Salt Dining Lounge
345A Preston Street, 613-693-0333, saltottawa.ca
Open: 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily
Prices: Mains $23 to $34
Access: No steps to front door or washrooms
Wiser people than I offer this advice: Don’t dwell on what might have been. But trust me, nagging regrets are hard to dispel when a top-dollar, locally raised, dry-aged steak arrives at your table overcooked.
We were at Salt, a large, luxurious restaurant and lounge that opened on Preston Street this summer. The two of us were sharing a signature, 20-ounce O’Brien Farms striploin that had been aged in-house for a month and a half. This big-occasion main course was ordered medium rare. It arrived, pre-cut and leaking juices on to its wooden cutting board, and sadly closer to medium in its middle. The steak’s outer slices were devoid of pink.
That’s not to say that dinner was ruined, or even that the steak was bad. It had good flavour and char, but it could have been better.
This, of course, is a first-world complaint. But when the dish in question is a high-stakes steak — $90 — nothing less than deep, lingering satisfaction should do.
Overall, that’s how I feel about Salt after dining twice there this month. Yes, the best dishes wowed with striking visuals, complex preparations and deftly achieved flavours and textures. But the dishes that could have been improved upon also added up.
The decor at Salt set expectations very high. I like that the restaurant’s dining room is a lavish, see-and-be-seen place of plush seats and banquettes, imposing tables set with stemware, crushed velvet curtains and hard-bound menus. This expansive space, and the suave, piano-equipped lounge near Salt’s entrance, have “night on the town” written all over them.
Meanwhile, black-clad servers set the proper classy tone. We’ve appreciated thoughtful gestures too — an offer of blankets in case we found the room too cold, an Asian soup spoon filled with chili-spiked salt, proactively brought to a guest who expressed a fondness for heat.
My only misgivings about Salt’s ambience is that the room can grow too dark to fully appreciate the visual dazzling from chef Ryan Edwards, 36, who was previously at Taylor’s on Bank Street and who will compete in Ottawa’s Gold Medal Plates competition next month.
Edwards has the admittedly difficult task of bringing fine-dining, farm-to-table, and at times technique-rich flair to a restaurant that can pack 120 guests indoors plus at least that many on its patio, when the weather allows.
Chef Ryan Edwards of Salt Restaurant And Lounge on Preston Street (Wayne Cuddington/Ottawa Citizen)
His menu finds him making multiple uses of many components, so that black cod, scallops or pork belly appear as appetizers or main courses. Made-in-house accents such as smoked tomato ketchup, apple mostarda and ginger crisps tantalize.
Among the dishes that won us over were two meticulously made salads. Edwards’ beet salad ($13) takes the humdrum out of that common menu choice, supporting the usual roasted and pickled beets with discs of gelatin-treated goat-cheese panna cotta, beet purée and granola.
Beet salad at Salt
Even better was the root vegetable salad ($13), a generous combination of not only confit squash and morsels of celeriac, parsnip and charred carrot, but also crisp pancetta and parmesan tuiles. A complex, nutty sorrel and brown-butter vinaigrette was a winner.
Root vegetable salad at Salt
Less complicated but well executed were the chicken liver mousse on toast ($9), which boasted good clean flavour and consistency, and a scallop crudo adorned with bits of pistachio and smoked tomato water ($11) which, although limited to just a few bites, had the quality and complexity it needed.
Chicken liver on toast at Salt
Scallop Crudo at Salt
Rillettes of smoked black cod ($13) was a loose, liquidy concoction. I’d like to eat it again, although I’d prefer a larger, less salty portion. (Despite the restaurant’s name, this was the only dish that was too salty.)
Black cod rillettes at Salt
With Salt’s apple salad ($14), the titular ingredient was overshadowed by an enjoyable slab of pork belly and assertive kimchi purée.
Fall apple salad at Salt.
Of four non-steak mains that I’ve sampled, lobster spaghetti ($25), rich with shellfish meat and perked with chili, stood out as a solid success.
Lobster spaghetti at Salt
With two other mains, Edwards offered pork “four ways” and duck “three ways” respectively. These ambitious dishes pay off if a kitchen has the chops make different cuts sing in harmony. But the challenge is that one piece of pork or duck can outshine the rest, generating disappointment and maybe the feeling that pork or duck “one way” would have been better.
The variations on Mariposa duck ($32) was the better of the two, with a spot-on seared breast. As for confit duck leg, Edwards incorporated morsels of it in a cube of deep-fried polenta. Foie gras appeared as an accent, à la David Chang, in the form of small splashes of shaved frozen torchon.
With the Mariposa pork “nose to tail” plate ($34), I thought very highly of its prosciutto-wrapped tenderloin, and was glad that the main’s pork belly was as good as the specimen on the apple salad. But I was less persuaded by a nugget of overly gelatinous confit cheek and I could have done without the deep-fried bit of pig tail, even if it was novel and nicely seasoned.
Mariposa Pork “nose to tail” four ways, at Salt.
With a black cod main course ($30), Edwards nodded to Asia, adding udon noodles, shiitakes and bok choy to a bowl of smoked dashi broth, beneath the serving of pan-seared fish. But the broth struck me as over-smoked, in particular after several spoonfuls, and the rest of the dish felt ordinary.
Pan-seared sablefish in smoked dashi broth with udon at Salt.
But if Salt’s mains have been a little uneven, desserts ($12) were strong and even pleasantly provocative finishes. A deconstructed abstraction of tiramisu included chocolate espresso panna cotta, coffee ice cream, meringue drops and a scattering of coffee “soil,” among other things.
Deconstructed tiramisu at Salt
We liked even more the outré, sweet-meets-savoury melange of “aerated” sponge cake with dehydrated fennel chips, fennel jam and a special fennel-meets-brown-butter ice cream.
Aerated sponge cake with fennel brown butter ice cream at Salt
I’m left, then, with “ifs.” If only I’d sent back the steak (Salt co-owner Rod Scribner later told me he would have welcomed the return). If only we had chosen short ribs and scallops rather than that meaty splurge, and received perfection. If only every dish was as striking as those desserts.
After speaking to Scribner and Edwards, I feel that Salt has the ambition and smarts to hit very high standards plate after plate. But I haven’t yet had that experience, and it will take a future visit to see if the unevenness disappears.
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