BRITANNIA IN THE ’BURBS
Stittsville’s Jack Ketch eatery
This year, I’ve had more good meals than usual in Ottawa’s suburbs. I’d happily send you to Orléans for Persian dishes at Persis Grill, Portuguese food at Caravela or barbecue fare at Meatings. It’s hard to top the South Indian cuisine and small plates that the Kanata restaurants Flavours of Kerala and Aperitivo respectively serve.
I hoped for similar satisfactions in Stittsville at the Jack Ketch, which opened Oct. 21 on Stittsville Main Street. After a lunch and a dinner there, I definitely see its potential. But I also think a few tweaks would improve some dishes.
Behind this cosy place of fewer than 30 seats are chef Kevin Conway and server Allison Pearce — and as far as I can tell, that’s it. Kudos to Conway, who is from Stittsville and has cooked in Toronto and at Social, MeNa and Whalesbone in Ottawa, for launching a more personal, smaller-scale gastropub-style eatery in his hometown.
The Jack Ketch is a narrow, simple place that gives visitors a view of Conway working in its modest kitchen as soon as they enter. There’s a wee bar of just a few seats, and beside it the greyblue walled dining area with its wood banquette along one wall. There are some small paintings on the walls. I didn’t look too closely, but the impression I got was that fortunately, the ambience did not nod overly to the eatery’s notorious namesake — an English executioner of the 1600s who, as the stories go, was too incompetent to dispatch his victims quickly and made a gory, painful mess of things.
More appealingly, the connection to England pops up on Conway’s menu in some smaller dishes that we’ve had and enjoyed. The slab of pork pie ($12) that we tucked into as an appetizer was a spot-on delicious, meaty indulgence with a rich, melting crust. More pork pie is probably what I’d be most craving on my next trip to Stittsville.
Conway’s riff on “angels on horseback” (a cooked oyster hors d’oeuvre, $3.50 each) was fine. He chose to fry rather than bake the oysters, and he bolsters them with a spicy chutney-like jam speckled with pork belly.
We also liked Conway’s homespun snack of minced Matane shrimp, mildly flavoured with mace and cloves and served with toast ($5), which played on the British classic of potted shrimp, minus its usual “lid” of congealed clarified butter.
Kedgeree, an Anglo-Indian dish consisting of flaked fish, rice, parsley, hard-boiled eggs and curry powder, pops up on Conway’s menu too, but converted into fritters for an appetizer ($13). Ours were crisp, but the sample I tried really needed its mayo-based sauce as it seemed heavy on batter and very light on fish. At a lunch visit, we tried three items that are also on the dinner menu. Best was the impressively tall six-ounce “hangman’s burger,” dressed to the hilt with bacon, aged cheddar, crispy onions and more and served with thick, plank-like fries ($16). Vegetarian, barleybased risotto ($16) was lacking
in flavour and excitement, while spicy Buffalo-style Cornish hen ($16), was seriously over-sauced, and the hominy that came with it was not hot.
We had better main courses at our dinner visit. The standout, and the cheapest of three reasonably priced dishes, was a thick, chunky portion of maple-glazed pork loin ($20) that was juicy and flavourful and well supported with brussels sprouts and an intriguing savoury pastry stuffed with white beans. (Here, a little proactive describing by Pearce would have helped.)
Pan-roasted trout ($22) was not bad at all, but even better was its hearty bed of du puy lentils mixed with bits of chorizo and mussels. We had high hopes for duck ravioli with duck confit in duck broth, topped with cured duck egg and pistachio ($22), but felt the dish could have been improved upon. The ravioli were the stars on the plate, but the broth in particular didn’t wow us, and while the nuts as a garnish loomed large, the cured york shavings seemed underplayed.
Three desserts (all $8) were uncomplicated, homey concoctions, as old-fashioned as the retro patterned dinnerware beneath them. I thought the milk chocolate tart topped the cakebased choices (blueberry grunt and pouding chômeur) for depth of flavour and interest.
At the tiny bar, a few local beers are on tap. Cocktails, including “flips” — smooth, frothy mixed drinks of yore that contain beaten egg — are reasonably priced at $9 and $10. The wine selection covers main varietals each with a single bottle, and six-ounce pours are available for between $7 and $13.
In all, despite some mild downs along with the ups, I have a generally favourable impression of the Jack Ketch. Given the shortage of interesting alternatives nearby, it deserves the benefit of the doubt. If the place can raise its game just a bit, it could be a really solid choice in Stittsville without any qualifications.