CapitalDining.ca

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare could be just one of many diversions if you were dining alone at The Manx. It looked like a nice, clean, unread copy. Fretting about slopping my burger over some soliloquy, I chose not to pull it off the back shelf for company at my solo Manx meal last week.

Besides, the burger required my full concentration. Was it the chipotle aioli that gave it such a sultry smokiness? Or was there something else?

After she caught me in the act of pulling the thing apart for closer inspection, my server poked her head out the bar pass (I was deep in the corner booth) to report that it was the cheddar that was smoked.

"We smoke it here. We smoke everything ourselves. In fact, we make everything from scratch."

When I last wrote about this long-running underground pub, it had no competition. If you were on Elgin Street and wanted a tasty meal for a reasonable price in convivial surroundings, The Manx was it. Today, there are good-bet choices on what seems to me an increasingly tastier street. Among those good bets, the funky Oz Kafe and the new Town Gastropub. So given what you might call neighbourly competition, I wondered if The Manx queues were quite as long as I remembered them.

Well they are.

I also wanted to check out the renovation job I had been told about. The room is essentially the same, I'm happy to report, but it is now rimmed with a padded red bench, and the floors seem to have been redone since my last visit. They've added more copper-topped tables, some high, some low, and perhaps that copy of The Bard's best stuff is also new? But The Manx remains a loud, happy place with a gnarled-around-the-edges English alehouse feel, and here you may eat and drink well and fully and for not too much. Benches may have budged about in the four years since I last darkened The Manx doors, but not the prices.

Of the starters, the lentil soup with roasted corn and cumin warmth was lovely. Very good as well, the black bean quesadillas with smoked onion and a distinctive tomatillo salsa. Butter beans and roasted vegetables gave depth and body to a garlicky hummus, served with warm naan.

From the sandwiches section, the club with roasted chicken breast and peameal bacon was well done, but it was the daily burger with its pile of Le Coprin mushrooms, bronzed onions, chipotle mayo and smoked cheddar that I loved. The meat was juicy, herbed and perfectly seasoned, the portion of vegetables in balance with the thin patty, and the bun was fresh and yielding.

There are four main dishes on offer. The blackboard lists the day's additions. Unfixed to any wall, it roams the room. From that board I encountered the first mild disappointment in the form of a flat iron steak, a bit overcooked and a bit tough, on a layer of avocado and a bed of rice. Better the fish, I thought, miso-glazed trout, gently cooked, with gorgeous fingerling spuds, roasted and lightly doused with sesame, soy and ginger.

The house tomato sauce is delicious, and it makes the naan pizza worth ordering, this one covered lightly with cheese and zucchini.

Warm brownies for dessert with ice cream. Great choice of beer on tap, strong local content on the list, plus an impressive selection of wines and whiskies. The long-running Manx charmingly runs on.

Cuisine: Pub
Cost: $$: Starters, $6 to $12; sandwiches/mains, $13 to $16

Hours: Open daily for lunch and dinner. Open until 1 a.m. (2 a.m. weekends)

Features: Late dining, Vegetarian options.
Accessibility: Stairs down to entrance.

370 Elgin Street, Ottawa, ON
613-231-2070

Every so often a restaurant surfaces that, right from the get-go, seems exactly in the swing of its time and place. Such is Town.

Just a few weeks old, it runs as though it's had a year to find its stride. Part of the smooth functioning begins with a menu of manageable length. This one focuses on small plates of Italian comfort food, plus a smattering of main dishes priced in the $20s.

Town also has pulled together a staff -- men and women in black Town T-shirts -- who can speak with intelligence about the food and drink.

They also appear to enjoy their jobs and each other, which makes this crew a significant source of the good feeling that pervades the new Town.

You enter a narrow space. The garage doors are open to the life on Elgin Street. On the left is a chalkboard wall on which is written the menu. Beyond that, a stainless-steel bar with half a dozen stools. On the right, above a long, brown bench and running the length of a white wall is a glass shelf. Spread along it are votive candles and glass vases of different shapes and heights, each holding a flower, a stem, some lemons. Modish brown tiles cover the floor and two precision rows of reproduction light bulbs hang from the ceiling.

In the open kitchen are co-owner and pastry chef Marc Doiron, formerly at the Rideau Club, along with chef Steve Wall, most recently at the Rideau Club (where he worked with Marc) and, before that, chef at The Whalesbone Oyster House, which is where I knew his food. Marc's wife, Lori Wojcik, who manages Wall Space Gallery in Westboro, is the woman about Town. Her knack for what should go on walls is plain.

The food is very good. If I had a quibble, it would be with its weightiness, particularly at the noon hour when the menu seems designed exclusively by-and-for hungry young men with fully functioning gallbladders.

I found myself on a hot summer day, staring down a short lunch menu of rich, heavy food, longing for lightness, for summer freshness. A cold soup, perhaps a bright salad. But here we have gnudi (delicious) with pesto, cod fritters (fantastic) and a big starter of toasted bread, oiled, topped with chicken liver parfait, rhubarb jam, and a jumble of bacon. It was utterly delicious in a killing sort of way.

Second course -- all sandwiches, on big, yummy buns -- old-fashioned chicken salad with lots of mayonnaise, sweetened with cranberries, a matchstick of green apples, loaded with arugula, and topped with strips of bacon. Fantastic bacon.

Another sandwich, tuna -- again with ample mayonnaise, and with preserved lemon that made a statement.

Sandwiches come with a side salad perked with a zippy vinaigrette, laced with chives. Much was brought home to hungry young men.

More rich, brown food on the dinner menu. Order meatballs as starter (also available as a main) and you get two big ones, fashioned of veal and pork and ricotta cheese, enveloped in a ripe tomato sauce, plopped on soft polenta and topped with chives. Altogether very satisfying.

Gnudi is like gnocchi, but with cheese in place of potato. Some describe it as ricotta ravioli without the pasta wrapper. In any event, these are soft cheese balls that boast an air-dried "crust." They paddle about in brown butter, drenched with a nubbly basil pesto and crowned with freshly grated parmigiano, like white snowflakes on green grass.

Cod fritters are browned and crackling, soft and milky, on a stew of smoked pork, drizzled with a sharp sauce that tastes lusciously like a hot lemon sorbet.

The steak (flat iron) arrives in thick, juicy slabs, the flesh rare as requested beneath its brown-striped crust. The meat is delicious, well seasoned and served with exactly what you want steak to come with. Roast potatoes (fingerling), onions (caramelized cipollini), tomatoes (oven dried, and of deep flavour), mushrooms (grilled king eryngii), and greens (a tangy salsa verde that flavours everything you want it to).

Simple and very good food, fairly priced ($24) and portioned. There is pasta, thick strands mingled with soft nuggets of duck, the two in a rich, buttery broth that is vigorously seasoned, filled in with herbs and vegetables. And there is flattened, brick-roasted chicken, served in parts, the skin crisp, the meat cooked through but still moist, fragrant with lemon.

Chef Wall's pickerel has a fantastic crusty skin, yet the fish flesh is pale and soft, its subtle flavour intact. It arrives on a bed of Italian butter beans, topped with pink grapefruit, surrounded by small, sweet mussels and chunks of sharp chorizo. Circling fish and fruit and legumes is a light fish broth enriched with parmesan. This is a splendid dish.

Spoon-desserts arrive in mason jars. A chocolate budino (Italian pudding) tastes of quality cocoa. Rice pudding is scented with cinnamon and cardamom and topped with a pistachio brittle and sun-dried cherries, while the buttermilk panna cotta with its pink glaze of strawberry wine is a luscious summer dessert.

Kichesippi, Beau's and St. Ambroise are the brews on tap. The wine list isn't long, but there's a fair selection available by the glass, and the reds I've sampled have been served at the correct temperature. The blackboard lists a daily $8 cocktail.

Town was buzzing at each of my visits. With good reason

Cuisine: Gastropub
Cost: $$$: Small plates, $5 to $15; main dishes, $20 to $28

Hours: Open for lunch, Tuesday to Friday; dinner, Tuesday to Sunday

Features: Late dining, Wine list worth noting.
Accessibility: Easy access, washrooms on main level.

296 Elgin St., Ottawa, ON
613-695-8696
website

The visual drama of this restaurant takes place entirely outside, and La Terrasse is open only on nights when being outside is pleasurable. Which is why it's taken me many tries to get here. On 35-above evenings I want air-conditioning. If threatening skies, I want a roof.

But this particular July night was as splendid as you could possibly want and I sat on La Terrasse at a table closest to the canal below, just pinching myself.

For here was a rowing eight-shell blistering along the Ottawa River. Here were bagpipes somewhere in the distance (played by someone who knew his instrument). We arrived to a sun lowering over the Gatineau Hills and left at dusk, after a stunning light show.

All these fine things, along with the forest of trees that flanks the east block of Parliament Hill, were in our sights. We were in the heart of the city, but also in its lee, perched on padded chairs in near-complete privacy, on the hidden patio of the Fairmont Château Laurier.

Yet on this night of nights, wonder of wonders, La Terrasse is near empty.

On most of this city's patios-with-a-view-of-water the food is forgettable. Not so here. I bring you the experience of just one meal, mind, as at my second planned visit La Terrasse was closed for a wedding, and my third attempt was on a night with a downpour. But I can tell you about two starters, two main dishes and two desserts -- all pretty satisfying.

First up, a very good gazpacho, ripe with summer flavours, well balanced in terms of tang and spice, and with a refreshing lemon-basil yogurt squiggled on its thick, red surface.

A little wooden bench equipped with three paper cones containing seafood treats was our second starter. In the bottom of each cone we discover a bit of sushi rice and a little seaweed salad, and on top, a big sparkling shrimp, or a tasty lobster and dill salad, or, in the third cone, albacore tuna, thin slices of the pink fish, flash-seared tataki style. Very fresh, very nice.

We are told O'Brien Farms (from Winchester) supplies the beef for the "Capital Burger" and whether it's the quality of the beast or of the thick smoky bacon, the old Balderson cheddar or the mustard mayo, this is a superior hamburger in every way.

I would have enjoyed the seafood fettuccine more if the price hadn't seemed out of whack. It was a tasty dish, the pasta and fish properly cooked, well sauced, the charred tomatoes a nice touch, but at $32 I would hope for more than two shrimp and a smattering of lobster pebbles.

You may eat more simply (and more affordably) than we did here.

The menu tries to please a variety of tastes and needs, so on it you also find chicken wings and nachos, plus things like clubhouse and pulled pork sandwiches ($16). You also find steak and lamb and fresh fish.

Desserts are designed to make a kid happy, with a couple of tossed-in adult treats. Here are banana split boats, ice cream sundaes, and brownie bombs, plus chocolate panna cotta (delicious) and lemon meringue pie (lovely, served with a raspberry sauce and a crème anglaise that tastes of eggs, cream and vanilla).

La Terrasse offers a condensed drinks list (all wines, brief as the offerings are, available by the glass) and a children's menu. Kiddies under five eat "on the house" on this secret patio.

Cuisine: Canadian
Cost: $$$: Starters, $9 to $16; main dishes, $14 to $32

Hours: Open daily from 4:30pm to 10pm, June to September, weather permitting.

Features: Patio dining.
Accessibility: Fully accessible.

1 Rideau St., Ottawa ON
613-241-1414
website