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Fraser Cafe

Posted on July 27th, 2008
Review date: 2008-07-27

Simon Fraser (not the 19th Century explorer but the chef and new restaurateur, late of Domus, Café Henry Burger, Black Tomato, among others) and his brother Ross (previously, Domus, Beckta, New York City's Café Boulud, Michael Stadlanter's Eigensinn Farms, among others) have joined forces, converting a little burger joint into a cosy neighbourhood restaurant of twenty-seven seats called, simply, Fraser Café.

As the mother of brothers, I find two things interesting about this coalition. The first is that the Fraser boys work side by side in a very teensy space with sharp knives, heavy pots and so on and they both clearly appear to be perfectly sound of body. (Our table was close enough to the kitchen I could count each bead of sweat.) The other is that they actually seem to like each other. Or at least they put on a very good show for the paying public.

If the fraternal urge to bash each other ever surfaces, I should think the open kitchen provides a strong deterrent. Clever boys.

143 Putman was the original location of The Works, an Ottawa hamburger restaurant, now a chain of five. It was then, is still, and will in all probability forever be, a small, cramped, and endearingly cluttered space. The Frasers have opened things up as much as they can, rimming the square with a bench of purple (matching the potted purple shiso on the pale wood tables) tossing in some lime-green sploshes and keeping the rest of the space clean and white. Kitchen utensils - whisks, sieves, ladles - hang above the galley window. It's a fun, boisterously busy place. Between the chatty trio perched at the polished cement bar, the stud on the Food Network telling us how to grill eggplant, the sounds of the chefs toiling away in the fully exposed kitchen, and the music - which at times seems more suited to the young bros than their Boomer patrons - it's a happening little place.

So very happening you can't get a table. I tried without luck to book four times with those Frasers. Once, in desperation, and because my summer break was approaching, I just showed up, to find the place closed for a private function. (I had, by the way, a stunningly delicious meal across the street and down the way at the near-empty Ambiente… but I digress.)

But luck was with me in late June, and I squeezed into the then six week old Fraser Café for a very fine meal of oysters and quail, scallops and bass. The Frasers have carefully constructed their menu to meet the limitations of a tiny open kitchen and to capture the progress of summer in its weekly revisions. It is mostly food unspun, devoid of frou frou; not meant to wow so much as to well and truly please.

Which isn't to say there weren't some wow moments. In between the more ordinary starters - the day's soup, a tomato salad with dabs of feta and grilled bread, local greens with a cucumber vinaigrette - is a little quail, glossy skinned and moist fleshed, the flavour delicate, delicious, served with a few tempura vegetables and very good roasted fingerling potatoes. (This ate more like a small main dish than a starter. I should think lacquered quail and asparagus soup would make a happy, affordable meal here.)

Rare strips of beef have a dark, sweet crust, animated with a Korean barbecue sauce, served over thin soba noodles, with roasted peppers, asparagus, red onion. Sea scallops are so very good, expertly prepared, with a Nicoise-like side of olives, tomato, potato, and avocado, and with a gentle lemon dressing. There is a 'kitchen's choice' main dish which you order blind. It turned out to be the standout. A wild caught striped bass on a bed of snow crab, the delicate fish and the rich crab boosted with a smoky sauce of charred tomato and paprika, the elements all mingling beautifully.

For dessert, a fresh strawberry crisp with in house ice cream and a deeply delicious chocolate pie.

There is decent choice of wines by the bottle, glass and half litre and there is a selection of local beer.

If the Fraser Café is in your neighbourhood, you should go and go often.

Cuisine: Canadian
Cost: $$$: Starters, $2.50 to $13; main dishes, $17 to $25

Hours: Lunch/brunch, Tuesday to Sunday; dinner, Tuesday to Sunday
Features: Late dining, Patio dining, Wine list worth noting, Vegetarian options.
Accessibility: easy access into restaurant, but space is small, a.

143 Putman Avenue, Ottawa, ON
613-749-1444
website

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Two Markets, two markets

Posted on July 13th, 2008

I’ve been dodging chefs, doing some fancy undercover work, at the inaugural “Chefs’ Hour” at The Ottawa Farmers’ Market.  It had been my plan to see who showed up between 2 and 3 last Thursday afternoon – the hour during which chefs were given front of the line treatment. I was going to see which farmers they visited, who they chatted with, what they bought and from whom they bought, and then go dine at their restaurants to see what they were going to create with that which they had bought. Clever eh?

But the last part of the plan backfired, and so I cannot report on what Matt Carmichael (Restaurant E18hteen, Social) was planning to do with all those zucchinis, or what John Taylor (Domus) with all that elk. While trailing them, and others who came (Beckta chef Mike Moffatt, NAC chef Tim Wasylko, among others) I bought so much myself, I was left with no choice but to go home and make supper.

This staying home and cooking nonsense has been a difficulty of mine since Mother’s Day weekend, when the farmers’ markets opened. I now bounce out of bed on the weekends, grab some bags, a kid, a dog, a husband, and head to St Paul’s University on Saturdays, to Lansdowne on Sundays. I wander the stalls, chat with bee farmers and strawberry pickers, elk ranchers and bread bakers, and come home with bags bulging, wallet depleted, a fridge full of material I then have to face, and a big silly grin on my face.

Last weekend, breakfast was a spiced chicken burrito at Zucante’s. Mid morning snack was a smoked bison sausage from Pykeview Meadows on sourdough bread from Bread & Sons Bakery, and dinner were rib eyes from Fitzroy Farmers, with beets and salad greens from Jambican Studio Gardens, fresh peas from Limeydale Farm (with a drizzle of the coriander-mint chutney from Emerald Bakery) and strawberry love tarts with rhubarb compote from Four Sisters Food.

Last Thursday supper: peas with garlic scapes, elk burgers, strawberries from Abby Hill Farms, with chocolate cookies from Art-is-in-Bakery.

If it’s grown, reared, smoked, pickled, fired, sewed, designed, caught, collected, foraged, brewed or baked by folk who live and work roughly within a one hundred kilometre radius of the Greater Ottawa Area, it’s fair game at either the Main Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, or the much bigger Ottawa Farmers’ Market on Sundays (and now on Thursday afternoons from 2-7). Both these markets insist on particular criteria: goods must come from a defined local area; and they must be grown, reared, processed or caught by the stallholder.

There are immeasurable benefits to this sort of face-to-face buying and selling.  Plus there’s an energy, a social buzz, a pioneering spirit at these markets that’s impossible to put a price on.

These markets are in their infancy. They are makeshift, established in parking lots, under rows of tents, at the mercy of the elements, birthed by people with vision and commitment. They are vitally important, and deserving of our support as they grow and evolve into something more permanent.

So go. Go with kids, your dog, a hat, maybe a raincoat. Bring some reusable bags and some cold hard cash. But do go. You are buying, directly from the source, the freshest, most flavourful, most local produce possible, and in doing that, you are supporting your home community and economy and helping the environment by reducing food-miles.

Ottawa is the richer for these places.

PLACES LIKE…
From the Main Farmers’ Market (Open every Saturday until September 27, from 9 am to 2 pm on the grounds of Saint Paul University. See www.sustainablelivingottawaeast.googlepages.com)

  • Jambican Studio Gardens (Colin Samuels and his nieces) sell me bunches of Easter egg radishes and promise me raspberries in July.
  • Cora and John Beking of Bekings Poultry have great eggs. www.bekingseggs.com

  • Limeydale farms on NCC property and when not at the market, sells at a summer stand at Hawthorne and Hunt Club. Their main product is sweet corn in season, but right now, they have the sweetest peas for sale.

  • Terre a Terre Farms near Montebello, and have been a certified organic farm since 1988. Elise Charette sells me salad stuff, including mizuna, beet greens and arugula

From the Ottawa Farmers’ Market (Open every Sunday until October 26, from 8 am to 3 pm and Thursdays from 2 pm to 7 pm.  See www.ottawafarmersmarket.ca for details)

  • Neil Family Organics uses the natural pectin in apples to thicken her jams and jellies. We stock up on rhubarb-raspberry and buy a jar of her “curry in a hurry” sauce to throw on chicken one of these nights.

  • Ottawa Valley Honey. Mike Kositsin, Arnprior beekeeper and honey producer. Trained by ninety-year-old grandfather. Russian by name, Rasputin by hair style. A chronic grinner, Mike explains that he has 80 colonies and no website, that he gets stung “all the time”, that honey is made from just two things, flowers and bees (or, more specifically, the nectar of one and the enzyme of the other) and that his job is to take out the “bee bits” (antennae, wings, legs) through a series of screen filters. That nothing is added to what he takes from his hives. We stock up on basswood and wild flower honey.
  • Four Sisters (“Healthy Food that doesn’t taste like Dirt”) are indeed four sisters who make, other than those terrific strawberry love tarts, a wicked curry and smoked-paprika hummus.
  • Art-is-in-Bakery Bread has a line up 20 minutes long at noon on Sunday. Its breads and buns and cookies are fantastic, and Ottawa clearly knows it.
  • Bread and Sons Bakery does not enjoy the same crowd, but its breads are also excellent. Buy some and compare!

Filed under: Travels by Anne - No Comments →

Chez Fatima

Posted on July 13th, 2008
Review date: 2008-07-13

As you walk through the front door of this colourful, cluttered restaurant, you're welcomed by jolly souk music, the scent of cinnamon and, if you're lucky, by Fatima herself.

Though my first visit to Chez Fatima was Fatima-less. In fact, the first thing out of my server's mouth was an apology. "Je suis desolé…" Fatima was on holiday, home to Morocco.

He seemed concerned we might walk out the door. Why we'd do that seemed to me mighty curious. We were hungry, the room smelled good, the patio doors were open, the breeze was gentle and there were North African wines on the list. We weren't going anywhere. Besides, he was no slouch. And what was the big deal about Fatima anyway?

My second visit, two weeks later, we meet her. Within minutes his apology made sense. Fatima walks around the room like a mother hen, her apron stained with a hard day's work, her long black hair tied up in a wonky scarf. She is warm, gracious and genuine. We relax under her ministrations - and under those of the bottle of Domaine du Sahari, vin rouge du Maroc she has left on the table. "Drink how much you like, I'll charge you later."

Moroccan olives arrive smeared in a pungent paste, along with a basket of bread - warm, chewy, anise-scented, and exceptionally good. It is the first good thing of many to come.

If you have yet to experience what happens when a lamb has lied down with a preserved lemon for a few hours, Fatima's place is a tasty introduction. Or maybe try the harissa (Morocco's national soup), the harira (Morocco's fiery condiment) or the pastilla (a North African sugar-cinnamon-with-poultry delicacy).

The mix of flavours in Moroccan cuisine comes from a mish mash of many cultures over many centuries - Arabic, Berber, Saharan, Spanish, Turkish, Sephardic Jewish. Chez Fatima does a good job of presenting this rich cultural blend.

After olives, comes soup - harissa or lentil - and pasty treats like that festive pastilla. Prepared for one or for two, it unites shredded chicken with crushed almonds, fresh mint, and aromatic spices. Moistened with an egg custard, the concoction is wrapped in phyllo dough, baked brown, oozing butter, and served with a sprinkling of sugar- cinnamon. It is very sweet, and not to everyone's taste (though it works on mine). Roasted, mashed eggplant mixed with parsley, tomato and chilies is an unsweet starter that might appeal to those not ready for the pastilla. Mussels in good condition hang out in a charmoula sauce - with onions, tomatoes, preserved lemon, coriander.

The main menu is split into the classics - tagines, couscous, grills. The vegetarian couscous teams vegetables and chickpeas; the fish tagine combines striped bass with more of that good charmoula sauce. The rich stew that unites a lamb shank with prunes, apples, dried figs, raisins, and roasted almonds is sweet and fragrant of cinnamon, ginger and orange. Coriander seed, green olives, mushrooms, squash and preserved lemon is the other - and wildly different - treatment of lamb. The brochette Royale brings lamb, chicken, kafta (meatballs), prawns and merguez sausage together on one long skewer, with a side dish of couscous topped with caramelized onion, zucchini, squash and potato.

Harissa, the fire-red condiment made from chili peppers, salt and a little oil, comes in a little dish alongside. Proceed with caution.

Briwate (phyllo pastry packed with sweet almond paste) and chabakia (honey-soaked sesame biscuits) arrive for dessert, along with fresh mint tea. Sugar is served on the side of the tea, which may not be authentic Moroccan-style, but we are grateful nonetheless.

On a Friday night at Fatima's, our service is interrupted for twenty minutes by a stunningly beautiful belly dancer, snaking her way through an intoxicating routine.

As we leave Fatima's place, my 19-year-old son tells me Moroccan might be his favourite cuisine.

Cuisine: Cafe
Cost: $$: Starters, $5 to $8; main dishes, $12 to $18

Hours: lunch, Monday to Friday; dinner, Monday to Saturday
Features: Patio dining, Vegetarian options.
Accessibility: A small step – more a bump – into restaurant;.

103 Promenade du Portage, Gatineau, Quebec
819-771-7568

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