1 Elgin
The former Le Café inside the National Arts Centre, 613 594-5127,
nac-cna.ca/en/1elgin
Open:
Tuesday to Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday
Prices:
starters $13 to $19, mains $28 to $42
Access:
steps down to entrance
For four decades, Le Café, the National Arts Centre’s restaurant, won over innumerable fans.
Its first chef, the late and revered Kurt Waldele, was a pioneer of elevated cuisine that celebrated Canada, years before waving our flag in the kitchen became common. With its unbeatable downtown location and view of the Rideau Canal, Le Café was a prime destination for locals and tourists alike.
That said, Le Café also had its detractors. In 2010, my predecessor Anne DesBrisay wrote: “For as many years as I’ve been writing about Ottawa restaurants” — which was 17 at the time — “I have found the food at the National Arts Centre’s dining room pretty so-what-ish … It seemed to me a restaurant stubbornly determined not to outshine the shows going on above its head.” I was of a similar mind in 2013, although DesBrisay and I were reviewing restaurants overseen by different chefs.
Since then, much has changed. In the summer of 2017, Kenton Leier came on board as the NAC’s executive chef after helming kitchens at some of Ottawa’s top downtown hotels.
In the summer of 2018, a first phase of renovations revamped the kitchen and brought in new custom-made tables and chairs, installed circular booths along its back wall, and changed the carpeting.
In early June this year, the restaurant closed for more renovations. The bar that had been near the entrance was moved to the middle of the dining room, cutting its long, narrow space in half. Just as dramatically, the ceiling has been modernized, swapping in a reflective surface broken up energetically by sleek bars of light.
The NAC also bid adieu to the Le Café name. I’m not sure I like the new name — 1 Elgin — more, but as a signal of change, it’s meaningful.
Most importantly, based on my visits to Le Café earlier this year and 1 Elgin last week, I can say that recent changes have done the restaurant a lot of good.
Last Friday, which was not a show night at the NAC, we liked the half-full room’s revitalized ambience. The centralized bar adds more buzz to the place. Over all, the room feels more of today, in line with the NAC’s overall renovation in recent years that coincided with Canada’s sesquicentennial and the centre’s 50th anniversary this year.
Most dishes we ordered from the menu of six appetizers, six mains and seven desserts were more well made, better presented and even more significant than what I’d eaten at the NAC both years ago and this spring, before Le Café closed.
The extra significance was due to the fact that Leier last month teamed up with Six Nations chef Rich Francis to design the menu. Francis is the first of four resident chefs at the NAC in 2019-20. His food debuted in mid-September, coinciding with the launch of the NAC’s new Indigenous Theatre, and will be offered at 1 Elgin until Nov. 13. Francis has set the bar high for the chefs that will have residencies next January, March and May to complete the NAC’s inaugural resident chefs program.
Francis’s input has added, to varying degrees, Indigenous touches or back stories to some menu dishes, and we leaned in that direction, passing on more conventional items such as beef tartare or beef tenderloin that might have been on Le Café’s menu.
Of three appetizers, we enjoyed most of all the “three sisters soup” ($13). While I’ve since read that three sisters soup usually includes corn, beans and squash, our soup was a hearty, homey potato-fennel soup, enlivened by tender shreds of smoked duck, black olive tapenade and some hidden but zippy candied lemon zest.
Anishinaabe wild rice and Tuscarora corn salad ($ 15) was simple but refined, with ribbons of lightly pickled root veg and a creamy, intriguing vinaigrette adding breadth to the dish.
“Medicine-cured salmon” ($19) was the night’s only dish that felt like a bit of a letdown. Its slab of fish was pleasant and restrained of flavour, but its greens were more pedestrian.
Also, when we asked our server why the dish was “medicine-cured,” his answer was more improvised than informed. He returned later to tell us that the salmon had been cured with juniper and beet juice, which was nice to know, but still didn’t answer the question.
On the whole, our servers that night were friendly, attentive and engaged. But they could also have been more knowledgeable about dishes that deserved a bit of explanation and detailed touting.
Main courses were satisfying and attractively plated.
My wife’s Arctic char ($29) was the largest piece of that fish I’d ever seen on a plate, and it was appealingly crisp-skinned and succulent. Wild rice and steel-cut oat risotto struck a comforting note and well-roasted chunky vegetables (a feature on every plate) added bulk and visual appeal.
Elk osso buco ($42) was massive, meaty and duskily-flavoured, and its roasted grapes were a nice accent. However, the marrowbone on the plate was seemingly more for show than enjoyment, as its marrow was dry and didn’t provide the requisite indulgent note.
Pan-seared and impeccably seasoned duck breast ($32) could not have been improved upon. Our table’s vegan was pleased with a colourful mushroom-based main ($28), supported by surprisingly palatable seitan “prosciutto,” a saffron coconut sauce and pumpkin purée.
Because we let 1 Elgin know in advance about birthday celebrants at our table, several appropriately decorated desserts were on the house. Tops was the dark chocolate tart ($12), especially with its sweet and grassy dollop of sweetgrass ice cream. Maple pumpkin spice cake ($11) did less for us.
Since we were told when we arrived about those free desserts, we allocated that part of the budget on house cocktails ($11) that used Canadian gin and were suitably complex and stiff. Some craft beers are on tap, and the wine list is lengthy, with most bottles in the $40 to $80 range and many wines available by the glass in five- and eight-ounce pours. To support the menu by Francis and Leier, 1 Elgin is also offering wines from Okanagan Valley’s NK’MIP Cellars, Canada’s first Indigenous winery, although the menu consistently refers to “MK’MIP Cellars.”
I won’t dwell on the meals I had at Le Café this spring, except to say I liked them less because they seemed to have been prepared with less attentiveness and were more old-fashioned in terms of taste and appearance. Better dishes included a veal chop special and the beef tenderloin tartare, and the latter is still on the latest menu.
Soon after Leier was hired, he told this newspaper he wanted to raise the level of the food at the NAC’s restaurant, which had received mixed reviews online.
“The goal is to be a great restaurant, not an average one,” he said. “It won’t happen overnight, but the effort will be there.” Consistency, he said, was an issue, especially given that on show nights, 150 to 200 guests come for a quick meal before a Southam Hall concert.
Leier is on the right track, I think, with 1 Elgin’s freshened surroundings and the best fare that he and Francis presented persuasively winning us over. We’ll hope that the executive chef and future resident chefs keep up the good work.