New West Welly resto will appeal to beer lovers
20 varieties on tap will showcase world of craft brews with ‘perfect’ food to pair
Here’s a groaner of a joke for beer lovers: How are the renovations going at the about-to-open Bar Lupulus? Well, they’re hopping to it.
If that gag is at all funny, it would be because humulus lupulus is the species name for hops, which are crucial for making beer, which is the beverage that will be lavishly celebrated at Lupulus. Opening Wednesday at 1242 Wellington St. W., west of Holland Avenue where the Flying Banzini sandwich shop had been, the bar and restaurant will dive deep into not only the wide world of craft beer, but also stress “natural” wines, meaning bottles made without chemicals and minimum technological intervention.
“We want to specialize in niche products that nobody else really has access to,” says Anthony Spagnolo, one of the partners behind the business. “It’s where our passions are. I love sour, funky beer and I love natural wine.”
Regardless of their drinking preferences, food lovers should note that one of Spagnolo’s partners at the bar is chef Jeff Bradfield, whose culinary star is on the rise in Ottawa. Until the middle of the summer, Bradfield had been cooking at Social in the ByWard Market, creating sufficient buzz there to have earned him an invitation to cook at Ottawa’s Gold Medal Plates Competition on Nov. 9 at the Shaw Centre.
Spagnolo and Bradfield worked together at Brothers Beer Bistro in the ByWard Market, which opened in 2012. Spagnolo ran its beer program for several years.
As the general manager of Bar Lupulus, Spagnolo will offer 20 draft beers, plus kombucha, a fermented tea drink, and nitro cold brew coffee (coffee infused with nitrogen gas) on tap.
The deluxe taps will allow for beers to be served at different temperatures and with different pressures — “the way the brewery intends,” Spagnolo says. The bar will constantly rotate its beer offerings, and could wind up serving 1,000 different kinds of beer in a year, Spagnolo says. Beers will be served in high-end, German-made Teku glasses.
One thing that Lupulus will not do is beer flights. “That’s overdone,” Spagnolo says. “It takes up a lot of space.” But beer will be available in four-, eight- and 16-ounce pours, he says.
Bradfield, who is 32 — and before running the kitchen at Social had cooked at Erling’s Variety, Zen Kitchen and Brothers Beer Bistro — says his food will rely widely on Mediterranean influences and include raw-bar items and made-inhouse charcuterie. Menus will be compact and likely feature a few appetizers, and three pastas, three mains and three desserts. Main courses will be priced between $20 and $30, Bradfield says.
“His food is actually perfect” to pair with the acidity and effervescence of the bar’s main attractions, Spagnolo says. “It all ties in together.”
It’s not lost on Spagnolo and Bradfield that their bar is basically midway between two Ottawa culinary hotspots with similarly lofty aspirations and cachet — chef Steve Wall’s Supply and Demand Food and Raw Bar a few hundred metres to the west and chef John Svazas’s Bar Laurel a little further to the east.
Lupulus’ owners think it can stand out. “The difference will be my style,” says Bradfield. “Me and Steve are completely different chefs.”
Bradfield, who will cook everything in-house in an open kitchen that is beside the bar and buttressed by a downstairs prep kitchen, says that he has settled on the dish that he will serve at Gold Medal Plates. He says that he can manage the extra workload of preparing for the competition on top of his first month opening a new restaurant.
Spagnolo says that Ottawa-based Dominion City Brewing Company will be crafting a custom-made beer to pair with Bradfield’s dish at the November competition. However, while the beer’s proposed flavour profile and characteristics have been determined, the finished result won’t be ready to be sampled until just before the competition. “It’s a little nerveracking,” Spagnolo says.