LeRoy Walden is keeping Soul Food in the capital, this time on wheels...and on a stick.

While out for coffee, Ottawa’s self-proclaimed Soul Food King, LeRoy Walden spotted his former neighbour. After a big hug, he shared the news that he closed his restaurant and is about to launch a food truck this spring. The first question out of her mouth was: “You’re still going to make fried chicken, right?”

Was there any doubt? LeRoy’s name is synonymous with fried chicken in these parts. And he likes it that way. My question is: What took him so long?

Back in 2008, I directed Ottawa Magazine readers to a little place I’d found called Jean Albert’s. It was a cottage off the highway in the quiet rural Ontario town of Hallville where — lo and behold — Walden, a Detroit record producer, was serving up his grandma’s super-succulent crispy batter-fried chicken and other comfort food recipes with tall glasses of fresh lemonade and sweet tea at picnic tables in his wife’s hometown.

It’s safe to say, it was the first authentic American Soul Food restaurant in the national capital region.

For people who were less familiar with the hearty home cooking of the American south, it was the first chance to try things like sweet corn pancakes, fried catfish, collard greens, and black-eyed peas. But as it turns out, soul food is easy to love. Jean Albert’s soon moved to the city to be closer to its fans and had a second life in a little house on Somerset street.

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Last year, Chef Brearley of Castegarth Restaurant foraged all the ingredients except for the venison for his spectacular dish at the Gold Medal Plates competition. Designed to resemble the forest floor, his plate had acorns, black walnuts, hawthorn berries, Jerusalem artichokes, wild apples, and wild ginger – all the things that the venison would eat. It was an impressive and delicious dish, and I have never forgotten it.

This spring, Chef Brearley has teamed up with fellow foraging enthusiast Scott Perrie of Morels Ottawa to prepare very special menus based on the gifts of nature. City Bites got the scoop on the exciting world of foraged ingredients from one of the region’s most passionnate practitioners.

City Bites: Have you done foraging dinners in the past?
Matthew Brearley: Yes I have been doing foraging dinners for many years I believe this is the seventh one.  In the early years the wild food was more of the accent of the meal and consisted of the usual suspects morels, wild leeks, wild ginger. Last years was the most experimental using ingredients like lichens, wild carrot and yarrow. Before Castlegarth I did a special foraging menu at the 4&20 Blackbird Cafe

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An appreciation for small French luxuries is what ties together the items on the shelves of Chez François like twine around a bouquet of lavender. What binds the customers may be something more primal: pining for fresh, flakey buttery croissants.

The croissants have been luring customers into Westboro’s gourmet boutique since December when husband and wife owners, Jean-Francois Maranda and Viktoriya Melenteva, transplanted the shop to Ottawa from Mont-Tremblant.

It existed for 20 years under the name Plaisirs de Provence, with food entering the business in 2007. The couple owned another shop in Quebec City and one in Montreal before they relocated to Aylmer, Quebec, with the idea of bringing their French import business to the capital city.

While Chez François specializes in typical Provencal housewares, including lovely textiles and tableware, more than half of the shop is now dedicated to food — fresh-baked goods and refrigerated items like imported cheeses, foie gras (goose and duck), and French dried sausages. There’s also a sweet counter full of such goodies as macarons, cookies, fruit tarts, chocolates, and candies.

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Chef/co-owner Warren Sutherland (R) in the open-kitchen at Slice & Co. with one of his pizza cooks

“My food is for everyone,” says Warren Sutherland, the mastermind behind Elgin Street’s cool new pizzeria-with-a-twist, Slice & Co (located at 399 Elgin St.).

During an interview with the former fine-dining chef, I realize Sutherland is turning the notion of good food for the masses on its head. He knows fine dining (even casual fine dining) is out of reach — in terms of cost, interest and comfort level — for a good percentage of the population.

But he says that doesn’t mean people should have to choose between privileged “chef food” and crap.

He could probably care less if his customers could tell the difference between a sea urchin and a sunchoke — the foodie crowd has plenty of dining options in town today. He’s here to stand up for mainstream eaters. But even those who don’t (and wouldn’t want to) call themselves “foodies” can appreciate good quality, thoughtfully prepared everyday food.

And that’s where Sutherland and Slice & Co. aims to raise the bar.

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