Oatmeal café may bowl you over
Oat Couture Oatmeal Cafe serves some hearty dishes of provocative porridge
Until very recently, my assumptionthatoatmealisjust for breakfast was pretty deeply ingrained.
But in the past two weeks, I’ve had my outlook on porridge rocked by the oddly savoury yet satisfying bowls at Oat Couture Oatmeal Cafe, which opened in the spring in Old Ottawa South.
At this cosy and apparently unique eatery-coffee shop, the menu lists more than a dozen spins on oatmeal, each made with toppings and stirred-in ingredients. Four are designated “mighty,” meaning that they’re free of refined sugars, five are “sweet,” and five more are “savoury,” meaning that everything from bacon to blue cheese to pesto to peanuts could be involved.
We are a long way away from what the 18th century essayist Samuel Johnson had in mind when he wrote that oats were “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”
The café was founded by investment manager Brian Montgomery. But it was chefpartner Ben Baird, formerly of the Urban Pear in the Glebe and the Ottawa Streat Gourmet food truck, who concocted such items as the “Kyoto” bowl, made with brisket, shiitake, fresh pineapple and peanuts on oatmeal, with pickled ginger, sesame and green onion stirred in, and the “Eden,” in which oatmeal shares its bowl with chunks of rosemarypoached pear, dried figs, beans and blue cheese, while the pears’ poaching liquid and pepper have been stirred in.
Of course, the more conventional bowls are in the majority here and do not raise eyebrows. I’ve enjoyed a bowl made with sliced bananas, blobs of almond butter, dates and coconut and raspberry purée. My wife took a bowl heavy with chia and hemp seeds and liked it a little less, simply because of how much flossing was needed later to remove the seeds from between
her teeth. But in general, both bowls were fine, made, like all the bowls here, with comfortingly textured organic, Canadian steelcut oats that had been prepared in one of the cafe’s three Instant Pots. However — and perhaps this is my apparently dominant preference for more meaty, salty fare asserting itself — it’s the savoury items that would draw me back to the oatmeal café.
The most breakfast-y of the savoury bowls here is the “Hangover,” which involves bits of thickly cut bacon, aged cheddar and julienned apple, plus a significant amount of caramelized onion and thyme stirred in, plus lemon juice and maple syrup. The mix here was a good one, with all of the contrasts playing nicely with one another and the quality of the ingredients apparent. Indeed, you could basically pay these compliments to all of the cafe’s savoury bowls.
Other bowls treated oatmeal as a more or less neutral element or as a stand-in for some other starch. The bowl called “Bubba” starred bits of marinated shrimp, playing loosely on shrimp and grits, perhaps, but taking things in a more southwestern direction, with the additions of avocado, cilantro, lime and cumin. My friend who ordered this bowl liked it, but thought it improved as the tender but cold shrimp morsels warmed up from the heat of the oatmeal.
The “Caprese” was an oatmealbased mash-up of caprese salad and risotto, you might say, with the basil-and-caper pesto that made the oatmeal green making a big impression, along with grape tomatoes, crumbled goat cheese and crisped prosciutto.
My two favourites, though, were the brisket-based “Kyoto” bowl, which got its protein right and zinged with contrasting flavours and textures, and the funkily cheesy and pear-and-pecan enhanced “Eden.” Both of these bowls delivered the most varied mouthfuls and surprised pleasantly with their combinations.
How much oatmeal should you order before you’ve had your fill? I consistently ordered mediumsized bowls ($11 each) and found them rightsized. A friend who ordered a large “Hangover” ($14) could not polish it off for brunch.
Another friend who enjoyed his “Caprese” nonetheless took issue with its price. He felt that there should have been more to his $11 bowl, given that a little more money would have bought a more filling and meatier bowl of ramen or pho, for example. I think it comes down to the value you place on oatmeal.
The café also makes oatmealbased cookies, dog treats, smoothies and granola. It delivers through Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes, but I would prefer the attractive, comforting, well-lit vibe of the place itself, with its brick and pine walls, high ceiling and industrial chairs and table tops. Fun fact: The address was once home to a bank and the bank safe’s door is the coffee bar.
The café serves coffee from Little Victories Coffee about a kilometre away in the Glebe, and it’s very good.
Apparently chef Baird at first dismissed the idea of savoury oatmeals when it was put to him, but experimented just the same. We should thank him and the café for being so serious about cereal. Ottawa foodies are better off with their provocative porridges.