Category: Around Town

  • Goodbye John Taylor

    Goodbye John Taylor

    I remember the tweet like it was sent last week: “Yep, we’re done.” It was from chef John Taylor and it appeared on the Domus Café feed on May 26, 2014. “Thanks to everyone for the last 18 years, it was a blast! But time to move on!” He and his wife Sylvia moved on […]

  • Best Plates of 2016

    Best Plates of 2016

    Twenty sixteen was a banner year for new restaurants. I wrote about the best of them for Ottawa Magazine’s annual restaurant issue, which you are welcome to take a peek at here. To snag a spot on that list, it had to be about more than the food. The welcome, the service, the general mood […]

  • Congrats Beau’s!

    Congrats Beau’s!

    Delighted to report that Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company has won the Ontario Culinary Tourism ‘Event of the Year’ for its Oktoberfest. Beau’s faced some stiff competition – the province hosts some pretty amazing culinary events – but its Oktoberfest clearly stood out. So big congrats to the big Beau’s team! From Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance: Since 2006, Beau’s […]

  • December dinner with Les Marmitons

    December dinner with Les Marmitons

    “Make sure you let people know we are, first and foremost, a social club. We cook together… but we also laugh a lot.” Not sure which member of the Marmitons group spoke these words, I just remember he said it as he prepared to slice up a pile of leeks. He was a member of […]

  • La Cabaña

    La Cabaña

    La Cabaña was my salvation for a dozen happy years – the family go-to restaurant for fast/filling/flavourful for a van load of teenage boys en route to the field/gym/arena. We’d usually call ahead and place an order. By the time the minivan pulled up to 848 Merivale Road, our pupusas had been fried up and […]

  • Arôme’s dry-aged steaks

    Arôme’s dry-aged steaks

    In a time when restaurants are more and more into the stripped-down look — linens off tables, fabric off walls, carpet off floors — and are delivering a din to dining that can range from jolly to deafening, Arôme feels something like spa eating. It’s no great looker – a hotel-issue dining room, generic-enough that […]

  • Best New Ottawa Restaurants

    Best New Ottawa Restaurants

    Top Ten New Restaurants now online. Check it out at Ottawa Magazine.

  • First Chefs & Shows at GCTC

    First Chefs & Shows at GCTC

    “Come Hungry; Leave Entertained.” That’s the tasty thinking behind the GCTC Chefs & Shows, a marriage of the culinary and theatre arts, with the added pleasure of the food foreshadowing the performance. Chefs & Shows is the brainchild of Sheila Whyte of Thyme & Again, and Michael Moffatt, executive chef of Beckta, Play and Gezellig […]

  • Most Wanted: Ottawa Cooks!

    Most Wanted: Ottawa Cooks!

    A big fat thank you to Ottawa Magazine & Emily Kennedy for the love! So nice to be Wanted.