Brothers Beer Bistro
366 Dalhousie St., 613-695-6300, brothersbeerbistro.ca
Open: Monday 3 to 10 p.m., Tuesday to Friday noon to midnight, Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Prices: small plates $9 to $17
Access: Steps to front door
Bellies, legs, wings, ears, cheeks, tongues, hearts and marrow — all go down easily and tastily at Brothers Beer Bistro.
The Dalhousie Street restaurant, which opened in 2012, has recently arrived chef Steve Mitton to thank for its new embrace of less-fancy cuts of meat and organs. Meanwhile, the veteran Ottawa chef, 47, has the eatery to thank for his return to the kitchen.
“I just needed to get behind the stoves again,” Mitton told me last week.
Mitton established his reputation as a maestro of meat during his eight-year run at Murray Street, the celebrated restaurant that for eight years was a few blocks away from where Mitton now works. Murray Street, which was acclaimed as one of Canada’s best new restaurants in 2009 by Air Canada’s EnRoute magazine. closed at the end of 2016, and Mitton spent most of last year doing catering, event planning and pop-ups for the Whalesbone Group of restaurants.
I was very keen on Mitton’s food at Murray Street when I wrote about it in the fall of 2013. After two dinners at Brothers Beer Bistro this month, I’m just as pleased with the fare from his latest kitchen. The biggest difference between the two restaurants’ menus is that on the savoury side, Brothers serves no main courses and focuses on rich, but unfussy small plates, with most reasonably priced at $15 or less. In all, it’s tempting to think of Brothers Beer Bistro under Mitton as a more affordable and smaller-scale, but no less tasty, Murray Street.
Indeed, a few Murray Street dishes have come over to Brothers, namely crispy, meaty duck wings in an espresso-stout barbecue sauce ($15) and a dessert of S’mores in a jar ($8) that hides a chocolate-porter pudding under its torched marshmallow canopy. Also, the second page of the Brothers menu lists several kinds of charcuterie ($8 each), and those meat products also helped put Mitton and Murray Street on the map. While the selection was larger at Murray Street, I can vouch for the assertively smoked duck and especially his more mellow ham at Brothers. Indeed, the nuanced flavour of his ham will ruin the store-bought stuff for you.
Duck wings at Brothers Beer Bistro
S’mores in a jar at Brothers Beer Bistro
Smoked duck and smoked ham at Brothers Beer Bistro
In all, we’ve tried almost three-quarters of the menu’s 20 small plates and came away with some favourites that fit the description of rich animal protein matched with a fine sauce worth sopping up and a palate-cleansing bright or acidic garnish.
They included a meaty chunk of pork belly ($14), braised with a light Asian accent (five-spice powder) and served in a puddle of fantastic sauce and offset with peaches and green onions. Also making us swoon was a luscious slab of smoked trout ($16) served with confit potatoes, a soy-brown butter vinaigrette, pickled beets and salted onions. Of several sandwiches, tops for me was a deluxe, double decker smoked meat sandwich ($17) made with O’Brien Farms’ brisket, Tomme De Savoie cheese, Juniper Farms’ sauerkraut, light rye and Russian dressing.
Chef Steve Mitton of Brothers Beer Bistro
Smoked trout at Brothers Beer Bistro
Smoked meat sandwich at Brothers Beer Bistro
Crisply and cleanly fried nuggets of rabbit ($12) were not super-exciting on their own, but they were well-balanced by kimchi and a plum sauce with a spicy edge.
Rabbit nuggets at Brothers Beer Bistro
Decadent richness on bread won us over with locally grown Le Coprin mushrooms on toast ($15), with semi-soft, buttery Le Ballot cheese and a brandy cream sauce, as well as Mitton’s escargots and raclette cheese served on a roasted marrow bone ($16) that brimmed with the spreadable, dripping, unctuous stuff.
Escargot and cheese on bone marrow with toast at Brothers Beer Bistro
Mushrooms on toast at Brothers Beer Bistro
Among the more outré items, a “tartare” of smoked duck hearts ($14), smoothed with goat-milk yogurt and bolstered by cabbage and horseradish slaw, was interesting and pleasant, if, in the end, salty. Mitton showcased soft, braised soft beef tongue in a whimsical, downmarket “guédille” (a Québécois hot-dog bun creation, $14), complete with fries in the bun.
Duck heart tartare at Brothers Beer Bistro
Tongue sandwich at Brothers Beer Bistro
O’Brien Farms’ beef cheeks topped broad noodles in Mitton’s shrunken riff on beef bourguignon ($17). Beef rib meat starred in a beef dip sandwich with a superior sauce.
Roast beef dip at Brothers Beer Bistro
With Mitton’s duck confit on a pancake ($17), for all its crisp skin and succulent flesh, I experienced an unwelcome Au Pied de Cochon Sugar Shack flashback, which is to say I thought it was overly sweet. Maple syrup lovers might disagree.
Duck confit at Brothers Beer Bistro
We thought that the po’ boy sandwich of heavily sauced smelts was sloppy and lacking in a flavour reward, and those duck wings were just alright.
The rundown above might be enough to make a vegetarian run screaming from Brothers. I can recommend the goulash, which subbed in mushrooms and lentils for the usual beef, and without much of a setback. The menu also lists a beet salad and Welsh rarebit as meat-free, although both involve cheese.
Lentil and mushroom goulash at Brothers Beer Bistro
Of Mitton’s desserts, the one I’m craving is his flourless chocolate cake ($8), smartly supported by sour cherries, caramel corn and a just-right corn-cereal ice cream. With so much good stuff on the plate, it made other desserts seem incomplete.
Chef Steve Mitton of Brothers Beer Bistro in Ottawa, January 29, 2018. Popcorn icecream. Photo by Jean Levac/Ottawa Citizen Assignment number 128459
In keeping with its name, the restaurant of 70-plus seats boasts a long and discerning list of draft and bottled beers. It’s ambience, however, is far from elitist, with generic woodiness and overhead ducts offset by a brick wall covered with mirrors. Country music played on the sound system during one visit. Service was slack then, with a dirty sharing plate handed out at our table. The next time, service was good, but not special.
Back at Murray Street, one of Mitton’s biggest indulgences was serving special-order pig’s heads, as per one of his über-carnivore heroes, chef Martin Picard of Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal. When I asked Mitton whether those heads might one day be served at Brothers Beer Bistro, he said yes.
They would just have to be smaller, continued Mitton, who already has his sights set on heads from the suckling piglets of Fermes St-Canut / Gaspor in the Laurentians. “They’ve got those nice little heads that are perfect for two people to eat for dinner,” he says.
So, if you exhaust the considerable appeals of Mitton’s small plates, you might one day be able to book a head.
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Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews