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The Branch Restaurant Kemptville, ON

Tomme de Gaston and Bleu de Sophie are two handcrafted sheep's milk cheeses from the Oxford Mills Creamery that grace the Branch Restaurant's 'Aunty's Platter', and they are lovely. Fleshing out the plate is a wedge of Harmony Organic Dairy brie, brown bread and artisan crackers, rolls of house cured prosciutto, Branch-made mustard and fruit chutney, a little pot of marinated olives, a few nuts, a small bunch of Concord grapes and the last five raspberries of the season, dark and small and deeply concentrated. If Aunty is in fact responsible for this fine plate of fine food, we are grateful to her.

It was a promising introduction to The Branch Restaurant, a buzzy bar-cum-gastropub-cum-art gallery-cum-music hall housed in a circa-1860 stone building of pressed tin ceilings and local art-decked tall walls. Tables are small and scrubbed, candled and flowered, and a rounded bar seems a popular place. The Branch is owned by two couples: our youthful server, Brent Kelaher, his wife Jennifer, and Texas-born Branch chef Bruce Enloe with his Ottawa-born wife Nicole LeBlanc. Staff and diners all appear to be friends and The Branch seems a place to gather. Carver's young son pads about the place, the after supper crowd gathers at the bar for a pint and a plate of spaghetti (yes, called spaghetti, not pasta Bolognese, and second helpings are on the house).

The atmosphere may be informal, but the food is accomplished. The menu changes regularly, and delivers fresh, unfussy, made-from-scratch, seasonal food. Main courses are an eclectic lot and seem designed to cover most of the bases, from the endless spaghetti to enchiladas fashioned with house smoked tofu in a mole sauce. There's a burger and a steak (pasture-raised beef comes from Ontario's Kerr Farms) plus Moroccan salmon, chicken with roasted squash, a Thai shrimp curry and Cajun crusted tempeh with walnut rice (to which you may add the house-smoked brisket). Suggestions for wine and beer pairings accompany each dish.

A mushroom and lentil soup is a solid beginning. The burger promises to be thick and juicy and doesn't stretch the truth, and the wild salmon stands up to the onslaught of strong flavours - a berber spice mix (dried chilies, ginger, pepper, cumin, coriander, cardamom, cloves…) and a North African-style peanut-tomato curry sauce - remarkably well.

It's mostly all good, from the bread to the crème caramel. Quibbles? One or two: If Chef Enloe were less enamoured with nutmeg and cloves I'd be happier - their pungent flavour permeates too much. Why a restaurant so publicly concerned with the local-organic-seasonal-sustainable would offer an October amuse featuring grapefruit seems a bit askew. And the rice that cradles the curry is crunchy. Other than these little things the Branch Restaurant is well worth swinging on.

Cuisine: Canadian
Cost: $$: Starters, $6 to $14; main dishes, mostly $13 to $22 (and up to $46 for a 12

Hours: Open: Lunch and dinner, Wednesday to Saturday, and for “Rubber Boots” Sunday brunch

Features: Vegetarian options.
Accessibility: Fully accessible.

15 Clothier St. E., Kemptville, ON
613-258-3737
website

Ballygiblins, Carleton Place

I read somewhere, some time ago, that a Carleton Place chef had struck up a 'you scratch my back' relationship with a pig farmer. All kitchen scraps go to slop the farmers' pigs, and chef puts some well-fed pork on plates at his restaurant. Then I heard news that Roger Weldon, chef of the grand-sounding Ballygiblins Restaurant and Pub in Carleton Place had been invited to attend Terra Madre in Turin this month. As far as I know, Roger Weldon is the only cook in the Ottawa-Gatineau region with an invitation to Slow Food International's biennial convention of the Terra Madre, where he'll be sharing classrooms with some of Canada's shiniest chefs.

So just who was this guy and what was this restaurant? After setting out to find out, I'd say he's someone to watch, and Ballygiblins - which has a stronger pub than parlour look about it - will be worth your exploring once he's back from Italy and has had some time to digest.

As it stands now, the Ballygiblins menu doesn't inspire much confidence. It is an odd blend of please-em-all pub grub (deep fried pickles/wings/zucchini, macho nachos, etc) with a side bar of sandwiches, burgers, mussels, ribs and seafood (fish and chips, mostly.) But the salmon is wild and the vegetables come from the Farmer's Market (and taste as much) and the bruschetta is loaded with fresh basil and gorgeous heirloom tomatoes. Local craft beer and onions flavour the mussels, and the homemade desserts are pretty good.

Tuck this one away for future reference. It will be interesting to taste Ballygiblins again after the international food community in Torino has left its mark. My hunch is that they'll be no more Peruvian asparagus on the early October menu.

Cuisine: Canadian
Cost: $$: Main dishes, $12 to $21

Hours: Open daily for lunch and dinner

Accessibility: Fully accessible.

151 Bridge Street, Carleton Place, ON
613-253-7400
website

Sam Jakes Inn, Merrickville, ON

As we live more and more in the era of the designer restaurant, it is tough to suppress my knee jerk impression that this dining room could use some sprucing up. Floral walls, pink and green, hotel issue carpet, yesteryear lighting (on full blast), a small electric fireplace (turned off) and cheap-looking laminated menus neither evoke the charm of this hundred and fifty year old stone mansion, nor impress with any modern minimalist two tone designered tastefulness. It is fine. That is all. Though someone, at the very least, might turn the lights down, switch the fire on, and maybe light a few candles.

But what's more than fine is the food. I had a solidly good dinner in the dining room of the Sam Jakes Inn after taking in a day of fall's loveliness in and around the pretty town of Merrickville.

And on this Thanksgiving Sunday, I guess I give thanks for all those restaurants that remain comfortably, reassuringly perhaps, fitted out in an 'if-it-ain't-broke' fashion. Though a few fixes here and there would go a long way to bringing me back.

Chef Thomas Riding is a Scot trained by a Swiss, with experience cooking in hunting lodges in the northern Highlands. We guessed he would know about fish and meat, and we were right. After a light, flavourful squash soup, we tucked into the house cured salmon gravlax - served over a cucumber and fennel slaw, with the admirable house bread - and a late-tomato salad, with long stretches of warm roast zucchini wrapped around a log of good goat cheese.

The menu offers main dishes of roast duck with fennel and ginger and a star anise duck jus, halibut in a saffron butter sauce and a Mariposa Farms chicken breast topped with the last of the corn salsa. But we ordered lamb and steak. Lamb, for the cumin roasted sweet potatoes, and the strip loin for the dark, much reduced 'Countryman's Wild Grape' jus and for the zucchini tarragon bread pudding that came with it. Roast vegetables (beets, sweet potatoes, parsnips) accompany the meat. Both were very fine.

In keeping with its local-first philosophy, expect an all Ontario wine list and a good selection of craft beers.

Cuisine: Canadian
Cost: $$$: Main dishes, $25 to $30

Hours: Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Accessibility: Fully accessible.

118 Main Street, Merrickville, ON
613-269-3711
website