VON’s

It had to happen sooner or later.

We have been blessed as we explored our culinary safari of Ottawa’s dining offerings.

Blessed because we have discovered a genuine food culture that is active and alive. Whether it has been a neighbourhood joint or a well known establishment we have never been completely disappointed, critical maybe but never off put.

In fact we have been enormously encouraged, challenged, to find some place better than the last.

That last place we dined at always seemed to be a place we would return to in a breath.

Our run of luck ran out last night when we decided to dine at VON’s in the Glebe.

VON’s is a Glebe institution that has survived for 30 years. That is impressive.

The room is beautiful. Soft colours, whimsical chalked quotations written on the pillars, pure white table cloths and a comforting bar.

As we looked around the room we felt hopeful.

It wasn’t that long before a server arrived and placed us.

After some time our server returned and asked if we wanted drinks. “Water,” I suggested would be a good start.

Our experience went down hill from there.

But you can’t make sloppy service a bookmark for the rest of the event.

We decided to share the PEI mussels. There are four choices of sauces. We chose the tomato saffron option.

They arrived in a narrow sauce pot. These succulent and tasty mussels were sitting atop their sauce instead of swimming in it. When we finally got to the tomato sauce we found it weak and soupy.(12)

Lynn ordered a Grilled Chicken salad.(18) I opted for the Pork tenderloin stuffed with a prune and sage filling.(23)

Lynn’s salad looked like a salad, but the chicken seemed to have never been close enough to a grill to brag about a relationship, it was cold and dry.

There was another affront lurking in this salad just below greens, small chunks of canned pineapple. Need I say more?

My Pork Tenderloin was beautifully presented, two healthy servings of Pork oozing with the prune and sage stuffing.

Problem was the meat was dry as dust and crusted over from being over cooked or worse precooked and then reheated.

Pork Tenderloin is not that hard to prepare. The trick is, and it is not a big one, keep it moist. The meat speaks for itself and you can’t go far wrong if it has a professional touch in the general vicinity.

I looked over to a woman who was seated at the bar. She had ordered the Steak frite. (26)

A dish I had considered ordering.

Her frites, french fries, were presented in a tin mug of some sort. Curiously it was a McDonalds approach to presentation where a traditional look would have sufficed.

I watched as she attempted to carve her way through her steak searching for a morsel she could actually chew on.

Despite these culinary failings there was no shortage of people willing to pay a premium for poor service and over done food.

How does this happen in a city that we are now discovering, or so we think, has a genuine culinary curiosity?

Maybe some are not far enough removed from Mother’s grey, bloodless Sunday Roast Beef dinners to notice the difference yet.

Perhaps just getting a meal, regardless of its content, is enough for most.

Is it fuel or flavour we seek?


VON’s

819 Bank Street
613-233-3277

http://www.819bank.com/

STONEFACE DOLLY’S
On Preston

Yet again we both had been through a busy couple of days and we just barely had the energy to decide on an area of town to eat in.

We chose to play restaurant roulette and headed off to Preston Street.

The logic was simple. Find a place to park and then walk the street reading the posted menus until we found something that inspired us.

I was hankering for a simple veal scaloppini, Lynn was up for whatever.

We walked and we walked. Most menus offered us the same choices as the last.

We approached a new looking place and searched for its outside menu which was not to be found.

Tired, I suggested that we just go in and take our chances, take the bullet as it were.

We entered a terrific room, part bistro, part trattoria, part martini bar, all smoothly blended into a comfortable space – STONEFACE DOLLY’S On Preston.

In the front end of the room Dolly’s has a terrific bar that seats maybe 8, along with 3 high top tables over looking the street.

The bar curves and extends down the inside wall of the room transitioning into a dessert display and then into a serving area for the open kitchen.

The dining area is roomy but subtly divided into smaller intimate spaces. Standing you can view the whole room, seated your space becomes more private.

We were seated and left with our menus and then just as I was thinking about it, our water glasses arrived and our server explained what they had to offer as the evenings specials.

Then just as we had decided which way we want to go with our order our server was back with a basket of bread and a dip.

This is the often unnoticed art of service. If you are lucky to get a server that tunes into your cadence you will have someone who can guide you through your whole dining experience, someone who will ensure that you get exactly what you want.

The very best servers are stealthy, always there just as you need them, always ready with a suggestion or a question, always ready for anything that you might need.

Dolly’s bills itself as offering homestyle gourmet cookery with an international twist – and they deliver.

Owner Bob Russell was born in South Africa and his birth ground seeps into the menu as does influences from Thailand, Mexico, Europe and other spots where spice is an everyday habit.

Neither of us was that hungry and decided that we might skip the preliminaries and head straight for the entrees.

But…the table beside us was a group of six and two were having the mussel appetizer, one with a Red Thai sauce, the other in a white wine cream sauce. I am a sucker for mussels and I was almost tempted.

Lynn ordered The African Chicken Bobotie which was baked chicken chunks with a light spicing of curry, almonds and raisins served with coconut basmati rice, a yogurt raita and small salad. (16)

I chose Veal “Birds,” a concoction of ground veal wrapped in prosciutto served with a Portobello Mushroom cream sauce and vegetables. (18)

Our orders arrived, nicely presented, freshly hot and wafting with a gentle wisp of spices.

Lynn’s Bobotie turned out to be an open faced thickly crusted pie a swim with pieces of chicken interspersed with almonds and raisins all bound together in an aromatic broth. It smelled and tasted wonderful. The coconut rice was soft and rich, the salad just lightly dressed in earthy vinaigrette.

My “Birds” were lightly grilled to give the prosciutto a soft shell effect for the ground veal it was wrapped around. There was a surprise hidden amoung my vegetables, a dollop of turnips doctored with a little maple syrup and perhaps a hint of Roma cheese or sour cream.

There were a lot of choices that we could have tried. How does an Almond encrusted Chicken breast with caramelized pear and a brie cream sauce sound? (18)

Or perhaps the Jambalya - Chicken, shrimp, sausage and mussels in a mildly spiced Creole tomato sauce. Served with sautéed red and green peppers, carrots, and red onion on a bed of basmati rice, also $18.

Tempted?

Eating at Dolly’s was the tonic we needed for a night when we felt a tad unwilling to make our own decisions.

The room is not small, seating perhaps up to 60 people, but the entire production was handled by two servers, two cooks and a kitchen helper.

Not one of them missed a beat.

STONEFACE DOLLY’S
On Preston

416 Preston Street,
613-564-2222
www.stonefacedollys.com

Manx Pub

When is a pub a pub?

Ottawa is certainly not lacking in pub choices. They are everywhere and are all basically clones of each other. They mimic décor, the faux renderings of English or Irish traditions, the same beers and the same menus.

The Manx, hidden in a very small basement on Elgin Street bills itself as a pub. But a pub it is not.

It has all the trappings of a traditional pub, a dark wood bar, crammed booths and small round tables. But Manx has broken the pub mold by recognizing early on that Ottawa has become a foodie town, long past nachos and chicken wings.

Getting into the Manx takes some dedication. Lynn and I have tried twice to eat there in the past only to be frustrated by the lineup to get in.

The Manx is so small that even 4 people in the line ahead of you constitutes a major hurdle. The nights that we tried to gain entry in the past were very wintery ones, snow squalls outside, foot stomping to keep warm, kind of nights.

Our mistake was we had always arrived at the dinner hour, for us just after 7 so we could be eating by say 7:30 or there about.

If you know the Manx, we discovered, you have to get there early.

Our schedules this week were crowded and busy which meant that dinner was not an option for our weekly date. We decided to meet for a drink as compensation and chose the Manx, 5ish was the target.

Even then it was half full. I walked in a little after 5 and there were women sitting alone at half the tables who looked up at me expectantly as I entered, only to be disappointed. They had arrived early to stake out a spot until their dates or companions arrived.

Real Estate is a precious commodity at the Manx.

Lynn was already there protecting our turf like a suspicious lioness.

The staff has that pub lackadaisical attitude to service but in place that is so small and that has so few tables even the so-so service seems to go unnoticed.

What shines here is the food.

One of the specials was Caribbean seafood pasta which reflects some of the adventure that is offered on the menu. As a starter you might choose a Quesadilla with smoked onion, roasted corn, black beans and cheddar cheese served with sour cream and a tomatillo sauce (9.)

You can get a Furlonger club sandwich, a Lamb curry wrap or a Curried tofu and chickpea burger topped with a balsamic onion jam – all $12 each.

Lynn decided on the Salmon filet with a jalapeno and peach glaze and scalloped sweet potatoes served with a small mixed greens salad tossed in a lime-honey dressing (13.)

I wasn’t that hungry so I steered towards the Crab cakes with a mango-basil chutney accompanied by a lemon-caper aloi (12.)

Lynn hit gold with her Salmon. It was perfectly moist with a gentle hint of the glaze that gave it a curious exotic yet comforting taste. The scalloped sweet potatoes were amazing – almost worth having on their own.

My Crab cakes were terrible, over cooked, almost burnt, dry and suspiciously almost absent of crab. There was a crab taste hidden in there somewhere but I was hard put to poke around trying to find it.

We were halfway through our meal when I looked up to see that the room was now completely full and it was only just shy of six o’clock.

A gentleman beside us was just starting to bite into his delicious looking Curried lamb wrap. Just across from us a young woman was tucking into her Caribbean pasta. Lynn looked like she wanted to stay right where she was sitting, forever.

From everyone’s expressions as they ate I seemed to be the only one without a reason to smile, one out of so many others who seemed not only happy but pleased.

We'll try it again, if we can get in.

Manx Pub

370 Elgin Street
613-231-2070