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When I first dined here three-plus years ago, Genji was something of a revelation. The sushi creations, the light, grease-free tempura, the crimped porky packages (gyoza), the slippery baked eggplant sweetly stuffed. I liked them. I liked the simple look of the restaurant, the almost ceremonial service provided by gracious women. I liked sitting at the sushi bar, chatting with the itamae, being handed treats.

We are not blessed with great Japanese restaurants in this town. Sure, I've enjoyed meals at many of them - late-night sushi cravings have been fixed from time to time - but none really wows. None steps outside the box, deviates from the what-you'd-expect hot menu (packaged up with miso soup and an iceberg salad) and except for a few designer maki rolls unique to that restaurant, Ottawa has yet to enjoy a truly innovative Japanese restaurant, where both the raw and cooked cuisines are real strengths.

But of the formulaic Japanese restaurants we do have, Genji was the best of the bunch.

Today, I can't parcel up quite the same enthusiasm. It's still nice enough; it's just not as notable. The service seems distracted, the welcome muted, even the sushi bar doesn't feel particularly friendly. The restaurant is beginning to look tired, the banquettes are stained, and there's a noise in the room, a whir of fans (heating/cooling?) that's bothersome. Sometimes music is played. Sometimes candles are lit and overhead lights turned down. And sometimes not.

A couple of expensive disappointments at Genji lately, coupled with clumsy service, have left me feeling let down. My disenchantment likely set in the moment I was handed my first amuse bouche. It was a tiny salad of strips of ersatz crab in what tasted like spiced up Thousand Island dressing. (I know all Japanese restaurants in this city use the fake stuff, but please don't call this red-dyed product crab, and don't show it off as a complimentary starter that's supposed to put me in the mood for dinner.) Other amuse offerings have included over-steamed, unseasoned edamame, and rounds of tired tasting potato in a spicy sauce.

Miso soup, delivered in a plastic bowl, is fine, nothing to complain about, yet nothing to write home about, and the house salad is a high-school arrangement of chopped iceberg lettuce with a too-sweet dressing. The nasu dengaku is roasted Chinese eggplant covered with a thick roof of too-sugary miso. Yakitori (skewered chicken) arrives dried out, unseasoned, with no grill flavour. The tempura is the usual stuff, properly crisp.

The sushi and sashimi selection at Genji remains long. And though I miss the wasabi dab between fish and rice in the nigiri (without which the sweet seasoning in the sticky rice seems out of balance) the combination of taste and texture in many of the rice snacks works well.

Main courses from the grill, however, are largely dull. The steak is thin and tough one visit and comes with the same-old dreary "seasonal" vegetables (in the heyday of field-ripened local vegetables, we still get those tasteless baby carrots?) The butterfish arrives dried out, and the sablefish, though deliciously tender, is so saturated with a one-dimensional miso marinade, it overwhelms the delicate fish.

Genji has a notable list of sake, both hot (1) and cold (nine, from $20 to $49 for 300 ml), a decent selection of Asian beer, as well as a commendable wine list (12 in all, all available by the glass).

Cuisine: Japanese - Sushi
Cost: $$$: Sushi/sashimi, $4 to $16; starters, $4.25 to $12; main dishes, $16 to $23 d

Hours: Open for lunch, Monday to Friday; dinner daily

Accessibility: Steps to entrance; washrooms downstairs.

175 Lisgar St., Ottawa, ON
613-236-2880
website

Zen Kitchen does not have a mission statement pinned to its front door. It does not come with monastically uncomfortable tables, cafeteria-style rails or weigh scales by the cash register. It does not litter the walls with new-agey, pseudo-Buddhist, über-hippy references. What Zen Kitchen does do is help you forget you are in a vegan restaurant. Which is, as far as I'm concerned, high praise.

Owned by Caroline Ishii (chef) and David Loan (sommelier), Zen Kitchen opened in late June in the space vacated by Le Panaché. With help from Ottawa designer Heidi Helm, they've created a cheerfully dignified space. Gorgeous art hangs on red and mustard walls, chairs and benches are comfortable, upholstered in jaunty polkadots, lighting is soft and clean, fresh flowers and candles grace gleaming cherry tables.

The meals I've had at Zen speak loudly of a gifted chef who draws tastily on a larder of local plants, and who roams the globe - Mexico, Morocco, Japan, Thailand - for bright ideas. Ishii's dishes range from bold to delicate, multi-textured to softly herby, aromatic to spicy. This is thoroughly enjoyable dining that doesn't suffer from any lack of beast.

Though I do feel the need to add "for now." This time of year, eating a plant-based diet is dead easy and delicious. How the vegan Zen will taste in February is TBD. Though I look forward to finding out.

So vegans, for those who don't subscribe to Mother Jones, are vegetarians at their most "devout." Animal products or animal by-products are all no-no's. So, wonder at the dreamy creaminess of the mushroom sauce? Ground cashew "butter," thinned with silken tofu and spiked with roasted ancho peppers. Presto. Butter with nary an udder tickled!

Ishii's gnocchi shows the hand of an expert, pleasantly served with a late summer ratatouille. A roasted corn chowder with coriander is elevated with smoked oyster mushrooms and a chili oil drizzle, and by Art-is-in Bakery's fennel bread used to sop it up. Local chanterelle mushrooms in impeccable condition are lightly coated in a tempura-style batter fashioned with brown rice and gram flours, scattered with sesame seeds and served with a duo of marvellous sauces.

Plates are all decorative, though they rely as much on taste as design. Ishii's tapas presentation of salad rolls (with a divine peanut sauce), tofu skewers (fantastic), tumeric-stained daikon ribbons, a pile of kimchi and one of togarashi-peppered potato chips, is inspirational. Even the black bean with chopped chestnut "cake" (more a mound) covered with a ripe guacamole, surrounded with pickles and corn chips, is stylish.

Of the main dishes from a short list, I like the Thai curry best, the sauce intricate and aromatic, clinging to farmer's market vegetables topped with roasted pine nuts. If you're into seitan, you'll like these panko-crusted medallions of vegetable protein, and the lemon-scented Israeli couscous dotted with capers has an intensely buttery flavour without, of course, butter contaminating any of it. The one miss for me were the udon noodles. Were it not for the fantastic lobster mushrooms - orange, crustacean tail-shaped, and tasting remarkably of the sea - this dish, with its gummy tempura-ed maki roll, would be pretty so-whatish.

There are beverages beyond carrot juice, and Zen's wine list leads with strong local content, kindly priced.

Dairy-free desserts are a challenge. I preferred the Mexican chocolate cake with cherry compote to the lemon tart, with its crust that tastes of beach sand. The chocolate truffles that come with the bill are, however, divine.

At one dinner a TV crew was filming (part of The Restaurant Adventures of David and Caroline, for the Women's Network this fall) and a producer asked how we enjoyed our meal. I felt it would be beyond cheek for the smugly anonymous restaurant critic to give a thumbs up, on camera.

If I had agreed to talk, what would I have said? Probably that Zen is a great addition to Ottawa's dining out scene, and a restaurant I'm more excited about than any other I've come across this year. One that just so happens to serve vegan food.

Cuisine: Contemporary
Cost: $$$: Starters, $8 to $12; main dishes, $17 to $19

Hours: Open Wednesday through Sunday for dinner

Features: Patio dining, Vegetarian options.
Accessibility: Steps to entrance, washrooms upstairs.

634 Somerset St. W., Ottawa, ON
613-233-6404
website

Must is a wine bar and small plates restaurant that has tucked itself into the two-storey heritage space on William Street, where the Mexican restaurant Azteca used to be.

I smelled the cleverly named Must from down the street (making must - juice, that is - is step one in wine-making). The kitchen was roasting corn and the campfire whiffs drifted out the front door, drawing us in and safe from a sudden downpour. We had parked just up the street - close to the crowded patio of The Grand Pizzeria (reviewed in this space two weeks ago) where throngs of al fresco diners were jostling for dry ground, shielding their pizza pies under bright red umbrellas.

No throngs here. We were Must's only clients. We climbed the stairs, past the Enomatic, and were directed to a café table that overlooks William Street and the Market Square. It suited us very well, and we ordered our first taste of wine from a manageable list of reds, whites and bubbles, available in various size pours, by fun flights, and from the wine preservation system that handles the more distinctive bottles.

The eating part got off to a strong start, and after the first few bites of the first small plates, we looked out the open window and wondered why more of the soggy tourists below weren't joining us.

That evening, just about everything worked. And so I returned, brimming with good feeling, just needing to taste a few more things. "You'll love it here," I promised my date.

But she didn't. I didn't. Seconds after the first few bites of the first small plates, acute disappointment set in. Nothing worked that evening. The service was dismal and the food was a round of misses.

A third visit, I went looking for some Jekyll and found more Hyde.

But I'll say this. The space has wonderful bones and great potential (though right now it's too dark, the wood of pub tables and chairs a bit oppressive). The wine list is of manageable length and seems very well put together, offering interesting choices at most price points. And the range of snacks would not be sniffed at in Barcelona - Mediterranean offerings like figs with Serrano ham and chevre, marinated olives and caper berries, grilled chorizo with white beans, and a frittata-like dish of egg, potato, onion and ham.

Though what impressed us most that first night was more Caribbean than Spanish. Ordered for the smoked corn we'd been salivating over, the house jerk chicken was so moist and flavourful we wondered if the bird had been brined before roasting, and the dry rub had just the right degree of pique. The smoked corn salsa was divine. We also scored with the dumplings, smoked mushrooms wrapped in sheets of al dente pasta in a rich and creamy wine sauce - and with the grilled calamari served with a delicious green curry dip.

But at my next visit that same dish of dumplings was a disaster. The pasta was undercooked, the mushrooms dull, the sauce floury and lacking the polish of the first visit. The shrimp were similarly ho-hum, the corn chutney tasting only of lime, and more of tin can than the smokey pleasure of before. Grilled chorizo sausages were dry, their white bean "cassoulet" under-seasoned and underwhelming. There was far too much soy-lacquering on the tuna sashimi and the "Must egg" was a failure - a poached egg mounted on a pile of over-fried, stale-tasting wedge potatoes, their edges burnt, with leather dry Serrano ham served on the side.

A main dish of beef was flaccid and juiceless, the outside grill-marked but not crusted, the fingerling potatoes mealy, and the pinot reduction found napping the vegetables, not the meat. Duck confit was so salty we returned it, and were surprised it made its way back to us via the bill.

Taken all together, Must is a puzzler. For one brief shining moment it was my new It restaurant, a real summer find. But like much of this summer, it proved unpredictable; Must is not necessarily a must.

Cuisine: Contemporary
Cost: $$$: Small plates, $4 to $13; main dishes, $14 to $26

Hours: Open Monday to Wednesday, 4:30PM to midnight; Thursday-Friday, 2PM t o midnight; Saturday, noon to midnight; Sunday, noo

Features: Late dining, Wine list worth noting.
Accessibility: Step into restaurant, a few tables on ground floor.

41 William St., Ottawa, ONess
613-680-3107
website