In 2020, when Ottawa’s restaurants closed their dining rooms, switched to takeout, built patios, re-opened their dining rooms, closed them again and then re-opened them again, there was nonetheless one constant.
Despite the poundings they took from COVID-19, the restaurants still doled out delicious dishes just as worthy of year’s-end kudos as the memorable fare I’ve celebrated each December since 2012.
As you’ll see, some of my categories have changed this year — I’ve had to pivot a bit too, so to speak. But I will have to repeat some of my annual caveats. The picks below are not the best in their categories bar none in the Ottawa area. They’re my faves drawn from my eating exploits this past, and unprecedented, year. Nor should they be taken as wholesale endorsements of all the dishes at the restaurants that made them.
They may also no longer be available, especially given how transitory some things have been during the pandemic. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fondly recall them, and the pleasures they gave in a year when we too often needed our spirits lifted.
Best takeout dinner
After my Dining Out column pivoted this spring to Dining In, I was pleasantly surprised by the family and couple’s dinners I picked up from several restaurants, which themselves had out of necessity gotten into the takeout game during 2020’s first ban on indoor restaurant dining. The established restaurants Stofa, North & Navy and Absinthe Cafe won us over with simpler homier fare meant for home consumption.
The newcomer eatery Ayla’s Social Kitchen also impressed us with its lamb shanks and risotto. But my favourite takeout dinner was the elevated Middle Eastern feast from Fairouz Cafe, which made kebab-and-pita eating seem like a fresh and boldly flavoured experience.
Best tasting menu
Although my indoor dining was intermittent in 2020, I did enjoy several multi-course splurges. I even had two tasting-menu dinners at the ever-innovative Atelier — a “normal,” pre-pandemic, 12-course parade of surprises in January, and a seven-course “drive-in” dinner in May, for which I picked up courses from the restaurant’s front door and ate them in a nearby parking lot. If bang-for-bucks was the deciding factor, then Carben, in Hintonburg, would get the nod for its $80 tasting menu.
But I’ll give the newcomer Aiana, and its luxury-loving chef Raghav Chaudhary, the prize because sometimes I’m just a sucker for caviar, truffles and foie gras.
Best burger
This year saw a few burger businesses and pop-ups open, and I’m sure the thought of a public skittish about eating in dining rooms was in some cases a factor. Toronto-based The Burger’s Priest came to town. For a time, NeXT in Stittsville made “Dirty Burgers.” Gitanes on Elgin Street launched Gitanes Burger, a separate enterprise I’ve yet to try.
Aiana made me a mean Wagyu burger, and if you count sliders as burgers, then the Asian pulled pork sliders from Thr33’s Co. Snack Bar deserve a shoutout. But in all, my most satisfying burger was Shelby Burger’s onion-y double-patty smash burger.
Best sandwich
Kitchen Maroo, the tiny eatery on Gladstone Avenue that opened during the pandemic, made a bulgogi sandwich that redeems Asian-fusion cuisine all on its own.
Best pasta
I have to tip my hat to chef Adam Vettorel for the pastas we took away from his two restaurants, North & Navy in Centretown and Cantina Gia in the Glebe.
But the pasta dish I crave the most is the cavatelli with shrimp that emerged from chef Arup Jana’s kitchen at Brassica in Westboro in August.
Best pizza
Quite a few players entered Ottawa’s pizza space this year.
Tops for me were the wet-centred, Neapolitan-style ultra-fast pies from Pi Co., the Toronto-based franchise operation that came to Ottawa, and especially the pies from Heartbreakers Pizza — the mushroom pizza, sausage and fennel pizza and the pepperoni and jalapeno pizza finished with honey, to be specific.
Best kebabs
Having already complemented Fairouz Cafe’s chicken and beef kebabs, I want to equally laud the entirely different skewers of lamb, shrimp and short rib I had last summer at 98 La La Noodles in Lowertown.
Their spicy, cumin-y seasoning is an instant cure for the flavour-deprived.
Best amuse-bouche
If I were an oligarch, I would have the chef on my superyacht docked in the Cayman Islands prepare a steady supply of potato-chip cones filled with caviar or truffles, like the ones that launch Aiana’s tasting menu.
Best cookie
I created this category so I could mention the chocolate foie-gras macaron, which skews more savoury than sweet, that graces Aiana’s tasting menu.
Best soup
I’m torn. One one hand, there’s the refined squash soup from Aiana, and on the other there’s the beef noodle and mustard greens soup with fresh noodles at 98 La La Noodles.
The first soup is a young chef’s elevated epicurean fare, while the second is a proletarian Chinese staple, beautifully executed. They’re starkly different, and because it’s 2020, I refuse to choose.
Best red meat dish
Again, I see a tie. Arlo’s flank steak, bolstered by a highly herbal salsa verde, was oh-so-summery. But then, Gyubee’s all-you-can-eat meat-fest has to figure in here somewhere, even if we were doing the cooking on our table-mounted grill at the ByWard Market restaurant.
Best poultry dish
Yet another tie, but this time between two roasted chickens I brought home — the classically beautiful bird from Absinthe Cafe, and the jerk chicken from Baccanalle in Ottawa’s east end.
Best seafood dish
Too often, mussels make me think, “meh.” Vivaan’s mussels moilee in their creamy coconut-milk sauce were so luscious and bathed in flavour that they washed away my prejudice.
Best vegetarian dish
Chef Jamie Stunt excels at making simple ingredients strikingly delicious. This summer, he worked his magic on a kohlrabi salad that helped make our evening special on the patio of Arlo on Somerset Street West.
Best dessert
Despite, or perhaps because of, its humble roots, Vivaan’s fried bread and milk sauce really made us sit up and take notice.
Best spicy dish
There were many contenders, including the Hyderabadi chicken biryani from Vivaan, the dan dan noodles from 98 La La Noodles, the fried lamb from Bukhari on Carling Avenue and the Chongqing noodles at Hey Kitchen on Somerset Street West. But how could I not give the award to the spicy combo stir-fry from Chili Chili — the Somerset Street restaurant that advertises its predilection for heat in its name? (Its mapo tofu is also a must-have.)
