Ottawa Food

What would a trip to a new place be without some discussion and photos of food? Well, it's actually a rhetorical question. Those of you who know me well, know about my passion for food.

Well armed with tour guides and with a sense of adventure, my travelling companion , Miss Kay and I found a few meals worthy of mention. We started every day with Montreal style bagels in the Byward Market. Now these were the honest to goodness real bagels. Not fat and puffy, but chewy and baked in a wood oven. I'm salivating just thinking about them; I regret not being able to plan taking a dozen home with me. It's been so long since I've had this great a treat (Corey's sister use to bring a couple dozen with her when she visited us from Montreal). In the market, we also found a small Indian food restaurant that served a really wicked chicken Tikka sandwich- Tandoori style chicken, covered in lettuce and tomatoes and wrapped up in nan. It took us two tries, before the owner finally sold us the sandwich, but when we had it with a great cup of chai, we knew that it had been worth the wait.

Prior to heading out, my brother recommended the Bridgehead coffee shops. Since he is a foodie of at least my caliber (I have a few years on him, but he has travelled more), I made a note, and we headed off for a mid afternoon cup one day early in the trip. Coffee and company were so good there, we returned everyday. Their lattes were excellent. One day, we even treated ourselves to dessert.

We were fortunate enough to land in Ottawa in the middle of a barbeque competition. Since we were quite willing to lend our opinions about the quality of the ribs, we tried two different places. While both were worthy of finger licking, we liked our second choice best (it also had the best pulled pork). I wanted to take a photograph of the ribs, but only remembered after they were eaten. So here are the bones. Perhaps Miss Kay will post the before photos of the first set of ribs.


Finally, we left the conference one night to venture out to eat. A friend of ours had given us a tour of Ottawa the previous day and we remembered a recommendation of his. We headed out to the Italian part of the city and located the restaurant that he mentioned. Unfortunately it was closed for renovations, but we found something else nearby. We seated ourselves outside at Sergios and enjoyed a rather balmy night in the city. I ordered the gnocchi with a portobello mushroom sauce and was not disappointed. These were the lightest gnocchi I have ever had- they were just like mashed potatoes. They literally melted in my mouth.

On the flip side, here is a tip for you: don't eat sushi in Ottawa. It is overpriced and not tasty at all. We should have known better, but a craving for it drove us there one day. All I can say is : thank goodness we still had some room for the tikka sandwich mentioned above!