Long’s website shows hot and sour soup, while sour beef soup turns out to look, and taste, very different.

Chu also makes a tasty, if quite salty, Sichuan fish-flavoured shredded pork (the name actually refers to a sweet-spicy preparation for fish applied to pork), as well as dry pot orders that can be made with enough chili powder to evoke Sichuan’s fearsome reputation for spiciness. That said, the shrimp in our dry pot were a little overcooked.

I’ve also tried some of Long Long’s smaller items, including dumplings, both steamed and pan-fried, that had fine savoury fillings of shrimp or pork, and somewhat thicker skins. Chu also makes steamed rice rolls stuffed with shrimp or beef, which are simply home-y Cantonese dim sum favourites that need soy sauce to liven things up.

From the menu’s deep-fried offerings, we also ordered chicken wings, which demonstrated again that the photos on the eatery’s website might not be bang-on. The online image showed 10 chicken wings for the amazing price of $3.49. We came down to earth when we opened a small bag and extracted two admittedly very good wings.

Chu’s eclecticism also prompts him to offer beef noodle soup in the style of the legendary bowls from Lanzhou in northwestern China, as well as a gluten-free variation made with rice noodles. I did not try those soups. Nor did I try the crowd-pleasers such as General Tso’s chicken, moo shu pork or springs rolls, because, you know, Burning Noodles of Yibin.

Long Long is not licensed. But it does sell bubble tea and milk tea, which emerged from Taiwan to take the world by storm.

Apart from the revelation that I like Burning Noodles of Yibin, the moral of my discovery at Long Long Noodles is that we should seek out regional culinary specialties in whatever unlikely places we find them. Who knows when we’ll next be on planes, dashing off for culinary vacations? Until then, those evocations of elsewhere are only a mouse click and car ride away.

phum@postmedia.com

The Belmont
1169 Bank St., 613-979-3663, belmontottawa.com
Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 5 to 9 p.m., plus Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: dishes $14 to $45, combo and family dinners $70 to $130
Access: steps to restaurant, steps to upper level with washrooms

I’ve always thought of dim sum, the Cantonese parade of dumplings, rolls and other snack-sized treats washed down with tea, as a Sunday morning thing. That is, until I had dim sum from the Belmont for dinner on a recent Sunday night.

The last year has been filled with so many flipped expectations and oddities — why not have traditional Chinese brunch items for dinner, and while we we’re at it, from an eatery that’s not afraid to globetrot to find inspirations for its eclectic fare? I’ll give the Belmont, and its chef, Phil Denny, a pass regarding cultural appropriation (or if you prefer, misappropriation) because what we ordered was both very good and respectful of its origins.

Our family night order of dim sum ($80) was heavy with commendable dumplings. Pork and coriander shumai were toothsome, shrimp and radish pot-stickers were tasty, albeit over-seared, and dense beef momos were intriguing, even if those Tibetan dumplings might spark political outrage as part of a dim sum spread in the country that gave us dim sum. Each kind of dumpling came with its respective and appealing dipping sauce, as if to highlight that this dim sum had come from Old Ottawa South, not from Somerset Street West.

Also included in the meal were some of the best pork belly morsels I can recall eating in pandemic times, including the slabs I’ve braised and barbecued myself at home. The roasting of Belmont’s five-spice-flavoured pork belly cubes was utterly on-point, rendering both flesh and fat delectable, and the pork’s crispy skin reminded us how crackling ought to be, but seldom is.

The meal’s Chinese broccoli with cashews was more enjoyable than its stir-fry of edamame beans in their pods, as extricating the beans from their saucy husks made for messy eating.

Before that dinner, it had been more than five years since I had had food from the Belmont, which opened in late 2014. Then, another chef ran its kitchen. Denny, whose résumé includes stints at the Elmdale Oyster House and Tavern and Jak’s Kitchen, has been at the Belmont since March 2015. Dim sum has been on his menu since at least mid-2016.

Last weekend, we ordered again from the Belmont, but this time on a non-dim sum night. Our meal, which consisted of Denny’s vegetarian dinner for two, plus some meaty add-ons, was more uneven.

Denny has also been serving his take on the Trinidadian flatbreads called “doubles” since at least mid-2016, and we liked the ones we brought home with us, which swaddled a mild chickpea curry accessorized with some well-made condiments, not the least of which was a fiery hot sauce.

Other vegetarian dishes were hit and miss. The citrus fennel salad was packed with many good things — blood orange, grapefruit , pistachio, a yuzu honey vinaigrette. Japanese eggplants were a little under-seared, but their lemony yogurt and Egyptian seasonings were redemptive. But baked broccoli spaetzle was a dud, insufficiently creamy and over-cooked.

Beef tartare leaned persuasively toward Asia with its Korean pear, pickled daikon, soy-marinated peanuts and kimchi mayo. We only wished there had been more meat for $21. The same went for the Belmont’s braised beef main course, which was robust, homey and nicely accompanied by carrot purée and Brussel sprouts, but which also seemed shy of what we should get for $40.

The evening’s big letdown was an order of chicken liver mousse ($14), which for all of us was over-salted to the point of being inedible.

Fortunately, desserts — a brownie, panna cotta, a very cinnamon-y apple crumble-type concoction, each $10 — buoyed our mood.

Before dinner, a jar’s worth of the Belmont’s bourbon- and apple cider-based Gatineau Stroll cocktail ($40) was easy to like, although we would have loved a stronger ginger-y note.

Based on my two meals, I felt as if it would be better if every night were dim sum night from the Belmont. Or, next time I would order a little more judiciously from the à la carte menu. Despite its imperfections and inconsistencies, the Belmont remains a place to root for, all the more so because it lacks a meaningful patio to assist in its pandemic pivoting.

phum@postmedia.com

Bar Lupulus
1242 Wellington St. W., 613-759-4677, barlupulus.ca
Open: Monday to Wednesday 5 to 9 p.m., Thursday to Sunday 3:30 to 9 p.m.
Prices: Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas $27 to $32

Revival Pizza
116 Albert St. (inside Mad Radish), revivalpizza.com
Open: Monday to Wednesday 5 to 8:30 p.m., Thursday to Saturday 5 to 10 p.m., Sunday 5 to 8 p.m.
Prices: 12-inch thin-crust pizzas $12.50 to $17.25

Stay Gold Detroit-Style Pizza
360 Elgin St., 613-421-4653, pizzastaygold.com
Open: 4 to 10 p.m. daily
Prices: Detroit-style four-piece pizzas $18 to $22

A long-time dining companion of mine whose waistline had grown in step with the novel coronavirus winter recently resolved to join the everybody’s-doing-it ketogenic diet movement, which is decidedly carbs-averse.

Still, I reached out to him, perhaps tauntingly so: “Want to try some pizzas with me?”

“I may need to have a cheat day,” he wrote back.

“If you’re going to cheat, cheat hard!” I replied. “Chicago deep dish style?”

And so we ordered this month from Bar Lupulus, opting for the most indulgent of its over-the-top doughy options. My friend put his diet aside and took one for the team, while I girded myself for a three-pizza week, the kind of workload I take on so you won’t have to.

Pre-pandemic, Bar Lupulus on Wellington Street West near Holland Avenue was a place I’d recommend for food that was as delicious as it was innovative and eye-catching, as well as its epic selection of craft beers and natural wines. Of course, in the last year it’s been rocked by lockdowns and capacity limits. This year, one of its pandemic pivots has been to offer chef Justin Champagne’s take on Chicago’s infamously hefty pizzas, which typically stack cheese, then meat, and then tomato sauce in their thick crusts, which more closely resembles a pie than a flatbread.

Lupulus sells cheese, pepperoni, sausage and veggie deep dish pizzas with sourdough crusts. But we opted for the pizza special of the week, which was said to weigh four pounds and was ominously dubbed “From Moscow to Montreal” to mark its combination of smoked meat and sauerkraut, three kinds of cheese, served with a Russian dressing dipping sauce. If you’re going to live dangerously by ordering a deep dish pizza, you might as well go all out, we figured.

I admit I never much cared for Frank Vetere’s deep dish pizzas when I was growing up in Ottawa in the early 1980s, and while I’ve visited Chicago twice in the last decade, I didn’t sample the city’s pizzas. I chuckled when comedian Jon Stewart slagged Chicago deep dish pizza, dubbing it “tomato soup in a bread bowl. This is an above-ground marinara swimming pool for rats!”

But Bar Lupulus’s extravagance was a pretty good pizza, if you accept its fundamental premise. It had structural integrity, all the more so because we followed the advice we had received from the bar to let the pizza rest and set for 15 minutes before digging in.

So eating this mass of smoked meat, sauerkraut, cheese, chunky tomato sauce and dough was a tidy, if not genteel, experience. All of the ingredients of this unholy offspring of a Reuben sandwich and a Chicago pizza sang together better than I’d expected, and I liked the jalapeno and fermented chili dipping sauces we ordered on the side.

Lupulus’s pizza pivot is in line with what one Ottawa restaurateur joked darkly to me not long ago, that many restaurants are turning into pizza and burger joints in order to survive. This is funny in part because it’s true, and another example is Revival Pizza, which is the in-house pizza business of the Mad Radish eateries in Ottawa and Toronto.

The first (and only, to date) Revival Pizza opened in October inside the downtown Mad Radish, offering Neapolitan pizza “with a modern twist.” So, if you recoil in horror at deep dish pizza, the thin-crusted specimens from Revival might well appeal.

Last week, we ordered five of the eight pizzas Revival offers (and you can also design your own pizza). The quality was quite uniform, despite the range of options. From the simple pepperoni pie, to the white-sauced wild mushroom pizza with truffle oil drizzle, to the “Godfather” pizza made with prosciutto, artichokes and San Marzano tomato sauce, to the spicy “Portuguese” pizza garnished with piri-piri chicken, Kalamata olives and roasted red peppers and broccoli, each pie seemed like a good expression of what that pizza ought to be.

Especially after a bit of time in my oven to re-crisp their crusts and loosen up their cheese, the Revival pizzas hit the spot. They didn’t quite dazzle me like the best thin-crust pizzas served in town (from Heartbreakers Pizza, if you ask me right now), but they were pretty respectable.

Finally, this review wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the Detroit-style pizzas from Stay Gold Pizza on Elgin Street, which also opened in October.

In 2019, if some U.S. food writers were correct, Detroit-style pizza was having its moment, spreading in popularity far beyond Motown. There, culinary legend has it that rectangular, pillowy pizzas with crisp, cheesy edges and uniformly browned bottoms were first baked decades ago in blue steel pans used by automotive workers.

I don’t know if the buzz about Detroit-style pizzas came and went in the U.S., but I do believe Stay Gold is one of Ottawa’s first purveyors of this pizza style. In short, to love Stay Gold’s pizza, you really have to love bread, because these loaves, if I can call them that, brought to mind focaccia with pizza-like garnishes.

The Bee Sting pizza, made with pepperoni, soppressata and chili honey, tasted meaty, sweet and spicy. It hit the flavour notes of its likely inspiration, the (other) Bee Sting pizza served at the cult-favourite Brooklyn pizzeria Roberta’s. That said, Roberta’s serves thin-crust pizzas, and when I tried its Bee Sting pie several years ago, it was lusciously sauced, which cannot be said of the lighter-on-the-sauce, heavier-on-the-bread Detroit-style variant.

The same topping-to-bread ratio applied to the Shroom Service pizza we had from Stay Gold.

On the whole, they were pizzas worth trying, if only to make a self-respecting foodie’s life complete. But if you think pizzas are about toppings and sauce, and then crust, then you should probably run away from the prospect of eating Detroit-style pizza faster than you can say “keto diet.”

phum@postmedia.com

Sí Señor Mexican Street Food
506 Rideau St., 613-421-7490, sisenor.ca
Open: Monday to Thursday 3 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 9 p.m., closed Sunday
Prices: tacos $4.50
Access: steps to front door

For my first meal inside a restaurant in more than three months, I wanted something special.

Like many others, I spent my COVID-19 winter eating takeout fare. During last weekend’s balmy weather, I emerged craving not just someone else’s cooking but also their hospitality (with all the pandemic precautions that are tied to Ottawa’s red-zone designation, naturally).

Perhaps any meal at an eatery’s table would have been special. But I picked Sí Señor Mexican Street Food on Rideau Street for my first on-site restaurant meal of 2021. What lured me to the two-year-old eatery for the first time was the promise of tacos and more with the heft of authenticity to them, since Si Señor is owned and operated by Mexico City expat Hugo Crespo.

Most intriguing of all was the online menu’s mention of not just my favourite meaty fillings for tacos — orange juice-marinated pork carnitas, locally sourced Mexican chorizo sausages, Yucatan-style cochinita pibil pulled pork — but also birria de borrego, a lamb stew I hadn’t previously seen in Ottawa. As I’ve previously written, if a restaurant debuts a regional specialty in Ottawa, that’s the equivalent of hailing me with the Bat-Signal.

The four of us walked down Rideau Street on Saturday night, having reserved four spots. In fact, Sí Señor, a former pizza place, seats just six people inside plus up to eight more on its street-facing patio.

We entered the restaurant and found it modestly furnished but filled with bright colours and Mexican pride, thanks to Crespo’s collection of his homeland’s art and pottery displayed on the walls. But we didn’t spend that much time admiring the ambience, as we were hungry and the smells from the kitchen only exacerbated things.

For such a small place, Sí Señor has a surprisingly long menu, spinning variations off of its core products. Crespo offers 10 fillings for carnivores made with pork, chicken, beef, shrimp or lamb. For vegetarians, there’s a black bean and cabbage option or sauteed peppers, onions and cactus in pastor sauce. You can choose to have your fillings in corn tortilla tacos, flour tortillas, burritos, quesadillas made with house-made corn tortillas, and huaraches, a house-made sandal-shaped cornbread I’ll have to sample next time. Pork carnitas and pulled pork also appear in sandwiches, and since we’re in Ottawa, Crespo had to offer “taco poutines,” which top fries with your choice of filling, guacamole, sour cream and queso fresco cheese.

I went straight for lamb slow-cooked in banana leaves on a familiar corn taco and enjoyed the sumptuous meat and concentrated flavours of its sauce and garnishes.

I also tried two of Sí Señor’s tamales. While the doughy package adorned with shredded pork and green sauce was good, the chicken and mole tamal was the winner thanks to its earthy, nutty goodness.

In pre-COVID times, I would ask for and receive morsels of food from my dining companion’s plates. But for the time being, with virus variants abounding, I’ll just take their word about a dish’s worth. One dining companion who had lived in Mexico City for several years vouched for Crespo’s chicken and pork tacos, while another less-traveled friend thought very highly of the chorizo and shrimp tacos.

The fourth person in our party tried Sí Señor’s pozole soup and praised its homey feeling and abundance of shredded chicken. I ordered the same soup to go and had it for lunch the following day, when I found it good, if too salty.

Later this week, I went back to Sí Señor because another of Crespo’s items — hard to come by in Ottawa too, I believe — had to be tried. I ordered quesabirrias, which are made with either stewed lamb or beef (both halal, says the eatery’s website) and come with a dipping sauce made from the stewing liquid.

I liked the cheesy, not-quite-crunchy, meaty, sauce-y treats I took home and resolved to try them again after reading an internet report that called quesabirrias (which joins the Spanish words for cheese and stew) a hot taco trend (of 2019, it should be noted) in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I wondered if Crespo’s quesabirrias would have been more crisp and therefore better either eaten on site or refreshed in my oven at home. Crespo, when I spoke to him this week, answered yes.

We also had two of Sí Señor’s solidly made desserts. We were hard-pressed to say whether we preferred the tres leches cake, a sponge cake made with evaporated milk, condensed milk and heavy cream, or the crunchy churros with chocolate dipping sauce.

Sí Señor is licensed and serves tequila, margaritas, pina coladas and five Mexican beers. We went for the house-made hibiscus iced tea, which was pleasantly not too sweet, and imported Mexican soft drinks instead.

The restaurant also serves jars of its from-scratch salsas to go. The pineapple and habanero salsas are made for heat-lovers, Crespo warns.

Crespo, who was a bank’s mortgage specialist before he opened his eatery, says Sí Señor has fared much better than expected during the pandemic. He doesn’t want to brag, but says his 2020 was much better than his 2019. Tasting his food, I can see how Sí Señor earned its popularity.

phum@postmedia.com

Lusa Bakery
1111 Wellington St. W., 613-728-5252, lusabakery.ca
Open: Tuesday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., closed Monday
Access: step to front door
Deliveries: ubereats.com, doordash.com

Fiesta Manila Bakery and Filipino Store
1800 Bank St., 613- 260-7171,fiesta-manila-bakery-and-pilipino-store.business.site
Open: Weekdays 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Deliveries by staff are available

Caribbean Sweets and Treats
369 Lacasse Ave., 613-744-2446, caribbean-sweets-treats.business.site
Open: Tuesday to Friday noon to 6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday
Deliveries: ubereats.com, doordash.com

Fair warning to anyone Zooming with me in the near future: I will likely have powdered sugar residue on my face and custard stains on my hoodie.

The slovenliness is not simply a symptom of my pandemic fatigue. It’s an occupational hazard, but ultimately my fault. That said, it might be fair to say the nice lady working at Lusa Bakery in Hintonburg gave me a little nudge this week when she told me of the deal — any six pastries for $13.

I went home with a carton filled with not just an impeccable pastel de nata egg tart, but also five other exceptional treats including an almond tart, a custard-filled bola de Berlim (Portugal’s take on a Berliner stuffed doughnut) a coconut-crusted pão de deus bun, a croissant filled with custard and a cannoli. They should last me, well, not as long as I thought I could hold out.

Lusa Bakery opened summer on Wellington Street West. It’s an offshoot of Boulangerie Lusa in Gatineau’s Hull sector, which opened in 1988 and which my sweet tooth really should have known about sooner.

While Lusa Bakery was on my radar in 2020, this pandemic shut-in only hustled on over this year after watching an episode of the Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil, in which globetrotting food-lover Phil Rosenthal’s trip to Lisbon took him to a bakery. I decided then that somebody should feed Peter some of those pastries.

The pastry showcase at Lusa teems with temptations such that picking just six of them won’t be easy. But here’s a tip that could cut back your sugar intake: the savoury items I’ve had from Lusa have been equally satisfying.

The most substantial of those meatier choices was a bifana sandwich that tucked morsels of spicily sauced pork tenderloin inside the lightest, freshest bun I can recall eating. Croquettes of salt cod, chicken and shrimp were also outstanding.

There are two tables of two at Lusa Bakery if you are able to linger with your food and a coffee. But variant jitters made me more keen to enjoy my Portuguese delicacies at home.

Those repeated discoveries at Lusa made me wonder what other Ottawa bakeries previously unknown to me might yield. Entirely on spec, I popped by Fiesta Manila Bakery, a Filipino business on Bank Street near Walkley Road, and later, Caribbean Sweets and Treats in Vanier.

Fiesta Manila Bakery, which opened six years ago, is a small, crowded store with its bakery in the back. I was told there had been a dine-in element to the business, but the pandemic put that on hold and enlarged the grocery store.

The bakery’s biggest boast, visible on its sign out front, is that it sells pandesal, which are airy, slightly sweet Filipino bread rolls the bakery makes and even sells to Filipino and Asian grocery stores in Montreal. The internet tells me pandesal rolls are typically eaten at breakfast, with coffee, and can be used to make sandwiches with sweet or savoury fillings. I can tell you they can be eaten entirely on their own, hot from their paper bag, and they are very fine.

From Fiesta Manila, I also had high-quality savoury pork buns reminiscent of the dim sum staple char siu bao, only much bigger, and made with meaty fillings that also included hard-boiled egg. I also left Fiesta Manila with a pack of the bakery’s spring rolls, also known as lumpia Shanghai, made with veggies and ground pork, and I wound up happily popping one of them in my mouth at each red light on the way home.

Caribbean Sweets is a 12-year-old business run by Haitian expat and baker Fredly Moussignac. Among its wares are tasty puff-pastry-like Haitian patties filled with beef, chicken or cod. From Caribbean Sweets, I also bought a bag of crackers, known as biscuits secs in Haiti, some brittle-like cashew and peanut clusters for dessert, and a plastic cup of fridge-chilled akasan, a thick beverage that Moussignac makes in house from dried corn, milk, coconut milk, cinnamon, nutmeg and more.

My visits to Fiesta Manila and Caribbean Sweets and Treats left me thinking that more explorations of Ottawa’s lesser known bakeries are in order. Poking around on Facebook, I see that La Bakery, which opened last fall, sells Mexican dessert items such as tres leches cupcakes, while Made In Brazil Bakery, which opened last summer, serves sweet guava buns and naturally fermented breads. Even if Ottawa is locked down, we can find ways to investigate the wide world of baking.

phum@postmedia.com

PizzaForno vending machines
33 Clarence St. and 1159 Bank St.,pizzaforno.com

Tempests, more often than not, come in teapots. This week in Ottawa, it was dispensed by a pizza vending machine.

On his social media on Tuesday, Anthony Balestra, owner of two Anthony’s pizzerias in Ottawa and Eldorado Taco on Preston Street, took square aim at two recently arrived pizza vending machines that sell hot and cold pies outside the Senate Taverns on Clarence and Bank streets.

“So now us pizza restaurant owners have to battle COVID and compete against pizza vending machines,” wrote Balestra, who sells Neapolitan wood-fired pizzas at his Bank Street and Wellington Street West locations.

“You can get a pizza 24/7 from a machine but my establishment which pays taxes, employs people and has paid permits and liquor license costs, cannot operate. Outstanding Ottawa once again!”

Balestra’s snub generated more than 240 likes and a slew of comments, both pro and con. Standing with him were Il Perugino Caffè & Bar on Dalhousie Street and the yet-to-open Giulia pizzeria, among others, who scoffed at a pizza vending machine not just as unfair competition but also as an affront to pizza.

Sticking up for the machines was, most notably, the Senate Tavern on Bank Street. Replying on Instagram, the sports bar professed that it loved the pizza from Anthony’s and other pizza specialists, but said it had purchased the vending machine “to add value to our business and bring something fun and innovative to the city.”

The machine was not an attack on small businesses, continued the Senate. “It is owned by our small business and will help us battle through this current situation. It is surprising that you think that this is in any way a threat to your operation. I don’t see anyone every (sic) considering a pizza vending machine as competition to a first-class full-service establishment such as yours.

“Sports bars are built around in-person experiences and do not translate easily to a takeout environment,” the Senate continued. “These machines allow us to employ staff, albeit a small portion, that have been laid off multiple times.”

Given this kerfuffle, vending machine pizza was something I had to try — my editor said. Off then I went Wednesday night to order from the Bank Street machine.

It certainly was an attention-getter, my son and I thought. Promising artisanal pizza in three minutes, the PizzaForno brand machine aroused our curiosity, and those of other customers before and after us who gave the machine a spin. Like us, they had not tried the machine before.

A bit of subsequent Googling showed the machine was one of more than 20 PizzaForno machines in Ontario. Furthermore, there seem to be five other brands of pizza vending machine, including the pioneering, made-in-Italy Let’s Pizza brand, which prefers the term “automated pizza kiosk” for its product.

According to PizzaForno’s press materials, it’s a three-year-old Toronto-based company and its machines are made in France. It describes its 12-inch pizzas as “made fresh by hand, with an authentic Italian approach that includes Roman-style crust made with 100 per cent Italian Caputo flour.”

Each PizzaForno machines holds 70 freshly topped pizzas, which are stored in the refrigerated section of the automated oven. After a customer orders through the machine’s touchscreen, “a robotic arm takes their selection from the refrigerated section, conveys it to a patented oven where it is baked to perfection, placed in a box and delivered to the consumer.”

Among the Bank Street machine’s pizza choices were honey chèvre, barbecue chicken, pepperoni, four cheese blend, vegetarian and Hawaiian. It was out of the meat lover’s pizza. Seeing as we were already living dangerously, we ordered the Hawaiian pizza, with a tap of the touch screen and a swipe of my debit card.

About three minutes later, we left the street corner with a hot pie, which looked reasonably presentable, if not glorious, to eat in my car. Upon closer inspection, we saw the pizza was not sliced. My son, the more attentive of us, then said something on the touch screen had mentioned we should have somehow gotten a “biodegradable” knife. So that gaffe was on us.

To be succinct — and I realize this is a very casual review — we did not enjoy our machine-made pizza. The far-from-crisp crust was the biggest problem for us grab-and-go diners. I know that true Neapolitan pizzas can come with wet centres and require knives and forks to be eaten. But the machine’s pizza was extra-soggy and confounding to eat by hand, without tasting like anything special.

The next day, I reheated the leftover pizza and it was better and easier to eat. But I never got the sense I was enjoying artisanal pizza, much less food that cost $14.

In an interview, Balestra clarified he had not known the Senate owned the pizza machine and he had not meant to go after another small business.

He was more frustrated, he said, with provincial and municipal governments and the continual disruptions to business they have wrought because of the pandemic.

Balestra said he had spent $20,000 on patio furniture before Easter after the City of Ottawa encouraged patios to open, only to have the Ontario government prohibit patios from opening. He has also had to lay off 25 employees, he said.

“I wish the city would help us a bit more,” said Balestra. “I just want a level playing field for all of us. We just want a piece of the pie, if I can use that pun.”

I’m sympathetic to the common plight of both Anthony’s Pizza and the Senate Tavern and think you should be, too. But, with my curiosity assuaged, I can’t see trying the pizza-machine pivot again.

phum@postmedia.com

Shinka Sushi Bar
150 Laurier Ave. W., 613-565-8998, shinkasushibar.com
Prices: sushi rolls $7.50 to $20, specialties $18 to $26, poke bowls $15.50 to $21.50
Open : Monday to Thursday noon to 2 p.m. and 4 to 8 p.m., Friday to Sunday noon to 2 p.m. and 4 to 8:30  p.m.

I shed a prejudice this month thanks to Shinka Sushi Bar.

Packaged sushi bought from grocery stores just never did it for me. How could it, given some sublime raw-fish experiences I’ve had at exceptional Japanese restaurants outside Ottawa where the bar was set very high? Because of the discrepancy between those lows and highs, I generalized that, if sushi was to be the focus of a meal, it should be enjoyed in a dining room or, better yet, at a bar, dispensed by an amiable expert chef.

Of course, that now seems like pre-pandemic thinking. Mired in yet another lockdown that has made Ottawa’s restaurant dining rooms off-limits, we have to take our sushi however we can get it. Fortunately, the ambitious-beyond-the-norm items I’ve had in the last week from Shinka Sushi Bar were, for the most part, deftly made and delightfully tasty. They traveled well enough to persuade me that take-home sushi can be a very good thing.

I had high expectations from Shinka, as a few years ago I had had an impressive off-duty lunch at its precursor at the same downtown address, New Generation Sushi. This week, I confirmed that Shinka, which opened in 2017, was more or less New Generation rebranded by its veteran chef-owner, John Diep.

Diep told me that New Generation changed names because similarly named sushi places in Toronto were all-you-can-eat sushi places and Shinka, with its higher-end, more creative mandate, wanted to avoid any confusion.

Shinka’s menu also heightened our anticipation. The choices here are notches higher than what an all-you-can-sushi place might offer, promising upscale pleasures with prices to match. Think unagi nigiri topped with morsels of pan-seared foie gras, preparations with Hokkaido scallops from Northern Japan, which are renowned for their sweetness, and belly cuts of tuna and salmon, including the prized, supremely fatty o-toro bluefin sashimi.

The menu is not just discerning. It’s also broad. Shinka serves 13 kinds of poke bowls, placing raw fish or chicken or lobster or snow crab atop rice for those who think sushi rolls are insubstantial and main courses should come in bowls. If raw fish isn’t for you, grilled chicken and grilled salmon are available. If you don’t eat fish and other animals, there’s an extensive vegan sushi menu featuring items where mushrooms, sweet potato, tofu and the like add heft.

Online ordering was a snap. When I arrived at the appointed time to pick up my food (rather than relying on one of the delivery services whose commissions eat into restaurant revenues), I saw that the formerly sleek lounge had been optimized for takeout, with a wall of branded boxes replacing seating and obscuring the sushi bar.

The box that I took home for my first dinner was filled with an array of eye-catching, à la carte goodies that put pristinely fresh fish front and centre. Beautifully arranged and ever better tasting were slabs of medium-fatty chu-toro bluefin sashimi and lozenges of salmon belly and amberjack on rice, both morsels of fish torched to add extra texture and flavour before being precisely garnished. Other recherché and alluring choices included Japanese grunt fish topped with jalapeno, striped jack topped with sturgeon caviar and gold flake and golden threadfin topped with sea urchin.

Some of these imported-from-Japan fish choices were unknown to me, and I have no past yardsticks, or at least recent memories, against which to measure them. All I can say is that we felt spoiled by these sophisticated and clearly well-crafted items.

Among Shinka’s specialties were several sauced raw-fish dishes that some would call globally inspired sushi innovations. “Carpaccio” from Shinka consisted of thinly sliced salmon or tuna sitting in a homemade soy-citrus sauce and topped with green onion, cilantro, tobiko and fried garlic. The same sauce and garnishes came with Shinka’s “new-style sashimi combo” of salmon, sea bass and red tuna. Diep told me these items were very popular, and I could see why their set of winning flavours would be reinforced. If I could suggest one alternative, it might be pairing a bit of sharp chili heat might work with some of the raw-fish specialties.

We really savoured two preparations that highlighted raw Hokkaido scallops. The seafood shone in a simple, well-sauced crudo preparation and mounded with avocado on the crunchy base of a tempura-fried shiso leaf.

Sucker for duck liver that I am, I had to order the unagi topped with pan-seared foie gras. It did feel like a decadent splurge, even if the foie was a little overcooked and the sumptuous roasted freshwater eel overshadowed it.

I sampled some of Shinka’s signature rolls — the Osaka, made with red tuna, salmon, crabstick, avocado and the Butterfly, whose salmon had either been tempura-fried or smoked — and both were worth their premium prices.

Of the deep-fried appetizers that we tried, I thought best of Shinka’s crisp calamari morsels, while the good chicken gyozas and agedashi tofu seemed less like must-orders.

During the pandemic, we all live and learn. My latest lesson, courtesy of Diep and Shinka Sushi Bar, is that I should order in well-made, distinctive sushi more often.

phum@postmedia.com

Raphaël Express
250 City Centre Ave., unit 232 (on the second floor in the back of the building, in the Kitchen Ottawa), 343-463-3590, raphaelperuviancuisine.ca
Open: Wednesday to Friday 3 to 9 p.m., Saturday 2 to 9 p.m., Sunday 1 to 8 p.m.
Prices: starters $17 to $26, mains $22 to $36

A long journey of more than a decade and across thousands of kilometres has taken Lizardo Becerra from the globally renowned Central Restaurante in Lima, Peru to the Michelin-starred Villa Crespi lakeside resort in Northern Italy to the kitchen in Ottawa’s City Centre complex where he now works.

Your taste buds should be thankful for the Peruvian expat’s travels. The knowledge and experience he’s accrued are deliciously apparent in the elevated Peruvian fare he serves to go from his new business Raphaël Express.

The one-month-old kitchen takes its name from Becerra’s three-year-old son. The chef, who is 33, has called Ottawa home since 2012, when he moved here to be the Embassy of Peru’s executive chef. A few years later, he joined the kitchen crew at the Andaz Ottawa ByWard Market. After the pandemic led to the layoff of that boutique hotel’s kitchen workers, Becerra formed his plan to go into business for himself.

For years, Peruvian cuisine has been a darling for globe-trotting foodies, and not simply because Central was repeatedly named Latin America’s best restaurant and cracked the top 10 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants rankings. Peru’s rich biodiversity, multicultural history and unique staples are the basis of a singular, thrilling cuisine.

This month, I ordered dinner twice from Becerra’s website and then made the trip to the back of the City Centre complex to pick up his food. As modest as Raphaël Express may be, it’s a worthy culinary ambassador for Becerra’s homeland.

My first meal began with samplings of Becerra’s raw-fish starters. Ceviche is a star of Peruvian cooking, and Becerra makes his with Pacific rockfish, its clean-tasting white flesh firmed by its citrus cure and complemented, as is the Peruvian tradition, by caramelized sweet potato and toasted chulpe corn. A container of ominously orange “tiger’s milk” came on the side, and just a bit of that concentrated liquid added a distinct fiery kick to the fish.

Just as appealing but different was Becerra’s tuna tiradito, which starred pristine pink slabs of albacore tuna, flanked by crisp ribbons of fried plantain and wedges of sesame-crusted avocado. A potent citrus-oyster-ponzu sauce added a salty jolt.

Becerra’s causa is his only vegetarian appetizer. But the mashed-potato-based item was wildly colourful and flavour-packed, thanks to its layers of diced beets and avocado and its twinned olive and mustard-like sauces.

A lighter appetite could happily go for Becerra’s butifarra sandwich, made with thick-sliced homemade ham and packaged with more of that mustardy sauce and a pickled onion relish on the side. The sandwich, ceviche and causa bundled together are the prime components of Becerra’s Peruvian picnic for two.

Delving into Becerra’s main courses, I was most taken by his Peruvian fried rice, flecked with more of that ham and bits of portobello mushroom and then topped with a battered chicken cutlet and fried egg. The dish was simultaneously humble and excellent.

Chef Lizardo Becerra of Raphael Express Chaufa Chijaukay fried rice and egg on top.The influence of Peru’s Chinese immigrants is also in the DNA of Becerra’s beef tenderloin lomo saltado, a refined and thoroughly captivating take on what can be a simpler stir-fry in Lima. For those who eschew red meat, Becerra offers versions of this dish made with tofu or chicken.

Jalea could be called Peru’s take on fish and chips. Made with more of that B.C. rockfish, Becerra’s tasty jalea was impeccably greaseless and its planks of yuca had an extruded look to them. The dish’s pickled onions, punchy rocoto pepper sauce and soothing tartar sauce were super additions.

The only main course that struck me as more ordinary was the duck leg with cilantro rice, which was fine but paled in comparison to the more boldly flavoured items.

Becerra makes two desserts. I preferred his tangy passionfruit cheesecake to his “Peruvian-Italian” tiramisu. It interestingly incorporated lucuma, a South African fruit, but was also a touch heavy.

When I spoke to Becerra this week, he acknowledged that customers have told him his food can be pricey. That beef tenderloin dish is $36, while the cheesecake and tiramisu are $13 and $14, respectively. But I think Becerra makes a compelling case for his prices with the quality of his ingredients and the standards and technique evident in his dishes and their accompaniments.

During my run as a restaurant critic, I’ve been consistently pleased with the few Peruvian meals I’ve had, which were served at the Gatineau restaurants Petit Peru and Amazonas. I’m glad Raphaël Express now joins them to expand the options for exciting Peruvian dining in the Ottawa area.

While Becerra only makes food to go at the moment, he says his goal is to open a dine-in restaurant once the pandemic subsides. “When things are getting better, I’ll go to a brick-and-mortar space and make something nice,” he says.

We now have another very good reason to be rid of COVID-19.

phum@postmedia.com

Torta Boyz
298 Preston St. (in the parking lot), instagram.com/tortaboyz.ot
Open: Wednesday to Sunday 3 p.m. till they run out of food
Prices: sandwiches $15 and $16, fries $10 to $14

You don’t have to be a teenager chomping at the bit to go outside during a seemingly interminable lockdown to enjoy a trip to the Torta Boyz food truck. But it certainly doesn’t hurt.

Last week, my son, who is just shy of turning 18, brimmed with optimism after we placed our orders at the month-old business. We stood in the big Preston Street parking lot that the food truck calls home, my lanky teen alternately practicing his basketball moves or singing along with the Drake tune playing on the Torta Boyz sound system. Around us were other Torta Boyz fans, lounging near their cars and more than adequately distanced while waiting for their orders.

As the soundtrack changed from hip hop to Latin pop, my son said something along the lines of: “I like the vibe here. If the food is as good as the vibe, it’s going to be very good.”

While he hadn’t yet reached the age or majority, he’s always been an astute judge of ambience and victuals, from humble street food to fine dining plates. And his instincts were right about Torta Boyz. A few minutes later, we were sinking our teeth into Mexican sandwiches that were as vibrantly flavoured and complexly tasty as they were massive. We also had some heavily garnished fries that I would pick 100 times out of 100 over the best poutine out there.

The food truck’s menu is compact, consisting of just two whopping sandwiches on toasted crusty buns (or tortas, as they are called in Mexico) and three kinds of fries. We had to wait a bit between ordering and digging in, but I think the delay spoke to the care taken and the from-scratch approach inside the truck.

Of the two sandwiches, the carne asada ($16) made with toothsome slices of striploin steak, avocado, a lightly fermented slaw called curtido, chimichurri and chipotle mayo, was our winner by a nose. The tinga de pollo sandwich ($15) made with stewed chicken, avocado, black beans, iceberg lettuce, a tomato crema and cotija cheese, was not bad at all, and delivered a big spicy punch. But we both found the chicken was not as forward in our bites as the steak had been, and that perhaps the chicken and the beans were competing for attention.

Asada fries, if Wikipedia is to be believed, actually originated in San Diego, rather than Mexico. But we won’t hold that against the fries or the boys, because what the truck doled out was delicious in a fully loaded way. Of the three options, we went for the fries topped with shredded beef brisket ($14) that had been braised with smoky morita chiles and a pasilla chile salsa. The hefty beef mixed with the givens of the truck’s asada fries — guacamole, pico de gallo, cilantro, onions and cheese — to form a daunting and vivid topping. The fries thankfully held their own against the accompaniments because of their impeccable crispness.

The boys also make fries topped with grilled chicken and habanero salsa, plus fries with fried cauliflower and salsa. The latter is the sole vegetarian-friendly pick at the truck, at least for now.

My son and I agreed that a fine pairing with the food was Squirt, the grapefruit-based Southwestern U.S. soft drink. The truck also offers more usual beverages and Mexican Coca Cola, or “Mexicoke,” which is made with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, in case that sways the choice of Coke enthusiasts.

We have Luis Guerra and Moudy Husseini, who are very well caricatured in the Torta Boyz logo, to thank for these takeout treats.

The boys, if men in their early 30s can be called that, are life-long friends who grew up together in Ottawa. They went on to manage their respective restaurants — Husseini ran KS on the Keys in South Keys while Guerra managed Campechano Taquería in Toronto — before the pandemic left them out of work.

They resolved to open Torta Boyz. Initially it was going to be a ghost kitchen, but then the truck became available. Either way, “we’ve been wanting to do this since high school,” Husseini says.

If Instagram is your measuring stick, Torta Boyz is a big hit right out of the gate, with more than 2,500 followers. The boys just shrug when asked how they accumulated such a following.

They do acknowledge that they’ve been generating long line-ups, especially on weekends, and that at peak hours they limit orders to two tortas per person to keep the line moving. Also, they routinely sell out of items and close early, rather than at 9 p.m., when they run out. Consider yourself warned.

phum@postmedia.com

Dosa & Curries
114 Gloucester St., 613-231-6550, dosaandcurries.com
Open : Monday and Wednesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., 5 to 11 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., closed Tuesday
Prices : dosas $11 to $16.50, curries $12.50 to $17.50
Access : steps to front door

Before I first made the acquaintance of Vijay Krishna Rangarajan and his modest Centretown restaurant Dosa & Curries, I expected his business would have suffered mightily during the first few phases of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Rangarajan and I spoke in December 2020, about a year after Dosa & Curries opened. His restaurant had survived the emptying of downtown, which left other restaurants just blocks away gasping for revenue. Rangarajan told me that, while his eatery’s dine-in sales naturally sank, increased delivery sales nearly compensated. Net sales had only dropped about 10 per cent compared to Dosa & Curries’ pre-pandemic business, Rangarajan told.

I filed away this relative success story until just a few weeks ago, when it occurred to me that I should sample some of the food that had won Dosa & Curries its takeout-based following.

Not that Dosa & Curries’ menu made choosing dishes easy. As its name hints, the restaurant offers a striking range of dishes that represent the breadth of India’s regional cuisines. Items from India’s south, where tangy, crepe-like dosas rule, get top billing. But the menu also lists a striking assortment of curries, both vegetarian and meaty, as well as tandoori dishes, Indo-Chinese dishes, breads, desserts and more.

Before I describe the highlights of my orders from Dosa & Curries, I should mention two warnings. First, when I ordered by phone, I was never given an option to order dishes more or less spicy. In the end, that was fine, as the food definitely set our mouths thrumming with spicy flavours without incapacitating us. But other palates might want their food toned down, if possible.

More significantly, some of the dishes and chutneys from Dosa & Curries that we hit upon in our limited ordering contained nuts, but were not so designated, either on the menu or by the people who took orders. Clearly any nut allergies should be raised while ordering.

Back in pre-pandemic times, I thought that dosas were best enjoyed as fresh from the kitchen as possible, piping hot and texturally impeccable. The dosas I had to go from Dosa & Curries did not change my thinking, although I was still very glad to have to tried the restaurant’s onion rava masala dosa, which, despite being too crisp and seemingly overcooked, packed a big flavour punch due to its caramelized onions. Less interesting was a mushroom dosa, due to mushrooms that got lost in the proceedings. That said, the menu lists almost 40 more types of dosas — I’ve scarcely scratched the surface of what’s offered in this category.

From the menu’s page of dosas, our favourite item was a vegetable uttapam, which in South India is more of a breakfast item. This fluffier, tangier pancake made with rice flour and black lentils — one of a dozen uttapams available — seemed to degrade less during its trip to my dining table and better retain its tasty integrity.

With all of the dosas that we tried, one constant was the quality of the boldly flavoured chutneys that came on the side, as well as the sambar soup that was perfect for dipping.

The biggest revelation for us was a serving of ven pongal, a porridge-like combination of rice and lentils that was as tasty as it was humble, made buttery and irresistible by its drizzle of ghee and garnish of cashews.

The restaurant’s curries and other dishes were all extremely generously portioned, generating leftovers that stretched on for days and seemed to us more hearty than refined.

Chicken Chettinad teemed with meat in an earthy gravy and was enjoyable, although I feel that I’ve had more nuanced versions of this dish elsewhere. Crab curry was earthier still, and of course a challenge to eat tidily. But we didn’t mind getting our hands and faces dirty while we extricated the meat from its shells, and we felt well-rewarded for our efforts.

Eggplant curry seemed more ordinary and was a bit of a letdown. A curry of lamb and pureed spinach struck us with its oddly sweet note.

Hyderabadi chicken biryani, which some regard as the ne plus ultra of Indian rice dishes, was powerfully seasoned and loaded with what seemed like at least a half a tandoori-cooked chicken. It was satisfying in a rugged way, but I’ll say as I have before that the best version of this dish in town is served at Vivaan on Preston Street, which aspires to put a fine-dining spin on Indian cuisine.

Chicken kothu parota, a stir-fry of shredded South Indian bread and other good things, had a rustic, rib-sticking feel to it.

Despite having had many meals from the two orders I made from Dosa & Curries, I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of what the restaurant offers. That’s not so surprising given that Rangarajan told me months ago: “W e have everything on the menu.”

I do want to try more of the food from his kitchen, although for the dosas in particular I’ll wait until the business’s dining room opens.

phum@postmedia.com

Khokha Eatery
605 Longfields Dr., Unit 13, Barrhaven, 613-440-3999, khokhaeatery.com , instagram.com/khokhaeatery
Open : Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday, noon to 8:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday noon to 9 p.m., closed Monday
Prices : Street food items $3 to $12, mains $10 to $15

Zermina Siddiqi, owner-operator of Khokha Eatery in Barrhaven, admits that when she opened a little more than four months ago, she toned down the spiciness of her food.

“I started on the mild side. I was keeping my Canadian customers in mind,” says Siddiqi. Her business is one of Ottawa’s few purveyors of Pakistani cuisine and especially of the street foods of Siddiqi’s homeland.

But then Pakistani expats who began frequenting the tiny takeout restaurant “started demanding more spice,” Siddiqi says. “We took the spice level a notch up.”

Still, the ranks of what she calls “Canadian” customers coming to the restaurant grew, even as dishes became more vibrantly spiced to Pakistani tastes, Siddiqi says. While she asks first-time customers if they want their food mild, Siddiqi finds repeat customers, Pakistani or otherwise, crave boldly seasoned dishes.

I get that. Last weekend, I tried most of Khokha’s dishes, and I want more of Siddiqi’s freshly made, thrillingly flavoured and eminently affordable food, even if it sets my taste buds pulsating.

Newcomers to Pakistani cuisine will see familiar-sounding items on Khokha’s tightly curated menu. Butter chicken and chicken biryani are mainstays on Indian menus. Ground-meat patties called chapli kebabs also appear on the menus of Ottawa’s Afghan kebab houses.

But Siddiqi says Pakistani cuisine’s distinctiveness is clear, especially to experienced palates. A crucial difference between Pakistani food and neighbouring North Indian fare is that Pakistani food is halal, consisting of meats that are processed and prepared according to Islamic dietary laws.

A few spices prominent in Indian cuisine such as asafetida appear not at all in Pakistani cooking, Siddiqi says. She adds that Pakistanis and Indians can tell the difference between Khokha’s Pakistani chicken biryani and its Indian counterpart. 

I can only say that Khokha’s noble chicken and rice dish ($12) is exceptionally good. With its beautifully fluffy rice, complex, mouth-filling flavours and finishing touch of caramelized onions, this biryani impressed me as much as the knockout Hyderabadi dum biryani made at the Preston Street Indian fine-dining restaurant Vivaan.

I’ve also tried three of Khokha’s four other mains. Saag gosht ($15), made with braised beef and an earthy, spinach-flecked gravy, was my favourite. When I told Siddiqi a previous saag gosht I ate elsewhere seemed much more simple and thrown-together, she replied: “ You can tell when people cut corners, when people skip ingredients. It really shows.”

Khokha’s chicken karahi ($15) swaddled bone-in chicken in an intensely tomato-based sauce with cumin, coriander, chilies and ginger singing harmoniously. While butter chicken isn’t part of Pakistani cuisine, Khokha’s pleasing rendition ($15) of the ubiquitous Indian dish was not only creamy and tangy but also blessed with a rewarding undertone of spiciness.

I didn’t try Khokha’s Hakka noodles ($10) because that Indo-Chinese dish hasn’t wowed me elsewhere. But Siddiqi says her Indian chef, Aman Singh, makes a version that is to die for.

Khokha’s street food choices include many snacks in buns, some kebabs in house-made flatbreads and fusion fare involving french fries.

I wondered if a samosa in a bun ($5) would be good, despite qualifying, in Siddiqi’s words, as “ carb overload.” I instantly liked everything about “bun samosa,” which contrasted crispy samosa pastry and pillowy brioche bun, while its vegetable filling and tangy chutney cut through. “Growing up, that was a snack sold in our cafeterias and schools, a very quick thing to grab,” Siddiqi says.

Available in a bun or with naan are Khokha’s chapli kebabs ($11 for two with naan). They elicited wows and sighs of appreciation from everyone who sampled them with me thanks to their eye-widening flavours.

Siddiqi is especially proud of these humble-looking meat patties, which she says are native to the region she comes from.

“A lot of people have commented they have not had chapli kebabs like this even in Toronto,” she says. “I will n ot compromise on them. Chapli kebab requires a lot of onions. We get tired chopping those onions.” She says she refuses to freeze kebabs in bulk, preferring to make them every second day.

Shami kebabs ($6 for two) were a milder, more comforting kind of patty, made with a combination of lentils and ground beef.

Khokha chaat ($7) mixed many good things, including chickpeas, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, mint and tamarind chutneys, spiced yogurt and chunks of crisp fried dough. Khokha’s meaty chicken wings ($12 for 10) were more sweet, salty and tasty than fiery.

The only dish I would not re-order is the butter chicken poutine ($6), as I rarely enjoy poutine-like dishes (an exception is Torta Boyz’s asada fries) and because I’d much rather have a full order of butter chicken.

Khokha’s kheer ($5), a rice pudding made with thickened milk, cardamom and nuts, was simple but satisfying in a primal way. Gulab jamun ($5) were better than dough balls in syrup had a right to be.

Khokha serves mango milkshakes ($4) rather than yogurt-based mango lassis. Nimbu pani ($3) is fresh lemonade tweaked with the addition of black salt, which adds saltiness and pungency.

While Khokha is Siddiqi’s first culinary venture, it gets other things right besides its food. She and her husband, Zubair, are friendly, likeable presences. The eatery’s attractive space features eye-catching decorations alluding to Pakistan’s multi-coloured “jingle trucks” and the Siddiqis hope to add a few tables indoors as well as a patio.

These days, the mix of Khokha’s customers is roughly 70 per cent expats from the Indian subcontinent and 30 per cent others, compared to 90 per cent Pakistani and 10 per cent others earlier. Who knows what the breakdown will be if the mix eventually stabilizes?

I can say that overall, the hard numbers deserve to rise steeply, given the allure of Khokha’s food, concept and hospitality.

phum@postmedia.com