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Three of Ottawa’s most eagerly anticipated new restaurants are opening within days of each other.
Whalesbone opened on Elgin Street last weekend, offering a space that looks a lot like the decade-old Whalesbone on Bank, but that’s three times the size and with a more extensive menu.
“We got tired of turning people away from the Bank Street location,” says manager Peter McCallum. “Also, while that menu is 10 items, this one is going to be 30. We quietly want to get really good at steak. We think with Hy’s gone, there will be an appetite for this.”
Jon Svazas, the chef/owner who famously took two years to open Fauna in Centretown, has brought a bit of Spain to Ottawa, opening his Bar Laurel this weekend, a mere half year after taking over the former Back Lane in Hintonburg.
The restaurant is named after Calle del Laurel in Logrono, Spain, the street famous for having the greatest concentration of tapas bars in all of Spain, says Svazas. His new menu features one-bite Spanish pintxos, many of them cooked over charcoal, exotic cocktails and just a few main dishes cooked over a wood fire.
“It’s going to fun,” says Svazas. “It’s completely different than anything we have here.”
Riviera, the new place from Matthew Carmichael and Jordan Holley, the chefs behind El Camino and Datsun, promises to bring art-deco elegance, good food and bubbly fun to Sparks Street. If final inspections go as hoped, the restaurant named after the vintage Buick is to have a soft opening in about a week, and open to public before the end of the month.
Bar Laurel. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Jon Svazas is the chef/owner behind Bar Laurel. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Bar Laurel
Where: 1087 Wellington St. W., in Hintonburg
Opening: Soft opening this weekend; open to the public starting Monday, July 18.
Menu: The menu is divided into Snacks, with such things as Iberian Ham Croquettes and Blistered Peppers in the $4 to $8 range; Conservas, which are small tins of seafood preserved in oil and imported from Spain, for $18 to $21; Pintxos Morunas, which are one-bite snacks such as cubes of grilled Iberico ham or lamb with lemon and rosemary, with Moorish influences and cooked over charcoal, $10 to $18; and Pintxos/Tapas, more traditional Spanish tapas such as squid with merguez and chorizo-stuffed peppers, in the $5 to $12 range. Shared main courses for two to four people, all cooked over wood fire and served with Spanish side dishes, include an 18-ounce Dry Aged Ribeye for $70 and whole fish and whole chickens for $40 to $50. The menu also includes four Spanish cheeses and just two desserts (Basque Burnt Cheesecake and Lemon Tart).
Svazas made a fourth trip to Spain in the spring for culinary inspiration.
“It’s so culturally different,” he said. “Good food is almost more of right than a commodity.”
Eryn Huskins, Bar Laurel’s general manager, said most of the staff was speechless during a menu tasting last week.
“The dishes are so amazing. It’s not a menu you’re seeing anywhere else in the city.”
Svazas says he was terrified to light up the wood ovens for the first time, “but now I just want to cook. They’re fantastic.”
The cocktail menu is all new too, created by bartender Matt Millard, who has an extensive knowledge of Scotch and bar manager (Steph Albert, formerly of Moon Room) who specializes in sherry and vermouth. The Perra Basica, for example, is made with dry Spanish white vermouth, crushed basil and citrus. Midsummer Cup (vodka, pink peppercorn, absinthe, house-made grenadine, citrus and pink ginger lemonade) was inspired by Millard’s trip to Sweden, which he won by competing at a Toronto vodka-cocktail competition. Syrups, bitters, sorbets and shrubs for the bar will all be made in-house. About two dozen wines, most them natural, will be available by the glass and seven beers are on tap.
Décor: Spanish chic, with warm, stylish lighting, a beautiful backlit bar, and dark walls (one features charred cedar).
Number of seats: 28 at tables, 14 at the bar and another 28 on the patio, which wraps around the front and down the side of the restaurant
General Manager Craig Douglas sits in The Riviera, which has transformed the old bank at 62 Sparks Street (near Elgin) into an elegant diner with vaulted ceilings, an open kitchen and even washrooms in the old vault. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
View from the old vault into the restaurant. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Riviera
Where: 62 Sparks St., near Elgin
Opening: If all goes according to plan, soft opening events will be held at the end of next weekend (Sunday, July 24, to Tuesday, July 26), then the restaurant will regroup, closing for one day, before opening to the public on Thursday, July 28.
Menu: Chef/owner Matthew Carmichael is holding his menu cards close to his chest, but expect oysters, crudo (raw fish), charcuterie and cheese as starters, with a long list of sparkling wines and champagnes, with several available by the glass. Main dishes will probably bring back many of Carmichael’s and Jordan Holley’s greatest hits from their days at Social (and even a pop-up stint at Mellos), from black cod and lobster to steak frites and fresh pasta.
“There will be a good pasta focus and a good vegetable focus,” says general manager Craig Douglas, noting that the chefs plan to travel to Montreal weekly to hand select fish and produce from the best markets.
“The food really comes down to what Jordan and Matthew want to eat and how they want to eat it.”
The chefs also stress that they want the place to be the kind of place where they’d like to eat — where you’d feel equally at home in a suit or in jeans and a T-shirt.
Stephen Flood, formerly of the Black Tomato and back from a sabbatical in Paris, is the bar manager and has composed an elegant drink list, to be presented to patrons on newsprint. Classics and “Neoclassics” include manhattans, boulevardiers and negronis (three kinds), while “The Great Flood” includes such creations as The Grapefruits of Wrath ($13), made with tequila, campari and grapefruit bitters; and Jockey Full of Bourbon ($14), with Buffalo Trace Bourbon, port, Montreal-made chile-and-tonka simple syrup, rye, salted cacao bitters and “a peaty Scotch rinse.”
Décor: Elegant art-deco diner. The stunning decor capitalizes on the high moulded ceiling, grey-panelled walls and bits of marble left over from the 1869 building’s days as a jewelry store, then a bank. But the decor, with help from Ottawa’s LineBox studio and Carmichael’s keen eye, also has echoes of old-school diner, with an open stainless-steel kitchen behind one end of the long brass bar, leather banquettes and plain white Royal Doulton dishes inscribed with “Riviera” in a 1950s font. A taxidermy deer head with its antlers laden with wooden rosary crosses, by British artist Rowan Corkill, keeps things interesting.
Number of seats: 80 at tables (including 10 at a private table in the former bank manager’s office), plus another 26 at the 70-foot brass bar. While most of the bar stools will be for walk-ins, about 10 coveted ones, ringside to the action in the open kitchen, will be reservable. A patio and private downstairs dining rooms are to be added next year.
The new Whalesbone on Elgin Street, which resembles the look of the older Bank Street restaurant, but is three times the size. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Pete McCallum is the owner/manager of the new Whalesbone on Elgin Street. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Whalesbone
Where: 231 Elgin St.
Opened: Saturday, July 9
Menu: It’s Whalesbone, and more.
“We’ve got 16 items now, but we’re going to 30,” says manager Peter McCallum.
The menu includes fresh oysters ($35 a dozen), poached shrimp ($21 for a half pound), and catch of the day ($30), but also beef tartare ($18) and a 10-ounce dry-aged prime striploin with chimichurri ($42).
“It’s seafood, but more,” says McCallum. “We’ve got an aging room downstairs for beef.”
Look also for the retail fish that Whalesbone previously sold at its Kent Street outlet, which will close to the public and be used only for production, such as smoking, and catering. Frozen seafood was available at the Elgin Street outlet last week; fresh fish is expected to move there this weekend.
Décor: Rustic chic, with reclaimed corrugated metal on the ceiling, barn board and an open kitchen visible through industrial windows. The dark ambiance, designed by co-owner Joshua Bishop’s mother, is similar to that at Whalesbone on Bank Street (which she also designed).
Number of seats: 110, including 24 non-reserved ones at a long bar.
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Whalesbone opened on Elgin Street last weekend, offering a space that looks a lot like the decade-old Whalesbone on Bank, but that’s three times the size and with a more extensive menu.
“We got tired of turning people away from the Bank Street location,” says manager Peter McCallum. “Also, while that menu is 10 items, this one is going to be 30. We quietly want to get really good at steak. We think with Hy’s gone, there will be an appetite for this.”
Jon Svazas, the chef/owner who famously took two years to open Fauna in Centretown, has brought a bit of Spain to Ottawa, opening his Bar Laurel this weekend, a mere half year after taking over the former Back Lane in Hintonburg.
The restaurant is named after Calle del Laurel in Logrono, Spain, the street famous for having the greatest concentration of tapas bars in all of Spain, says Svazas. His new menu features one-bite Spanish pintxos, many of them cooked over charcoal, exotic cocktails and just a few main dishes cooked over a wood fire.
“It’s going to fun,” says Svazas. “It’s completely different than anything we have here.”
Riviera, the new place from Matthew Carmichael and Jordan Holley, the chefs behind El Camino and Datsun, promises to bring art-deco elegance, good food and bubbly fun to Sparks Street. If final inspections go as hoped, the restaurant named after the vintage Buick is to have a soft opening in about a week, and open to public before the end of the month.
Bar Laurel. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Jon Svazas is the chef/owner behind Bar Laurel. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Bar Laurel
Where: 1087 Wellington St. W., in Hintonburg
Opening: Soft opening this weekend; open to the public starting Monday, July 18.
Menu: The menu is divided into Snacks, with such things as Iberian Ham Croquettes and Blistered Peppers in the $4 to $8 range; Conservas, which are small tins of seafood preserved in oil and imported from Spain, for $18 to $21; Pintxos Morunas, which are one-bite snacks such as cubes of grilled Iberico ham or lamb with lemon and rosemary, with Moorish influences and cooked over charcoal, $10 to $18; and Pintxos/Tapas, more traditional Spanish tapas such as squid with merguez and chorizo-stuffed peppers, in the $5 to $12 range. Shared main courses for two to four people, all cooked over wood fire and served with Spanish side dishes, include an 18-ounce Dry Aged Ribeye for $70 and whole fish and whole chickens for $40 to $50. The menu also includes four Spanish cheeses and just two desserts (Basque Burnt Cheesecake and Lemon Tart).
Svazas made a fourth trip to Spain in the spring for culinary inspiration.
“It’s so culturally different,” he said. “Good food is almost more of right than a commodity.”
Eryn Huskins, Bar Laurel’s general manager, said most of the staff was speechless during a menu tasting last week.
“The dishes are so amazing. It’s not a menu you’re seeing anywhere else in the city.”
Svazas says he was terrified to light up the wood ovens for the first time, “but now I just want to cook. They’re fantastic.”
The cocktail menu is all new too, created by bartender Matt Millard, who has an extensive knowledge of Scotch and bar manager (Steph Albert, formerly of Moon Room) who specializes in sherry and vermouth. The Perra Basica, for example, is made with dry Spanish white vermouth, crushed basil and citrus. Midsummer Cup (vodka, pink peppercorn, absinthe, house-made grenadine, citrus and pink ginger lemonade) was inspired by Millard’s trip to Sweden, which he won by competing at a Toronto vodka-cocktail competition. Syrups, bitters, sorbets and shrubs for the bar will all be made in-house. About two dozen wines, most them natural, will be available by the glass and seven beers are on tap.
Décor: Spanish chic, with warm, stylish lighting, a beautiful backlit bar, and dark walls (one features charred cedar).
Number of seats: 28 at tables, 14 at the bar and another 28 on the patio, which wraps around the front and down the side of the restaurant
General Manager Craig Douglas sits in The Riviera, which has transformed the old bank at 62 Sparks Street (near Elgin) into an elegant diner with vaulted ceilings, an open kitchen and even washrooms in the old vault. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
View from the old vault into the restaurant. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Riviera
Where: 62 Sparks St., near Elgin
Opening: If all goes according to plan, soft opening events will be held at the end of next weekend (Sunday, July 24, to Tuesday, July 26), then the restaurant will regroup, closing for one day, before opening to the public on Thursday, July 28.
Menu: Chef/owner Matthew Carmichael is holding his menu cards close to his chest, but expect oysters, crudo (raw fish), charcuterie and cheese as starters, with a long list of sparkling wines and champagnes, with several available by the glass. Main dishes will probably bring back many of Carmichael’s and Jordan Holley’s greatest hits from their days at Social (and even a pop-up stint at Mellos), from black cod and lobster to steak frites and fresh pasta.
“There will be a good pasta focus and a good vegetable focus,” says general manager Craig Douglas, noting that the chefs plan to travel to Montreal weekly to hand select fish and produce from the best markets.
“The food really comes down to what Jordan and Matthew want to eat and how they want to eat it.”
The chefs also stress that they want the place to be the kind of place where they’d like to eat — where you’d feel equally at home in a suit or in jeans and a T-shirt.
Stephen Flood, formerly of the Black Tomato and back from a sabbatical in Paris, is the bar manager and has composed an elegant drink list, to be presented to patrons on newsprint. Classics and “Neoclassics” include manhattans, boulevardiers and negronis (three kinds), while “The Great Flood” includes such creations as The Grapefruits of Wrath ($13), made with tequila, campari and grapefruit bitters; and Jockey Full of Bourbon ($14), with Buffalo Trace Bourbon, port, Montreal-made chile-and-tonka simple syrup, rye, salted cacao bitters and “a peaty Scotch rinse.”
Décor: Elegant art-deco diner. The stunning decor capitalizes on the high moulded ceiling, grey-panelled walls and bits of marble left over from the 1869 building’s days as a jewelry store, then a bank. But the decor, with help from Ottawa’s LineBox studio and Carmichael’s keen eye, also has echoes of old-school diner, with an open stainless-steel kitchen behind one end of the long brass bar, leather banquettes and plain white Royal Doulton dishes inscribed with “Riviera” in a 1950s font. A taxidermy deer head with its antlers laden with wooden rosary crosses, by British artist Rowan Corkill, keeps things interesting.
Number of seats: 80 at tables (including 10 at a private table in the former bank manager’s office), plus another 26 at the 70-foot brass bar. While most of the bar stools will be for walk-ins, about 10 coveted ones, ringside to the action in the open kitchen, will be reservable. A patio and private downstairs dining rooms are to be added next year.
The new Whalesbone on Elgin Street, which resembles the look of the older Bank Street restaurant, but is three times the size. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Pete McCallum is the owner/manager of the new Whalesbone on Elgin Street. Julie Oliver / Postmedia
Whalesbone
Where: 231 Elgin St.
Opened: Saturday, July 9
Menu: It’s Whalesbone, and more.
“We’ve got 16 items now, but we’re going to 30,” says manager Peter McCallum.
The menu includes fresh oysters ($35 a dozen), poached shrimp ($21 for a half pound), and catch of the day ($30), but also beef tartare ($18) and a 10-ounce dry-aged prime striploin with chimichurri ($42).
“It’s seafood, but more,” says McCallum. “We’ve got an aging room downstairs for beef.”
Look also for the retail fish that Whalesbone previously sold at its Kent Street outlet, which will close to the public and be used only for production, such as smoking, and catering. Frozen seafood was available at the Elgin Street outlet last week; fresh fish is expected to move there this weekend.
Décor: Rustic chic, with reclaimed corrugated metal on the ceiling, barn board and an open kitchen visible through industrial windows. The dark ambiance, designed by co-owner Joshua Bishop’s mother, is similar to that at Whalesbone on Bank Street (which she also designed).
Number of seats: 110, including 24 non-reserved ones at a long bar.
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