Stofa
1356 Wellington St. W., 613-722-6555,
stofarestaurant.com
,
stofa-homestyle.myshopify.com
Open:
Dining room closed due to COVID-19, open Friday, Saturday, Sunday for pickup and delivery
Prices:
$125 plus tax for a dinner for four, $5 or more for delivery, depending on distance, through Love Local Delivery
One of the best dishes I had last fall, back when we were able to gather in droves and eat elaborate creations elbow-to-elbow at public events, was a bowl that contained a Dungeness crab, pork and truffle soup dumpling in a uniquely savoury corn chowder.
The talented chef responsible was Jason Sawision of Stofa Restaurant on Wellington Street West, and his creation was his entry at last year’s Ottawa edition of Canada’s Great Kitchen Party, a qualifying event for this year’s Canadian Culinary Championships at the Shaw Centre.
All of this nostalgia for pre-pandemic gastronomy is making me a little teary. But its purpose is to explain the high hopes I had for the food that Sawision now prepares out of Stofa on weekends for purchasers of the fine-dining restaurant’s take-home dinners for four.
After all, Stofa, which opened in the fall of 2017, is one of four Ottawa restaurants that last year got a nod from Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants magazine. But Sawision’s kitchen is the only one of those four that, following the virus-mandated closure of its dining room, has turned to selling takeout fare to help pay the bills and weather the COVID-19 crisis.
Sawision has been in the takeout business for about a month, offering a different menu each weekend. His initiative’s catchy title — “Stofa-on-the-Sofa Family Meal” — hints that his fare is less haute cuisine than what you would have enjoyed at the restaurant. But we still found refinement as well as deliciousness in the containers that held our preferred courses.
Also, of all take-home food I’ve had in the last month, Stofa’s dinner was designed with the greatest awareness of the degradation that can befall hot-from-the-kitchen food as it journeys to someone’s kitchen table. Sawision went around that problem, offering a dinner that included from-the-fridge items meant to be served cold, at room temperature or reheated. Included with dinner were detailed instructions for reheating.
Last week’s Stofa was heavy on the Asian influences, as was Sawision’s entry in last fall’s Kitchen Party event, and sometimes it was the tiny condiment container that came with a course that made it a memorable winner.
To start, we had chips and salsa and egg rolls. How did Sawision riff on these humble staples?
The chips were impeccable, addictively good taro chips and the Thai salsa had an alluring savouriness that said come and get me, perhaps due to a splash of fish sauce. The pork and cabbage egg rolls were lean and satisfying, although I have to give a shoutout to the S&G Fries and Burgers chip stand on Carling Avenue for making what I think are Ottawa’s top egg rolls.
Sawision’s coconut lemongrass soup was a mellow vegetarian version of a comforting Thai dish, with toothsome slices of mushroom, chunks of potato and pieces of baby corn swimming in a rich, aromatic broth. Baby bok choy came with a container of dynamite ginger-scallion sauce, a go-to Chinese condiment that makes everything from poached chicken to braised pork to salmon to rice taste better.
More ordinary were the watercress salad with ponzu dressing and ginger, soy and sesame soba noodles. The latter in particular needed a dressing with bigger flavours.
All was forgiven, though, thanks to Stofa’s grilled and chilled beef tenderloin, elevated by a complex and beguiling spice rub and bolstered by some yuzu mustard mayo.
The meal-ending lemon ricotta cake was itself a bit dense, but the raspberry cream on top was to die for.
Each Tuesday, Stofa posts its menus — which in the past have been centred around mains such as baby back ribs with cola barbecue sauce and roast chicken with piri piri sauce — on Instagram and its Shopify-powered website. The leftover-yielding dinners — which go for $125, seemingly the going rate in Ottawa for many upscale takeout dinners — frequently sell out. With good reason, I say.