Articles Tagged ‘Ottawa’

WEEKLY LUNCH PICK: Attacking The Table’s lunch buffet with gusto

"What had started out as a careful, cost-cutting approach to The Table's buffet turned into a full-steam-ahead and damn the weigh scale attack on its hot and cold offerings"

By Anne DesBrisay

Unpitted olives, as much as I craved them right then, right there, I walked right on by. I figured they’d weigh me down and spike the bill. Instead, I headed for the baby spinach salad. Light and breezy stuff.

And then I dabbled with a bit of kale and swiss chard (heavier greens, to be sure, but worth their weight in gold). The organic tofu fritters beckoned — mostly for the vegan, gluten-free onion chutney that made them seem edible — and so did the cornmeal crumble with rosemary and roasted parsnips and all that crusty-gooey cheesey goodness on top.

A bit further along The Table‘s offerings was the pan of roasted vegies — mostly onions, charred peppers, and purple skinned eggplant — and on they came. The all-veggie jambalaya promised a bit of heat (and delivered) so that was scooped, and from the cold section, an arame seaweed salad (vegan/g-f) with snow pea shoots. Finally, a healthy dollop of the g-f house hummus. No bread though.

What had started out as a careful, cost-cutting approach to The Table’s buffet turned into a full-steam-ahead and damn the weigh scale attack on its hot and cold offerings.

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  |  May 21, 2013 at 9:00 am

WEEKLY LUNCH PICK: Delivering on the promise of a real, big, messy burger at Beech St. Burger

The new Little Italy burger joint takes the Five Guys burger experience up a notch

Happy National Burger Month!

What — you didn’t mark your calendar?

Okay, technically it’s an American holiday, but I bet there are plenty of people in the National Capital Region who would be willing to join in the festivities. We do love a burger.

It’s no surprise to see new burger joints popping up like crazy, even as we gear up for the invasion of a new fleet of food trucks to help diversify the world of fast-food eating in this city. The burger trend is indeed mushrooming (mmmm, mushrooms are great on burgers) and shows no signs of burning out. Ottawa’s own burger chain, The Works, at 19 locations and counting, has apparently had about 600 franchise requests from across Canada. Holy cow!

I wish I could find some local statistics on our burger consumption habits, but I suspect we’re in line with the results of a recent foodservice consultancy survey of more than 2,250 online US and Canadian consumer: it revealed that 91% of people that responded said they eat a burger at least once a month, and 44% said they consume burgers at least once a week. The report claims: “burgers are one of the hottest trends on today’s dining scene.”

Again, no surprises there.

I had TWO burgers last week. Both of them were from the new Little Italy gem, Beech St. Burger.

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  |  May 13, 2013 at 8:35 am

THE BACKSTORY: How Oz Kafe’s Jamie Stunt discovered the zen of yak

By Shawna Wagman

This article appears in the Interiors edition of Ottawa Magazine, on newsstands now.

Chef Jamie Stunt competes in the Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna on Friday, Feb. 8 and Saturday, Feb. 9, competing against the gold medal winners from nine other cities from Vancouver to St. John’s.

Jamie Stunt visits with a yak at Rosemary's farm. Photography by Luther Caverly.

YAK TATAKI. Yak tataki. When I first spotted those two words on the menu at Oz Kafe four years ago, I couldn’t wait to say them out loud: yak tataki, yak tataki, yak tataki.

They are the kinds of words that a food writer dreams about — playful, whimsical, and deliciously unusual. They make you laugh, perhaps salivate, and dream. In a job that constantly battles against boring, repetitive, predictable menus and the constraints of the English language (how many ways can we talk about a great steak?), this dish was already infused with the makings of a great story, and I was determined to find it.

I mean, who has the nerve to serve yak in Ottawa? And how in the world did the chef get his hands on fresh yak meat? I would soon discover that a herd of Tibetan yaks was roaming the wilds of the Ottawa Valley.

When the plate arrived, the meat was  just barely seared, thinly sliced, and topped with anchovy mayo and bacon breadcrumbs. It was not the kind of dish I had expected to find in a meat-and-potatoes government town, but there it was — all crimson and succulent and drenched with soul-satisfying umami.

The dish had been prepared by Jamie Stunt, the creative young chef I had pegged a few years earlier as one of the city’s culinary up-and-comers. The restaurant where Stunt cooks is the late-night crash pad for fellow cooks, who swing by after their shifts to fuel up on smoked duck poutine and spicy grilled beef lettuce wraps.

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  |  February 7, 2013 at 8:16 am

CHEF SHUFFLE: New chefs in top spots at Hintonburg Public House, The Urban Element and the soon-to-open gezellig

On the move: The chefs are getting restless and Shawna Wagman has the latest on who's going where.

First we heard from Summer Baird, owner of Hintonburg Public House, that Kris Kshonze, her head chef, was leaving. He has decided to stay home with his new baby — trading in a life in the service of hipsters for one in the service of diapers.

Then, we heard that Anna March, Mariposa’s former chef, was returning to the kitchen this fall after her maternity leave to join The Urban Element where she is now the head cooking class instructor as well as leading the culinary team for in-house corporate and private events. (She replaces Candice Butler who left a few months ago to take over the food program at Elmwood School.) We have since put the pieces of the puzzle together and realize that March and Kshonze are in fact a couple. Their son’s name is Henry.

Now Baird has confirmed that Mark Currier, currently resident chef at Mariposa Farm, will replace Kshonze at the end of October. It’s a reunion for Currier and Baird, who worked together in the kitchen at The Urban Pear about seven years ago when Baird was chef and co-owner and Currier was her sous-chef. So far, there is no news about who will replace Currier at Mariposa.

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  |  October 1, 2012 at 9:18 am

20 Best Neighbourhoods: Cost is no issue

By Laura Byrne Paquet | Photograph by Dwayne Brown | Statistical graphics by
Aesthetic Intelligence

Best Neighbourhoods: Cost is no issue

Alta Vista

For the cost-is-no-issue crowd, I tried to find a range of neighbourhoods — urban, suburban, and semi-rural — where money might not buy you happiness but could score you original Tiffany chandeliers, an indoor saltwater pool, or floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a Gatsby-like estate. Heritage house, mid-century modern pad, or 21st-century McMansion: there’s something for everyone in this category, as long as you have a million or more to spare. I assumed most folks in this crowd have kids. Heck, they can certainly afford them.

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  |  May 22, 2012 at 12:00 pm

WEEKLY LUNCH PICK: Meadow’s Lunch makes the ultimate club sandwich

Are you ready for a real club sandwich? This might be the best one in town.

It’s funny to think that I have probably eaten more than a hundred club sandwiches in my lifetime — okay, maybe a thousand. I have eaten dozens of them in diners across Ontario and Quebec and on road trips across Upstate New York; I’ve ordered them from hotel room service and in generic jukeboxes restaurants from Florida to Cancun. I am not particularly proud to admit that I even ate a club sandwich at a trendy Bobo café in Paris when I should have been seeking out the ultimate steak tartar or duck confit, or at least a croque monsieur.

There is something irresistible about that familiar combination of sliced poultry stacked between a trio of toasted triangles of bread, bacon, lettuce, and tomato with a glistening shmear of mayo. The 100-year-old US invention exists on menus around the world.

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  |  May 22, 2012 at 8:45 am

A POOL WE LOVE: A gorgeous natural granite swimming pool in a backyard setting

Natural Beauty: As the rock heats in the sunshine, the water temperature rises naturally in the pool. A pump ensure the water circulates and is also used when the pool needs to be drained for a full cleaning. Photography by William P. McElligott

MAKING A SPLASH: The joy of swimming in a natural granite pool

This feature appears in the  April 2012 edition.

By Katharine Fletcher

Photography by William P. McElligott

Talk about taking a natural formation and transforming it into a stunning backyard feature! Carole Larose and her husband, Wayne Corneil, did just that after buying a country home in Carp nine years ago.

When the couple purchased the 1.6-acre property in 2003, the central feature in the backyard was a fish pond created from a natural fold in the granite rock that dominated the landscape. The previous owners had dammed one end of the formation with cement to stop any outflow.

“As soon as we saw it, we decided we’d try to transform the pond into a swimming pool,” says Corneil.

The couple first tried a traditional chlorine-based system but found the chemicals too harsh — for them and the dogs they welcome regularly. They then began researching alternatives, finally settling on a saltwater option. Today the fish pond is nowhere to be seen, and in its place is an amazing saltwater swimming pool that gets used from May to September.

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  |  May 19, 2012 at 10:00 am

INSIDE CHEF MARC LEPINE’S BIG WIN: Judge Anne DesBrisay provides an insider’s view (and pix) from the Canadian Culinary Championships

The stage was set: The winning chefs from Gold Medal Plates competitions in nine cities across the country met in Kelowna last weekend for a gruelling competition pitting the best against the best. Culinary judge Anne DesBrisay was there as part of the judge’s panel and provides this insider’s view — and some great pix — of local chef Marc Lepine‘s awesome win at the Canadian Culinary Championships.

The Outcome:

This was entirely Marc Lepine’s race. From his opening moves at the Mystery Wine Pairing event on Friday night, through the Black Box Competition on Saturday morning, to the Grand Finale Gala, he powered to the top of the podium by virtue of being the judges’ unanimous first choice. A first for the Canadian Culinary Championships, that one chef wins so commandingly. But no doubt about it, this weekend belonged to Lepine. Ottawa should be very proud of him. He was a champiom of creative, precision executed, beautifully balanced and well assembled dishes that looked lovely, and had serious smack. Taking the silver medal,  Vancouver chef Rob Feenie of the Cactus Club. The bronze went to the affable, fun loving Jean-Philippe St-Denis of Kitchen Galerie Poisson in Montreal.

For his winning wine-pairing dish, Lepine had a budget of just $1.39 per person to create a fantastic dish that would match up with the mystery wine (an Ontario riesling, it turns out)

Report from the Wine Pairing Competition (Friday Night):

Ottawa chef Marc Lepine has just won the “People’s Choice” award at the wine pairing competition, the first of three components in the Canadian Culinary Competition! How the judges rated him on this leg of the race won’t be revealed until after the Black Box Competition on Saturday morning.

Marc Lepine guessed correctly: the mystery wine, the label-less bottle presented to the nine chefs was in fact an Ontario Riesling. These chefs were tasked with plumbing the depths of the wine (about which they knew for certain only its colour) and, with a budget of $500, concocting a dish that would make that wine stand up and do a pirouette. Or at least meet it halfway. And then producing 350 of those dishes to feed the hungry crowd, plus 11 more to present to the judges. Do the math: that’s $1.39 a plate. Consider that at your next dinner party…

Chef Lepine apparently considered a buck thirty nine and thought: Yes, langoustine!! His dish was anchored with a roulade of the rich seafood, wrapped in carpaccio petals of avocado, anchored on a curried mayonnaise. Other elements on the strikingly pretty plate: puffs of wild rice seasoned with coriander seed and fennel; carved ‘pebbles’ from Okanagan apples marinated in a chili syrup; a bit of grated orange peel; burnt citrus zest, some compresed celery, a crazy piece of sponge cake, flavoured with fennel seed, and with the genius of Darth Vaderish technology, a cake that went from butter to batter in something like 40 seconds. Something about aerating it in a siphon and zaping it in a microwave. Having never made a cake other than with the terribly boring cream together, add dry to wet, fold, dump, bake sort of method, I was leery. But my gosh, it was cake! And it was a plate. Simply stunning. And didn’t The People know it. Marc walked away with a spectacular bottle of Scotch, signed by Olympians and fellow chefs.

At the end of the triumphant night the brown paper bags were removed and the wine revealed. Marc was quite right: it was in fact an Ontario Riesling — a Gold medallist at the 2011 Ontario Wine Awards, the Chateau des Charmes 2008 Old Vines Riesling.

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  |  February 13, 2012 at 10:07 am

Best Restaurants of 2011: #4 Oz Kafe

Oz Kafe's roasted eggplant stuffed with duck ragout, yogourt, chilies, herbs, and fish sauce. Photo by photoluxstudio.com/Christian Lalonde.

A few days after I took my new-to-Ottawa friend to Oz Kafe, she emailed me with this message: “I can’t stop thinking about that corn. What was in the sauce?”

The answer is butter and chili. It’s pretty much what you’d find poured over a pile of Buffalo chicken wings. Not brain surgery, right? But on top of nutty-sweet, peak-of-summer cobs of corn finished on the grill, this dish became unforgettable. Simple, fresh, and unpretentious but also a little bit bad-ass and freakin’ delicious: it’s such an Oz dish.

These same chefs, Jamie Stunt and Simon Bell, offer a tight but eclectic comfort-food menu that includes a crowd-pleasing steak and caesar salad with smoked mashed potatoes and homemade barbecue sauce. They are also the only ones brave enough to serve local farm-raised Tibetan yak. The simple dish, Yak Tataki, pairs sweet, tender slices of barely seared meat with crunchy bacon-fat-fried breadcrumbs, yuzu, parsley, and horseradish mayo.

But the real magic of Oz is that its tiny closet of a kitchen has the best karma in town. It’s where cooks go to get unhooked, preparing prix fixe dinners for their own kind at monthly industry nights. In August, chefs, servers, and dishwashers piled in for a “spare parts” themed meal. The first course was called quadruple bypass — salmon, chicken, beef, and lamb hearts. Oz Kafe makes a party out of cooking and eating. And every other restaurant in town benefits from its existence.

361 Elgin St., 613-234-0907, www.ozkafe.com.

  |  January 23, 2012 at 11:30 am

Best Restaurants of 2011: #3 Town

Town’s salted caramel ice cream piled high with whipped cream, peanuts, and caramel corn. Photo by photoluxstudio.com/Christian Lalonde.

If Town were a freshman, he would be that adorable, smart, funny kid who has endeared himself to absolutely everyone — the artsy types, the jocks, the nerds, the cool kids. Even the parents are smitten. They say his taste in music makes them feel young again.

This is eager-to-please food that reaches out and hugs you. You’ll find things here you never even knew you were craving. Like a stunning classic Italian summer salad of prosciutto and fresh melon with arugula and little goat cheese fritters, the plate drizzled with honey. I bet all the other chefs in town are kicking themselves that they didn’t think of that one.

The featured flatiron steak was pink perfection, cooked under vacuum (he’s a bit of a science geek too) and topped with watermelon salsa. So good, it’s hard to believe the sides stole the show — we’re talking silky-smooth puréed mascarpone potatoes and quickly sautéed kale, its lacy leaves tasting of smoked bacon and butter (okay, it’s not that hard to believe).

So let’s see now: soulful creative cooking, fresh ingredients, great music, great vibe, excellent service, not a trace of attitude, and sane prices. At least dessert was a dud, right? No, it was incredible: a magnificent mess of salted caramel ice cream piled high with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and a tower of peanut and caramel corn. Town travels the line between frivolous fun and serious food and welcomes everyone to join the ride.

296 Elgin St., 613-695-8696, www.townlovesyou.ca.

  |  January 20, 2012 at 8:25 am

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