PASSABLE PLATES NEED MORE ZIP
Kemptville eatery features generic fare, heritage charm and live music
Twice this summer, my travels back to Ottawa have taken me past Kemptville around dinner time, and twice we’ve eaten in town at the South Branch Bistro.
The casual eatery and music venue opened almost a year ago in its circa-1880 stone building, replacing the decade-old The Branch Restaurant after chefowner Bruce Enloe moved on to manage the Two Rivers Food Hub in Smiths Falls.
Kemptville resident and bistro co-owner Shelley Stinson told me this week that she and her partner Ken Baird quickly jumped at the chance to take over The Branch because they enjoyed coming to the business when Enloe owned it. She also told me that her bistro buys local ingredients for its dishes through the food hub, which is a middleman for producers and food businesses.
Just as the restaurant’s name has received a tweak, so too has its food. Under Enloe, dishes could go in a global, gastropub direction or reflect his smoky Texan roots. During my two visits, South Branch Bistro’s dishes have seemed a little more generic, with some gentle nods to New Orleans fare. In charge of the kitchen here for the last few months has been Layne Belcher, formerly of the Urban Cowboy restaurant in Riverside South.
Crab cakes (two for $15) were loosely textured and a bit sloppy-looking, but they packed good flavour and their remoulade sauce perked things up. Chicken wings ($14 for a pound of wings) that had been smoked in the smoker behind the restaurant, then deep-fried and seasoned or sauced, were more distinctive than the usual pub fare. “Bourbon Street” shrimp ($11), however, underwhelmed, with scarcely any shrimp at all to be found in a bowl of thick orange-and-sambuca cream sauce that we sopped up with grilled bread.
Mains here have ranged from a respectable seven-ounce filet mignon ($31) — properly tender, nicely sauced and complemented by veg and roasted-garlic mashed potatoes — to an awfully bland dinner special of beef Stroganoff ($22), served on white rice rather than the usual noodles.
Better was the well-crusted blackened salmon ($24), and somewhere in the middle were a too-creamily sauced but tasty linguine carbonara ($22) and a serving of jambalaya ($24) made with shrimp, chicken and Andouille sausage. With the latter two dishes, the chicken breast meat was dry and short on flavour.
The South Branch burger ($15), with a very creamily dressed Caesar salad on the side, was just all right and at least a little bit under-seasoned. We had wanted to try the bistro’s pulled pork sandwich but the kitchen was out of the popular smoked meat on a recent Sunday night.
Desserts — made by Belcher’s mother, we were told — were appropriately homey. We thought better of the tart lemon pie ($7) than the somewhat mushy coffee cake ($6).
The backyard patio was a more charming place for a summery dinner than the dark, tin-roofed dining-room-and-bar area, which has had its walls painted Bermuda blue. The service has been friendly but at times a little unpolished, such as when a dirty side plate landed at our table.
Stinson and Baird deserve credit for keeping the venue going as an eatery — indeed, the bistro now serves breakfast daily — and as a cosy, rallying place for live blues, folk and roots music on weekend evenings. However, the kitchen’s fare has been basically OK and unremarkable at best, and a little over-priced. It would need to be a little more special and consistent in the future to pull us off Highway 416 on our way back home.