Category: Around Town

  • Capital Dining has had a facelift!

    Welcome, dear readers, to the new and improved Capital Dining site!  I am a good eater; less accomplished with things digital, and so am deeply grateful to James, Stephen and the wonderful Vanessa for all they have done to help me catalogue these restaurant reviews in ways that may be useful to you. There is now […]

  • Ottawa’s Brilliant Backyard

    For the summer issue of Taste & Travel, a wintry tale of a cold capital… and of its edible bounty. UPDATE: you will note that the restaurant Sweetgrass, referenced below, has closed. Chef Warren Sutherland is now at the SmoQue Shack. OTTAWA’S BRILLIANT BACKYARD This is a food-lovers story about a city with the dubious […]

  • Lunch at Fleur de Sel

    In 2008, the pescatarian restaurant Fleur de Sel teamed up with the crêpe restaurant L’Argöat, the latter moving out of its upper floor space on rue Laval and into Fleur de Sel’s red brick a few doors away.  The resulting merger then became known as (ta da!!) “Fleur de Sel et L’Argöat,” complete with a […]

  • Best Bites of 2011

    My annual year-end column that re-chews my favourite dishes of the year begins with a monstrous hunk of expensive meat at a glam new downtown steakhouse and ends with an almond cake at a new creperie in a little Valley town. I deliver these bites with the usual caveats. I haven’t returned to any of […]

  • Best Brunch in Canada 2011

    This is old news, but I just stumbled upon it. In September, Food Day Canada in conjunction with the Egg Farmers of Canada awarded “Best Brunch in Canada” to the Harbour House Hotel, on Saltspring Island, Chef Paul Stewart and his team. Way back in 2003, before Stewart succumbed to the charms of BC, he […]

  • Best Bites of 2010 – My year on a fork

    Herewith, dear readers, my year-end column plump with memories of happy bites from the year-that-was. This year’s wrap-up launches with a Korean restaurant in Little Italy and closes with a solid “10” in a restaurant called e18hteen.I rechew them here with a couple of caveats: First, I have not returned to any of these restaurants […]

  • Gold Medal Plates 2010

    The venue for the 2010 Ottawa-Gatineau Gold Medal Plates was the National Arts Centre. The ten competing chefs were spread around its upper balcony, offering the 500 milling guests everything from lingcod with fenugreek curry to yuba-wrapped macadamia curd. There was no shortage of beets. Octopus was featured on two plates, pork on three, plus […]

  • Capital Dining, the third edition!

    It’s coming. It’s coming. I’m closing in on being able to imagine the end! At least of the research phase of the book. Two lunches and a dinner every day takes a toll, but for you, I munch on. This for a third edition of Capital Dining, a guide to recommended restaurants in the Canadian […]

  • A Taste for Life 2010

    It couldn’t get much easier. Book a table (soon) at a participating restaurant – most of the city’s best are on the list – and dine in support of a good cause. Fully 25% of cost of the meal will be donated to Bruce House and the Snowy Owl AIDS Foundation. This marks the twelfth […]