Food and Drink News

Weekly update for Feb 7

•  Almanac’s Let’s Get Started workshop this evening (5:00 pm to 6:00 pm) will take absolute beginners through keeping and using a sourdough starter. $45 will cover the class as well as a take-home starter of your own and bag of flour.
•  The Whalebone’s Valentine’s Dinner Kit for Two contains scallops, chips with a dip of crab, caviar and chive, mussels, braised beef, leek and charred broccolini parmentier, all topped off by an Italian pudding. Yes, you’ll need to do a bit of cooking at home, but also yes, you will be hailed as a culinary hero. $125, for pick-up on February 14.
•  Zola’s has Valentine’s Day covered with romantic dine-in and heat-at-home menus. The latter option also comes with a single long stem rose (*swoon*), a scented candle, and semolina dinner rolls.
•  Six Ottawa restaurants made OpenTable’s Top 100 Romantic Restaurants in Canada for 2024 list: Coconut Lagoon, North and Navy, Riviera, The Shore Club, Zoe’s at the Château Laurier, and NeXT.
•  Meanwhile, Arôme – Casino du Lac Leamy is the only Québec resto to make the list outside of Montréal.
•  After 28 years, the Clocktower Brew Pub on Glebe, the first one, is closing to be replaced by a Turkish restaurant, Sultan Ahmet. Clocktower’s other three locations remain open.
•  Ameya Charnalia at Eat the Strip knows the magic words to find a hidden gem: ‘tucked away in an industrial park near a massive snow dump’. The crispy fresh onions, creamy, peppery, well-spiced sauce, and sabaayad bread at Sabaya Shack were ‘delightful’, he says of the Somali-style chicken wraps.
•  Over in Brockville, five restos are taking part in the first ever Mac N' Cheese Fest for the month of February: 1000 Islands Brewery, Finnigan's Tavern, Richard's Coffeehouse, Tait's Bakery, and Texas Tavern are all competing for the title of ... Big Cheese? Big Mac? They don’t say.
  
  Darren has only been to Brockville once in his life and he’s somehow been to three of these five places, although without a Mac N’ Cheese bun fight.
•  The Ottawa Citizen’s food writer Peter Hum rated the 10 dishes served up at last Saturday’s 2024 Canadian Culinary Championships at the Shaw Centre.
  
  He puts Chef Raghav Chaudhary of Aiana Restaurant Collective’s dish (featuring oysters, crab, trout, and algae) at number five and he concurred with the judges at putting Chef Jasper Cruickshank of Wild Blue Restaurant + Bar in Whistler’s dish (featuring shrimp, Dungeness crab, leeks, wakame, and geoduck clams) in first place.
•  Before that, Hum had a hankering for Brazillian cuisine. He discovered the ghost restaurant Sabor Brazil, which only accepts orders early in the week to be delivered or picked up Saturdays. He liked it. Over in Gatineau, he found Rio Açaí in Gatineau, a smoothie bar that specializes in bowls, crêpes, and – yes – smoothies made of açaí, a purple palm tree superfood.
•  In their biweekly Apt 613 Best Bites column, Alison Larabie Chase and Kiersten Vuorimaki recommended Afghani Mezbaan (‘luscious roasted eggplant chunks with onions, tomatoes, spices and a garlic yogurt drizzle were awesome’), Latin American Gooney's Arepas & Sandwich Works (‘The arepas are fresh, overstuffed, and delicious’), and Asian fusion Datsun (‘Get the dumplings. Do not share.’)
•   Mike Cohen in Montréal community newspaper The Suburban wrote about what’s on at Ottawa’s museums. But he also recommended breakfast at Ralph & Sons Diner on Carling and finished the day with prime rib at Big Rig Kitchen & Brewery. He notes that the brewpub also makes its own sodas, Lil’ Rig, which we didn’t know.
•  We don’t know if this is true or not, but the just-opened-last-week Bobino Bagel says that it is the first Montréal-style bagel joint in Gatineau. And yes, Gen X Radio-Canada viewers, it is named in tribute to the eponymous kids show. Bobino Bagel is located across the street from the Museum of History.