CLASSIC PORTUGUESE
Caravela’s robust food pleases
While dining recently at Caravela in Orléans, the newest Portuguese restaurant in the Ottawa area, I asked our server what I thought was an innocent enough question.
Seeing “arroz de marisco” on the menu, with its matter-of-fact translation “seafood rice” below, I inquired whether the dish was like paella. “Oh, it’s much better than paella!” was the server’s reply.
That was sufficient recommendation for me. Some minutes later, I was presented with a wide bowl that certainly met the definition of seafood rice, with a heavy emphasis on the former. There was rice, swimming in lots of seafood broth, but much of it was obscured by all the clams, mussels, and fish filets. Most daunting was a jumbo shrimp the size of a small kraken.
Another gregarious Caravela staffer — it might have been owner Fernando Diniz — clapped me on the shoulder when he saw my dismay. He told me I could grapple with the shell-on beast more easily with my hands than with cutlery. I asked the indulgence of my dining companions, rolled up sleeves and got to work, peeling. The shrimp, plus everything with it, was quite good.
That anecdote, in a shrimp shell, tells you what I think of Caravela, which opened in an Innes Road mall in December. My two dinners there have been marked by generously sized dishes, fresh ingredients and uncomplicated, homey preparations. Service has been casual and chatty, as likable as the complimentary bread with red-pepper butter and small, tasty olives that have started our meals.
The restaurant’s feel is cut from the same cloth. It’s an attractive, compact place that seats roughly 50 and represents Portugal well, from its immense abstract map-mural to the soccer playing on the TV behind the bar.
Caravela’s website calls its food “fine cuisine,” which I think overstates things. Instead, typical Portuguese appetizers were well-made and mains were classic, robust and protein-forward, with starches and vegetables that were of secondary importance. With most, leftovers were practically guaranteed.
Of the appetizers, deep-fried salt cod and shrimp cakes ($6 for an order of either) were small but spot on, brimming with the right flavours and textures and not at all oily. Caldo verde ($5), Portugal’s famed potato kale soup, was smooth and simple. Grilled octopus ($14) was fine texturally, although not as upscale as similar appetizers in Ottawa, and its jalapeno purée was jarring. While starters of chorizo, either flambéed ($9.50) or in a wine sauce with vegetables ($10), featured good sausages that were imported into Ottawa, those dishes in the end didn’t wow us.
Cod, either salted or fresh, figures in several preparations at Caravela. A rendition of seared and roasted fresh cod topped with vegetables ($23) was all right, but I liked even more the hearty but satisfying hash of salt cod, scrambled eggs, french fries and onions ($22).
Beyond cod, we’ve had a fine catch of the day that was a small, whole sea bream, likewise seared and roasted and topped with vegetables.
Alcatra ($28), an Azorean beef pot roast served with slices of sweetened bread, is heavily promoted in Caravela’s menu. It had good flavour, but was a touch more dry than my friend would have liked.
Pork and clams ($21) — a mishmash of tender, marinated meat,
briny bivalves and potatoes — were pooled in paprika-coloured oil and offset by bits of pickled vegetable.
Piri-piri chicken ($15 for a halfchicken, $27 for a whole one) was moist and well-seasoned, but more subdued spice-wise than similar birds served elsewhere around town. A whole chicken came with fries, that seemed like spuds that had been pre-cut elsewhere, and salad that were notable above all for their mammoth portions.
For those who somehow had room, house-made desserts, including a lady finger cake, a caramel mousse and a chocolate peanut butter tart, were good rich meal-enders. If macaroonlike coconut pastries made out-of-house are available, get an order, because they were fine treats. If you order the made-inMontreal egg tarts, you might want to ask for it to be warmed up, as the refrigerator-cold ones that we had missed the point.
Caravela is the second Orléans restaurant in a row that I’ve considered, and happily so. Ottawa’s eastern suburb is welcoming some worthwhile and even standard-setting eateries, and the roving diners from across the region should take note.