RESTAURANTS
Spotlight on La Maison Conroy
I doubt Mary McConnell Conroy would have enjoyed the seductive art now hanging on the stone walls of her former family home. Or the news that the house was, at one point, a strip club. In the mid-1800s, 61, rue Principale was the residence of lumber baron Robert Conroy and the aforementioned Mary. Most recently, it housed the restaurant and pub Le Bostaurus. The new occupants of the Aylmer mansion have scrubbed a few layers of grunge off the walls and named their stylish new restaurant in honour of those who came before.
It’s a stately room with peaked ceilings, dark wood floors, velvet drapes, and boudoir chandeliers. What commands attention are the sultry portraits of lips and eyes and furtive faces by Ottawa artist Meredith Lyman. They brighten what might otherwise have been a sedate space.
The kitchen is run by chef Kyle Mortimer-Proulx. His CV includes the Brookstreet Hotel, the vegan restaurant Zen Kitchen, and the big, lively Lowertown Brewery on York Street. To La Maison Conroy across the river, he clearly brings a smorgasbord of experience, along with two sous-chefs, both from his Zen days. (Where neither of them would have learned to whip butter with bone marrow.)
This bit of lusciousness arrives with the excellent house bread. It sets the stage for meals of many refined, meaty pleasures, beginning with a faultless beef tartare that’s given a umami kick with black garlic aioli and cured egg — the egg grated over top in fluffy yellow flakes. Scallops arrive milky white and glistening with the beef fat in which they are poached. They rest on a soft bed of celery root topped with a tangy mélange of pickled shallots and mushrooms, strips of fermented celery root, and bitter bites of charred radicchio. The crunch in the dish comes in the tidy squares of fried chicken skin. Pickerel is buttery, beautifully cooked, propped up on a vibrant green swoosh of creamed kale beneath rings of roasted spaghetti squash. Around the fish are splotches of squash purée and one ugly lentil fritter that tastes wonderful. Roasted carrots of many hues are paired with torched ricotta and braised fennel, the plate scattered with nuts, seeds, and pickled onion. Two sauces — a sweet carrot “caramel” and a tangy dill yogourt — compete for attention.
You could begin quite happily with oysters here. Or with charcuterie. Quebec cheeses are served in prime condition. A terrine of pork is chunky with duck, rabbit, and pistachio, supported with mustard, pickles, nuts, and perky chutney.
I managed three bites of dessert. Possibly four. A log of peanut butter semifreddo is coated with dark chocolate, mired in an excellent salted caramel, scattered with candied peanuts and crumbs of dehydrated chocolate cake, and served with a white-chocolate-drenched pretzel.
Wine, beer, and cocktail lists have all been thoroughly fussed over, and wine service is delightfully old-school.
Small plates $15–$25. Open Tuesday to Saturday for dinner.
Feast and Revel 325 Dalhousie St., 613-321-1234
The dining room of the Andaz Hotel is a glassy box, windowed on two sides, modernly monochromatic in shades of grey, touches of lumberjack plaid, copper accents, and dark wood. In charge of the kitchen is Stephen La Salle, previously head chef at the Novotel. He put that hotel on the good-food radar with the British pub fare served at The Albion Rooms. At Feast and Revel, the focus is Canadian, including some nods to Indigenous foods. You can begin with bannock. There’s poutine, of course, updated with soft lamb and fondant potato, elk from The Elk Ranch, and beef from a family farm in Perth. There’s pudding chômeur for dessert. But we start with the less local octopus, and it’s a triumph of a starter. Braised, then burnished on the grill, crisp and terrifically tender, the meat is propped on browned florets of cauliflower that have been roasted in seaweed-infused oil, then drizzled with an anchovy gremolata and dusted with dulse powder. The carrot salad is a winner. Lightly smoked, then roasted, the carrots cover a downy pillow of whipped feta sown with hazelnuts and drizzled with a plum vinaigrette. Sablefish is served with middleneck clams, bok choy, and radish, set in a shallow bowl pooled with a sticky-sweet broth. You’ll want a spoon to lap up every lick of the sauce. There’s a chicken dish — it’s billed as coq au vin and isn’t quite that but delights nonetheless. The bird is in the good company of gnocchi, braised cipollinis, winter mushrooms, and bacon lardons in a wine sauce reduced to a rich, ruby glaze. For dessert, the old-school Quebecois pudding chômeur is topped with bubbling maple-caramel and a blob of vanilla-yogourt ice cream. Mains $22–$37. Open daily.
Mason-Dixon Kitchen & Bar 424 Preston St., 613-422-7880
Mason-Dixon opened last fall, replacing the short-lived Quan Viet Fusion, which in turn had replaced the short-lived ThaiPas. The purple walls are now white, and the sesame aroma has been swapped for smells of smoke. The menu mixes what you would expect from a Southern barbecue restaurant — ribs, brisket, fried chicken and waffles, mac and cheese — with a bit of what you might not (smoked beef marrow, say, served with a pickled salad). It’s the smoking that elevates a beet salad. Mason-Dixon chef Henry Besser-Rosenberg adds crunchy balls of panko-fried goat cheese, apples, and candied nuts to further the fun. He smokes mushrooms, cheddar cheese, and bacon and piles these on a pesto-smeared pastry for a comforting mushroom melt. Shrimp snap as you bite into them, coated with a perky spice mix and paired with chorizo. Beneath the shrimp and sausage is a smear of roasted corn purée punched with the heat and smoke of chipotle peppers. A hunk of cornbread is terrific when dunked in the smear. Curiously, the ribs disappoint at our winter visits. They are improved when dunked in the house barbecue sauce but, on their own, are dry and under-seasoned. Better the beef brisket, sliced in juicy slabs and tucked into a sandwich or splayed on a combo platter with other meats. Spiced dark chocolate cookies make us happy. Ice cream would improve them. There’s a sizable bourbon collection and well-made cocktails with a Southern focus. Small plates $8–$17, large plates $15–$30. Open Monday to Thursday 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday 5:30 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Tennessy Willems 1082 Wellington St. W., 613-722-0000
This Hintonburg pizza restaurant is a cozy, woody space with soft lighting. There’s a small bar as you enter and a kitchen behind it where the pizza oven and its minder are on show. One wall is an all-retractable window. Others are covered with a rotating collection of local art, a blackboard with daily specials, and shelves selling preserves. TW’s wood-fired pizzas arrive puffy and bubbled, crisp and soft, dotted with black char and tasting of summer campfire. The tomato sauce is simple goodness, the cheese blend is in fine balance, and the toppings tend toward the modern, though still within the sensible range — eclectic offerings such as pulled pork, duck confit, and red-wine-simmered rabbit. Seasonal pizzas bolster the regular list. Favourites include the Wild Boar pizza, with apple, old cheddar, and a drizzle of sage oil, and the Chorizo, with well and truly caramelized onions spread in thick tangles across the base, covered with discs of house-made sausage and dabs of goat cheese. From the selection of non-tomato-based pizzas, the star is The Bianco, with sweet bites of soft pear and sharp knobs of Gorgonzola. A lick of the house chili oil lifts the impact of all the elements. You could start with a bit of charcuterie — the pork terrine is recommended. The Caesar salad is solid, with lots of chewy good bacon, a lemony lift, and no skimping on sharp cheese. The lemon tart remains the way to end. Pizza $12–$20. Open for lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday and Sunday from 4 p.m. for dinner.