Bar Lupulus
1242 Wellington St. W., 613-759-4677, barlupulus.ca
Open: Monday to Friday 11:30 a.m. to late, Saturday 5 p.m. to late, Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., 5 p.m. to late
Prices: small dishes $15 to $19, mains $22 to $30
Access: wheelchair accessible, including washroom on main level (other washrooms downstairs)
Under normal circumstances, I visit an Ottawa-area restaurant a few times, write up my take, and then not step foot in the place for another five or six years. The rotation, so to speak, is a long one because, well, so many restaurants, so little time.
This week, though, I’m making a big exception. I recently returned twice to Bar Lupulus a little more than a year after reviewing it in December 2017, which was about two months after the beer-based eatery on Wellington Street West opened.
To have stayed away would have been to miss out on some delicious and noteworthy dishes from Justin Champagne, Lupulus’s chef since last June.
When Lupulus opened, its chef was Jeff Bradfield, whose well-crafted, from-scratch cooking helped establish the bar as one of the city’s best gastropubs. But if anything, Champagne’s striking successes using some of the trendiest culinary techniques make me think that the tastemakers who determine Canada’s best restaurants ought to have Lupulus on their radar.
Champagne, 32, is at the helm of a restaurant kitchen for the first time. But he’s had lots of experience at fine-dining destinations, including five years at Atelier in Little Italy, working for its chef-owner and two-time Canadian culinary champion Marc Lepine. The Winnipeg-born Champagne, who moved to Ottawa to work at Atelier, has also cooked at Vancouver’s award-winning Hawksworth Restaurant and even at Atelier Crenn, a three Michelin-starred restaurant in San Francisco.
Bar Lupulus’s Chef Justin Champagne
The best of his items I’ve had at two recent dinners at Lupulus were artful, novel creations, complex but thoughtfully so, lovely to look at and very tasty. Some dishes were even a little perplexing, although in a good way.
I’ve had comparable fare, and especially umami-rich dishes that take advantage of au courant fermented ingredients, during some recent meals in Montreal, at some much-admired restaurants. I like Champagne’s food more.
You don’t have to go all in at Lupulus with its most experimental dishes. For example, the three charcuterie items I’ve tried — citrus-cured salmon gravlax with cultured cream and dill, wild boar rillettes and rabbit liver mousse with a foie gras cap and pistachios — were more conventional marvels of preserved meatiness and richness, offset by precisely optimized accompaniments including pickled butternut squash, pearl onion and mustard seeds, tomatillo jam and confit chayote. I can’t recall having had a more enjoyable charcuterie board, and it left us feeling we were in good hands and ready for more outré eating.
Charcuterie at Bar Lupulus
From the “raw bar” section of Lupulus’s dinner menu, we were wowed by a “soppressata” preparation of Acadian sturgeon ($18), which Champagne had brined and hot-smoked to toothsomeness. Garlic scape aioli, crispy chicken skin, dulse, chayote and Acadian caviar brought additional wonders to the plate.
Just as impressive was a carpaccio of oak-brined, grass-fed beef ($15) that beguiled us with its uniqueness savouriness, amped up by nori mayo and foie gras-spiked caramel corn.
Oak-brined carpaccio at Bar Lupulus
Of three eye-catching pastas, my favourite, due to its umami heft, was the jet-black “carbon” capellini ($18) with chili-brined roe, pickled cauliflower, arugula and charred eggplant purée. The dulse farfalle ($16) bolstered with fennel, patty pan squash, exotic mushrooms and a crumble perked by lacto-fermented vegetables, also had much to offer. A friend who had the wheatgrass pappardelle with an aerated tomato sauce and smoked confit rabbit leg ($18) enjoyed it, but thought other plates provided more excitement.
Carbon Capellini at Bar Lupulus
Dulse farfalle at Bar Lupulus
Wheatgrass pappardelle at Bar Lupulus
Indeed, if I had to compare Lupulus’s pastas with its mains, I’d say spend the extra $10 or so and go for the deluxe culinary thrills.
Champagne marinates guinea fowl in koji rice — cooked rice that’s been inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae mold, which is known as koji in Japan and which can be used as a starter for the fermentation of soy sauce, miso and other food products. The multi-day marinade boosts the funky flavour of the poultry, much as a steak is transformed by dry-aging. For his dish ($30), Champagne presented the bird’s breast tender and crisp-skinned, while the dark meat was fashioned into a deep-fried croquette. The rest of the plate brimmed with treats, most of all a saucy, umami-rich wheatberry risotto garnished with snails and truffled cheese.
Guinea fowl with wheatberry risotto at Bar Lupulus
The chef asks customers for a little leap of faith with his Arctic char ($26), which in lieu of the usual pan-fry is brined and cooked sous-vide at 46 C for 10 minutes. The fillet’s texture was unexpected, but also rich and buttery.
Sous-vide Arctic char at Bar Lupulus
A chunk of beef cheek ($28) was pressure-cooked to become appealingly tender and topped with a blend of sunflower seeds and spices, while the plate’s ancillaries — sumac gnocchi, crisp strips of salsify, a vivid smear of beet and habañero purée, pistachio chimichurri — were all on point.
Beef cheek, sumac gnocchi, salsify, pistachio chimichurri and beet and habañero purée at Bar Lupulus
Vegetarians need not feel shunned at Lupulus. For a remarkable meat-free dish, Champagne bakes sunchokes in shells of espresso grounds, hemp seeds and salt and then crisps up the shelled tubers in the pan. Other sunchokes are cooked with stout and puréed, while even more sunchokes become chips that are deep-fried and then dehydrated. The sunchoke dish ($22) is rounded out with orange-infused Israeli couscous, honey mushrooms and more on a bed of caramelized onion “leather.”
Sunchoke main course at Bar Lupulus
Desserts by Champagne maintained a similar sophistication, even as they comforted. Inside his chocolate olive oil cake ($10), the chef hid pandan meringue for a tropical surprise, while the cake was topped with a carrot sorbet that thanks to a koji component also had a bit of a fermented kick.
Chocolate olive oil cake with carrot sorbet at Bar Lupulus
Meanwhile, sous-vide chamomile cheesecake ($9) was gloriously light and dusted with lime leaf sugar, and served on a tonka bean cake.
Chamomile cheesecake with tonka bean cake at Bar Lupulus
Now, you can enjoy the dishes at Lupulus without knowing their backstories. But if you want to be fully informed of all the intricacies, Lupulus’s leather-aproned servers, in addition to being attentive and personable, know how Champagne’s dishes are made and can fill you in.
Ambience-wise Lupulus remains a welcoming, brick-walled space of cushy banquettes and saloon lighting, where a bank of more than 20 taps reminds guests that exotic beers rule. My only gripe, which applies to other restaurants, too, is that its low-lighting in the evening makes it harder to appreciate the beauty of the food.
I did bring a friend who has a decided aversion to hipsters and hipsterism and he needed to get over the very notion of “lacto-fermented veg crumble,” among other things. If you feel the same way, do check that prejudice. It’s worth getting onboard with Champagne’s food, not for “I liked it before it was cool” bragging rights, but because it’s so good.