Looking back at my eighth year of reviewing restaurants, I see a 2019 that was filled with an even bigger glut than usual of great dishes.
That’s due to a banner year of especially noteworthy new restaurants, serving indulgences ranging from Farinella’s Roman-bakery-style pizza by the slice to THRU’s grand and unique spurge of 50 or so bite-sized delicacies.
No wonder my annual list of favourites feels a little more diverse this time out, from sea urchin to take-out pasta, from fancy and fantastic dishes featuring rabbit to beef brisket smoked low-and-slow.
Newcomers such as Alice, chef Briana Kim’s modernist vegetable-based restaurant, chef Dominique Dufour’s highly personal and all-Canadian spot Gray Jay Hospitality and many others delivered. So, too, did more established eateries such as Bar Lupulus, Fauna Food + Bar and Supply and Demand, which I thought merited revisiting after some years.
Before the kudos, a few caveats are in order. The picks below are not the best in their categories bar none in the Ottawa area. They’re just faves compiled after more than 100 meals at more than 50 eateries in 2019. Nor are they wholesale endorsements of all the dishes at the restaurants that made them. And while some dishes can still be had, others were seasonal or short-run creations.
Foodies might notice one conspicuous absence on my list, namely anything from THRU, chef Marc Lepine’s fabulously creative six-seat restaurant-within-a-restaurant on the second floor of his much-lauded, cutting-edge place Atelier.
I’m afraid my notes about the barrage of items we had at THRU in May are less than clear. But in any event, the experience there was not about any single wow-inducing dish. Rather, it was more like a steady succession of outre treats, the point of which was something like gourmet overload in the best possible way.
But if THRU provided my meal of the year in Ottawa, the individual dishes below nonetheless satisfied mightily.
Best appetizer
At Gitanes in October, freshly shelled uni sourced from Rimouski, Que. were potently and pristinely flavourful, as rich and briny as any sea urchin I’ve had and much, much better than the occasional iodine-y specimen. The impeccable ingredient from Gitanes’ raw bar was bolstered by miniature miso-buttered English muffins and uni mayo, which by itself was some kind of delicious.
Honourable mention
: tempura soft-shell crab at Fauna Food + Bar
Best salad
In September, the salad served at Alice during its tasting-menu dinner was as elegant and visually striking as it was tasty and novel. Assorted greens from Juniper Farms were arranged in a mini-bouquet, topped with toasted flaxseed and other small, good things and offset with a ring of kohlrabi filled with sea buckthorn jelly. The salad’s revelatory dressing was house-made fermented almond milk, added table-side.
Honourable mention
: “spring has sprung” salad at Le St Laurent
Best spicy dish
In April, the most compelling of several spicy reasons to seek out NH 44 in an east-end Ottawa industrial park was chef-owner Teegaavarapu
Sarath Mohan‘s Hyderabadi chicken dum biryani, a vibrant dish that tucked tender, marinated chicken legs into boldly flavoured, fresh and fluffy basmati rice. While the dish can be a half-heartedly made letdown elsewhere, at NH 44, it was an instant party.
Honourable mention
: chili chicken at Harbin Restaurant
Best pasta
In December, the lasagna at the no-frills take-out and lunch spot Bella’s Boys on Greenbank Road was served on a paper plate. But it was truly superior, with fresh, tender flat noodles and substantial, zesty, meaty sauce that provided bite after bite of perfect comfort.
Honourable mentions: Braised beef caramele with red wine, blue cheese and gooseberries at Supply and Demand, pâte à choux gnocchi at Grunt
Best sandwich
If there’s a signature dish at Grunt, the cosy eatery on a Mechanicsville side street, it’s the roast porchetta sandwich, which fortunately is a staple on the frequently changing menu. While chef-owner Jason McLelland has sometimes tinkered with his pork belly treat since I tried it in the spring, his original iteration, which evokes an English Sunday dinner with Yorkshire pudding, mushroom demi-glace, crushed root vegetables and apple sauce, is hard to beat.
Honourable mention
: chicken parm at Bella’s Boys
Best soup
The flashiest items at J:unique Kitchen in Centretown are the over-the-top “Vancouver-style” sushi rolls, some of which arrive at your table with flaming garnishes. But chef-owner James Park’s tonkotsu ramen also rewarded. Its broth was hefty and clean, its noodles had some spring, and its pork belly and generous garnishes had been prepared with evident care.
Honourable mention
: boat noodle soup at Nana Thai
Best pizza
Tie: Farinella’s potato pizza, flecked with rosemary and markedly peppery, stood out among the constantly changing offerings from the Little Italy eatery that makes excellent, oven-fresh, foccacia-like pizza. Just as good but entirely different was the quintessentially Neapolitan margherita pizza at Pizza All’Antica in Manotick.
Best fish
Rare is the Thai restaurant in Ottawa that departs from the tried-and-true dishes that North Americans know and love. But don’t let that dissuade you from trying the pla neung manao at Nana Thai on Preston Street. The dish consisted of a steamed whole tilapia, opened like a book and dressed with a thrilling mix of chilies, garlic and lime. The dish’s bright savoury broth was an appealing bonus.
Honourable mention
: fillet of Atlantic cod with olive oil-poached fingerling potatoes, broad beans, horseradish and hollandaise sauce at Supply and Demand
Best poultry
At Bar Lupulus this past spring, guinea fowl that received an esoteric multi-day marinade in koji rice (cooked rice that’s been inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae mold) gained new, funky flavour before an expert preparation. Chef Justin Champagne presented the bird’s breast tender and crisp-skinned, while its dark meat was fashioned into a deep-fried croquette. The rest of the plate brimmed with treats, including saucy, umami-rich wheatberry risotto garnished with snails and truffled cheese.
Honourable mention
: flash-fried duck with broccolini, chanterelles, corn, morcilla and blueberry jus at Fauna Food + Bar
Best rabbit
At Le St Laurent, chef Ryan Edwards combined prosciutto-wrapped, mushroom-stuffed medallions of rabbit with a crisp croquette of succulent braised leg meat, bolstered by lemon aioli or offset by some wild garlic. Pickled and roasted carrots rounded out the dish.
Honourable mention
: rabbit dumplings with bone broth at Gray Jay
Best red meat
At Moe’s BBQ in a South Keys mall, pitmaster Mobeen Butt turns out formidable southern-style smoked meats, despite never having tasted the food that inspired him. Why? Because Butt’s food is halal, while typical U.S. barbecue never follows that stricture. Nonetheless, Butt’s smoked brisket was a thing of beauty, moist, thick-cut and beef-forward in flavour rather than heavily spiced or salted.
Honourable mention
: Oak-brined carpaccio with nori mayo and foie gras-spiked caramel corn at Bar Lupulus
Best Dessert
Tie: I used to say Ottawa restaurants frequently fizzle when it comes to dessert. But this year, some ravishing, sophisticated creations ended a few of my meals. At Bar Lupulus, there was chocolate olive oil cake with pandan meringue inside, plus carrot sorbet with special fermented zip. At Alice, the kitchen’s riff on an ice cream sandwich placed a quenelle of fermented rice-based “ice cream” between shards of hyper-crisp oat cake, buttressed by berries in a charred pine cone syrup. At Gray Jay, a startling dessert paired a molten (but not overly sweet) maple cake with a semifreddo made with sugar and dehydrated chanterelles and topped with mushroom morsels. Surprising? Yes, but also very good.
The restaurants
Alice, 40 Adeline St.,
alicerestaurant.ca
Bar Lupulus, 1242 Wellington St. W.,
barlupulus.ca
Bella’s Boys, 250 Greenbank Rd., Unit 12,
bellas.ca
Farinella, 492 Rochester St.,
farinellaeats.com
Fauna Food + Bar, 425 Bank St.,
faunaottawa.ca
Gitanes, 361 Elgin St.,
gitanes.co
Gray Jay Hospitality, 300 Preston St.,
grayjayhospitality.ca
Grunt, 173 Hinchey St.,
instagram.com/gruntottawa
J:unique Kitchen,
381 Cooper St
.,
instagram.com/juniquekitchen
Le St Laurent, 460 St. Laurent Blvd.,
lestlaurent.ca
Moe’s BBQ, 2446 Bank St.,
moesbbq.ca
Nana Thai, 121 Preston St.,
nanacuisine.ca
NH 44, 2450 Lancaster Rd., Unit 35,
nh44ottawa.com
Pizza All’Antica, 5527 Manotick Main St.,
pizzaallantica.ca
Supply and Demand, 1335 Wellington St. W.,
supplyanddemandfoods.ca
THRU, 540 Rochester St.,
thru.tickit.ca