Hum: 25 of the most iconic Ottawa restaurant dishes, from egg rolls and pizza to fine-dining

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So what if local food lovers can’t claim smoked meat or bagels as their own? The list of dishes that we can be proud of is a long one. Plenty of Ottawa restaurants and food vendors have must-order items that can’t be removed from their menus for fear of a customer revolt.

Below, in alphabetical order, are some perennials that, in my opinion, help to describe the high points of Ottawa’s food scene. If you think I’ve missed something especially tasty or significant, let me know with a comment below or an email to phum@postmedia.com.

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Arepas at Gooney’s

Luis and Belkis Granati, the owners of Gooney’s in downtown Ottawa, are the city’s evangelists for Venezuelan-style arepas — round cakes made of corn flour, usually bountifully stuffed with savoury fillings that have been staples in the northern part of South America for hundreds of years. Of the many arepas offered here, the “pabellon,” which takes a traditional Venezuelan dish of shredded beef, fried plantains and black beans and put it inside an arepa, gets this list’s nod. It’s delicious, especially with extra house-made, mayonnaise-based coriander sauce, which Gooney’s keeps in squeeze tubes on its tables and also sells to go.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Gooney’s

Banoffee Pie at Brassica

When chef Arup Jana opened Brassica in Westboro in 2020, the question he kept fielding was whether the banoffee pie from his previous restaurant, Allium, would be featured on Brassica’s menu. Of course, Jana couldn’t deep-six such a crowd-pleaser. The signature dessert delivers smooth, sweet, creamy, chocolatey pleasures in the proper proportions. Sorry, most other desserts in Ottawa. You must bow down before Jana’s banoffee pie.

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Read Peter Hum’s review of Brassica

Bao at Gongfu bao

While it was David Chang, the culinary mastermind behind the Momofuku brand of restaurants and pantry products, who popularized bao buns in the early 2000s, Ottawa chef Tarek Hassan has frankly outdone Chang with his even more artisanal bao. At Hassan’s Centretown shop Gongfu Bao, the buns are perfectly fresh and fluffy and filled with sumptuous proteins and well-calibrated garnishes. The fried chicken bao gifts eaters with a hearty crunch that gives way to moist, seasoned meat, supported by pepper-salt mayo and a beguiling relish.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Gongfu Bao

Barbecue chicken at Pili Pili Charcoal-Grilled Chicken

While African chicken eateries dot the map of the National Capital Region, the greatest concentration of them is on Dalhousie Street in the ByWard Market, where a fan of the vibrantly spiced, char-grilled poultry could bounce between African BBQ House, YKO Chicken BBQ and Pili Pili Charcoal-Grilled Chicken. At the latter, I’ve had robustly smoky, and intoxicatingly seasoned pieces of crisp-skinned chicken, although the fare from its neighbours is certainly within striking distance too.

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Read Peter Hum’s review of Pili Pili Charcoal-Grilled Chicken

BeaverTails

Even if BeaverTails were launched in 1978 in Killaloe, west of Ottawa, and even if BeaverTails Canada is now headquartered in Montreal, Ottawa can claim the fried-dough guilty pleasure as its own. Grant and Pam Hooker’s pastries, first sold at the Killaloe Fair, have been available at a ByWard Market stand since 1980. From those humble beginnings, the company has grown to include more than 140 locations worldwide, at its last tally. No less than former U.S. president Barack Obama has had a BeaverTail created in his honour — the “Obama Tail” boasted a chocolate-and-maple-syrup “O.” Although BeaverTails come in a dozen varieties, with chocolate hazelnut spread, caramel and crushed Oreos boosting their sugariness, the good old Killaloe Sunrise, which tops deep-fried dough with nothing more than cinnamon, sugar and lemon juice, is unsurpassed.

Birria soup and tacos at Aztec Tacos

Tacos in Ottawa run the gamut from forgettable, lowest-common-denominator renditions to the sublime birria tacos at Aztec Tacos in Vanier. That deluxe order at the Montreal Road hole-in-a-wall is a bowl of tender meat stewed in a superbly beefy and chili-infused broth, with soft, warm, corn tortillas on the side.

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Read Peter Hum’s review of Aztec Tacos

Bread at SemSem

While Ottawa has a lot of impressive Middle Eastern bakeries, this family-run bakery in South Keys stands out thanks to the exceptional, baked-to-order Levantine breads. Here, the cheese sunflower pastry wraps bread dotted with sesame seeds and thyme around the salty punch of halloumi cheese. The manouche flatbreads have been good enough to elicit wows and groans of satisfaction.

Read Peter Hum’s review of SemSem

Coconut sambol and roti at Ceylonta

Three decades in, Ceylonta on Somerset Street West continues to serve spice-infused dishes that reflect a Tamil palate’s take on Sri Lankan fare. There are many perennials on Ceylonta’s menu, but it’s the simple side dish of coconut sambol ($7), a savoury, spiced condiment made with freshly grated coconut and eaten with fluffy roti flatbread (two for $6) that I can’t quit.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Ceylonta

Combination pizza at Colonnade

The dauntingly cheesy pizzas at Colonnade Pizza have been filling bellies in Ottawa since 1967 when Lebanese immigrant Kalil Dahdouh launched his inaugural location in downtown Ottawa on Metcalfe Street. The style of pizza at Colonnade locations, not to mention at the venerable brand’s offshoot Lebanese-run pizzerias, is thick and heavy, with toppings galore hidden from view under a blanket of cheese that’s the stuff of legend. For its part, Colonnade uses a brick cheese made by the Oak Grove Cheese Factory just west of Kitchener, Ont.

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Read Peter Hum’s review of Colonnade Pizza

Croffles at Sharpfle Waffle

Don’t dismiss the croissant-waffle hybrids more cutely known as croffles as faddish creations. The two locations of Sharpfle Waffle (one in Mechanicsville, the other in the ByWard Market) make exceptional pastries that combined the best qualities of their inspirations, so that crisp, grid-like exteriors surround airy, flaky interiors. The specific variations, from black sesame to strawberry shortcake on the sweet side to charred corn and cheese and cacio e pepe on the savoury side, are exceptionally well-crafted too. Frankly, while BeaverTails may be the big boys in town when it comes to cooked dough, it’s Sharpfle Waffle croffles that I’m craving.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Sharpfle Waffle

Egg rolls from Golden Palace

Golden Palace, which opened in 1960 on Carling Avenue, is synonymous with egg rolls, hand-made by a veteran assembly line, open-ended and singed on both sides, and served with house-made plum sauce. Beloved by everyone from former prime ministers Lester Pearson, Jean Chrétien and Joe Clark to Paul Anka, Golden Palace egg rolls are ubiquitous. Ottawa Senators fans devour them by the tens of thousands each year at the Canadian Tire Centre and they’re available via gift cards at Costco. Each year, when the Golden Palace celebrates its anniversary in mid-April by offering half-price egg rolls, 5,000 of those legendary snacks can fly out the door in a matter of hours.

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Falafel wrap from the Falafel Guys

For almost a decade, Ahmad Altaouil and Ramez Chalhoub, two former Syrian refugees now better known as the Falafel Guys, have endeared Ottawans not only with their falafel wraps, but also with the spectacle of bread baked right in front of customers while they wait at one of their Ottawa Farmers’ Market locations. The flatbread that they make is called saj bread, named after the dome-like oven used to make it. The bread, made simply of flour and water, is formed, thrown in the air pizza-style, and then baked speedily on both sides on the saj. The falafels are just as fresh, and made from a traditional recipe of chickpeas, garlic, parsley and spices.

Kale salad at Supply and Demand

Supply and Demand’s famous kale salad is a superb retort to that notorious green’s legion of haters. A hit on the acclaimed Wellington Street West restaurant’s menu since it opened, this salad stars kale that has been tamed and softened by an icy soak and much massaging. Then the greens are made simply irresistible, Caesar salad-style, with a compelling caper vinaigrette, a scattering of bacon, and a pile of grated manchego cheese. “We are all tired of even looking at kale at this point,” Chef Steve Wall and his wife Jennifer wrote once. But their exertions reward us with a perfect salad.

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Read Peter Hum’s review of Supply and Demand

“Mouth of the St. Lawrence” at Les Fougères

In 2008, Charles Part, then the chef-owner of Restaurant Les Fougères in Chelsea, won Ottawa’s Gold Medal Plates Competition with a refined seafood dish that he called “Mouth of the St-Lawrence.” Although Part subsequently stepped back from kitchen duties at his restaurant, an upsized version of his winner is available at Les Fougères ever since. Made with Grand Banks scallops, potted Matane shrimp, a raviolo filled with luscious salt-cod brandade and mussels in a concentrated mussel stock, Part’s dish richly deserves to be a mainstay on the Les Fougères’ menu.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Les Fougères

Oysters at the Whalesbone Oyster House (Bank Street)

For two decades, the original Whalesbone Oyster House on Bank Street, has been the haunt of choice for Ottawa’s bivalve fans, as much for its casual, and even at times boisterous ambience and hipster-fisherman chic servers as for its pristine seafood. In its early days, the eatery set the standard for sustainable, quality sourcing and it knows just how to present its oysters, with not only a tray of fine sauces, but also some whisky to rinse the empty shells. That said, all the oysters here need is a squeeze of lemon and some shaved horseradish to achieve perfection. On Tuesdays, those briny little aphrodisiacs are just $2 each, too. Cheap date night, anyone?

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Read Peter Hum’s longer review of Whalesbone Oyster House

Pho Tai from Pho 99

Thanks to the arrival of thousands of Vietnamese newcomers in Ottawa in the late 1970s and early 1980s, hearty bowls of pho are now sold from one end of the city to the other. As it does in Vietnam, pho in Ottawa falls into two categories. More common are Southern Vietnamese renditions of pho, with a sweeter broth and all kinds of herbs as garnishes. But Northern Vietnamese pho has a different allure. In a word, it’s beefier, uncomplicated by spices and other tropical accoutrements. At Pho 99 on Lebreton Street, the pho is northern, beefy and undeniably delicious. The restaurant’s owner Ha Van Trung once told this newspaper that pho is a kind of medicine, a panacea for the sick and elderly. If he’s right, his soup is not only iconic, but also good for what ails you.

Seafood chowder at Petit Bill’s Bistro

When Petit Bill’s Bistro in Westboro opened 18 years ago, it naturally served seafood chowder. That was a must, given that co-owners and siblings Terry and Randy Fitzpatrick are proud Newfoundlanders. But Terry says the chowder didn’t come into its own until some months after Petit Bill’s opened, after chef Skip Sansome came on board. “He perfected it. He added a little more shellfish, added some spiced, added more cream. What he did too was make it gluten-free. I give him all the credit,” says Terry. “That was the thing that really got people talking. People started coming in and raving about the chowder.” Seventeen years later, Sansome, who hails from Corner Brook, Nfld., is still in the kitchen, and his chowder is probably the top-selling item on Petit Bill’s menu, says Terry. It’s sold in eight- and 12-ounce servings in the dining room, and also available by the litre or half-litre, cold and to go.

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Seafood tower at Riviera

Too many seafood towers in Ottawa seem to be about showing off that spending $300 on a caviar-enhanced array of delicacies is no big deal. At Riviera, the (caviar-free) seafood tower is still a splurge, but it feels entirely justified, given that it’s all about making the lobster, crab, shrimp, oysters, tuna, mussels and scallops shine. Shellfish that need to be cooked are cooked impeccably and then nicely chilled, so that their sweet, briny goodness is undeniable. Tuna, mussels and scallops are meaningfully garnished in preparations that still let them be the stars. Oysters come with a minimum of accoutrements, not that they need much at all because are absolutely delicious on their own.

Shan noodles at Rangoon

At Rangoon Restaurant, Shan-style noodles are as complex as they are humble, blessed with an alluring flavour that you’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. After all, the Chinatown eatery is not only Ottawa’s only outpost for Burmese food but also one of Canada’s few Burmese restaurants. The dish’s rice noodles come blanketed in succulent chunks of chicken and bolstered by a savoury sauce, chilies, pickled mustard leaves that add an enticing amount of sourness, coriander and sesame seeds. “Mix, mix,” amiable chef-owner Ngun Tial has told us when she served us. We were glad we did.

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Read Peter Hum’s review of Rangoon Restaurant

Shawarma plate at Shawarma Palace

Of course, there has to be shawarma on a list of Ottawa’s iconic dishes. But whose shawarma? This list pops for the platter from Shawarma Palace on Carling Avenue, as much for quantity as for quality. There’s a truly daunting amount of food crammed into a Shawarma Palace shawarma platter, which weighs between two and two-and-a-half pounds once the lid is somehow shut. The practiced assembly line fills the container with rice (white or brown), cubes of potatoes, a giant dollop of garlic sauce, enough hummus to choke a horse, salad, a big squeeze of dressing, and a blanket of shaved chicken or beef. When we recently sampled chicken and beef platters, the meat ranged from somewhat moist to on the dry side. But then again, the meat really is just a delivery system for garlic sauce. Shawarma Palace sponsors both the Ottawa RedBlacks and Ottawa Senators, which may indicate the pro-athlete level appetite required to power through one of its platters.

Smash burger at Smash Daddy

Given that Smash Daddy opened the first of three locations in Ottawa only in the spring of 2024, calling its smash burger “iconic” might be seen as a little cheeky. But once you’ve tried one, made with Wagyu beef or otherwise, you’ll fall in line. Smash Daddy smashes its patties to an almost exaggerated extent, so that flaps of deliciously browned beef, which are the first things I happily gnaw on, hang out beyond the confines of the bun. There’s no greater example of the culinary magic called the Maillard reaction, in which a hard sear imparts complex, robust flavours to a piece of meat. The Smash Daddy smash burger’s crisp, enjoyable texture was a big, big bonus.

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Read Peter Hum’s review of Smash Daddy

Soufflés at Stofa Restaurant

When Jason Sawision, the chef-owner of Stofa on Wellington Street West, was working in the Virgin Islands, he learned how to make soufflés, the oh-so-French light-as-air baked egg dessert. “We had six flavours going at once, so I had experience,” Sawision recalls. “I knew they could be done in a restaurant.” After opening his restaurant in the fall of 2017, Sawision decided that soufflés of ever-changing flavours could be a signature dish. “It’s a very unique dessert. It’s a very simple thing, but it’s pretty complex in terms of textures, flavours, the whole thing.” Recent flavours have included chocolate-cherry soufflé with coffee ice cream and roasted banana soufflé with maple ice cream. Sawision says that at Stofa it was a passionfruit soufflé that started it all and that it returns to the menu at least once a year.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Stofa

Steak frites at Absinthe Cafe

When Patrick Garland, the chef-owner of Absinthe Cafe in Hintonburg, describes the dish that has been on his menu for more than two decades and still accounts for about 75 per cent of his sales, he has no other choice than to combine an expletive with a superlative. “It’s the best f—ing steak in Ottawa,” he says. Absinthe’s iconic dish, which once went for $11.95 once upon a time, is steak frites made with a hanger steak, the uber-flavourful and tender cut taken from a cow’s upper belly that’s also known as a butcher’s steak, hanging tenderloin or onglet. Garland praises the cut for its marbling and loose, toothsome grain and says that it soaks up marinades well and loves being grilled. At Absinthe, the steak is marinated in fish sauce, soy, Sriracha and even prickly ash (Sichuan pepper), so that it’s unapologetically salty but delicious. Unless otherwise requested, Garland grills his steak to a perfect rare-to-medium-rare. The ultimate connoisseur’s take on the steak? The cut is apparently located not far from a cow’s kidney, and Garland says, “Sometimes if you’re lucky you get that kidney flavour. It isn’t always to everybody’s taste, but it is really good.” As for Absinthe’s fries with aioli and dill- and thyme-flecked green beans that complete Garland’s dish, they do yeoman’s work supporting the steak’s unabashedly hedonistic appeal. 

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Tuna crudo at Supply and Demand

This impeccable raw fish starter has not budged from the menu for more than a decade at this Wellington Street West restaurant that charts well on the annual Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list. Chef Steve Wall’s perfectly calibrated, big-flavoured starter combines perfect slabs of albacore tuna with lemon juice, truffle oil, puffed rice and baby cilantro. Simple? Yes. But raw fish dishes in Ottawa don’t get any better.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Supply and Demand

Wild boar sausage, caramelized apple, sage pesto pizza at Tennessy Willems

At the wood-fired pizzeria Tennessy Willems in Hintonburg, the wild boar pizza, a menu staple for more than a decade, is a genius-level savoury-sweet-herby mix of local wild boar sausage, caramelized apple, sage pesto and two-year-old cheddar. It is, not surprisingly, the pizzeria’s most popular pie by a big margin.

Read Peter Hum’s review of Tennessy Willems

Is this list too short? What iconic dish is it missing? Comment below or send your suggestions to phum@postmedia.com

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