the Ottawa Guide part 1: eating

Several times a day, Eric and I turn to each other and say, “we’re moving… to… Jordan? We’re moving to Jordan. What?” It doesn’t seem real yet; the Lonely Planet sits on our kitchen table but we still can’t seem to make out how this is different from a vacation.

What helps the idea to sink in is thinking about leaving Ottawa. Parts of that make me very happy – saying goodbye to salt caked onto the hems of my pants, -40 windchills, and curiously slow drivers who inexplicably seem to hate cyclists with a particularly righteous fervour.

And yet there are certain things I’m going to really miss, especially eating. Ottawa tends to get looked down upon from people who come from Toronto or Montreal (or who have ever been to either of those cities), but it has a vibrant food scene. In the hopes that these places might still be around and great whenever we’re back, here’s a list of my favourites. Should you ever find yourself in Canada’s frosty capital, enjoy!

Bridgehead coffee

Bridgehead is a local chain that sells fair-trade, organic coffee. But unlike a lot of places that stick an organic label on crappy coffee and feel justified in charging $2.50 for a tepid cup of sludge, their coffee is really good, especially since they opened their own local roastery last spring. Their baristas are generally quite talented, too – they know not to burn the milk, and the espresso is generally well-pulled. We spend an embarrassingly large amount of money there.

Suzy Q doughnuts

rocky road; one of the constantly revolving flavours

This place opened up last year in the old Hintonburger shack (see below), and I haven’t been able to look at a mass-market doughnut since. I’ve written about them before – pillowy mounds of dough, covered in fresh and creative glazes. My all-time favourite was the pumpkin pie, although a close second is the raspberry white chocolate.

Hintonburger

A burger joint that serves phenomenal burgers using local, free-range beef, local cheese, and amazing fries. They used to be located in the shack now occupied by Suzy Q; when a KFC closed down up the street they relocated (but kept the bucket). Go expecting a 15-minute wait at minimum; half an hour if it’s a gorgeous summer night.

Hintonburg Public House

This eclectic gastropub has adorably mismatched everything, but don’t let the awesome decor distract you from the menu. They make a mean burger, pull pints of local beer, and host fun events (including bingo and open mike nights). They used to have a duck confit hash on the brunch menu that made me want it to be groundhog day in my mouth. I’m eventually going to steal their electric blue bar (pictured).

Town

We used to live right near Town, but never got around to eating there before we moved. I finally made it there this year and have been kicking myself for missing out on years of ricotta-stuffed meatballs ever since. It’s cosy, italian-inspired small plates that are impressive without showing off.

Murray St Café

This 100% locally sourced restaurant does a ton of cool in-house charcuterie and puts together a great cheese board, but the real deal is their lunch menu. Fantastic sandwiches, spatzle mac-n-cheese, and a s’more pudding in a mason jar. I trick work colleagues into going there every time there’s a goodbye lunch to be had (a common occurrence when one works in the foreign service).

Shawarma Palace

Ask three Ottawaians where the best shawarma is, and you’ll get three different answers… but they’re all wrong, unless they say Shawarma Palace. This Lebanese joint on Rideau makes amazing shawarma and falafel that were entirely responsible for my freshman 15 20 35 (sad but true) back in first year. I don’t let myself walk by more than a few times a year.

Whalesbone / Supply and Demand / Elmdale Oyster House

Oysters at the Elmdale with fresh horseradish and a bevy of sauces

I call this the seafood trifecta of Ottawa. My understanding of the kitchen line-up composition of these restaurants is that they’re all vaguely intertwined and awesome. Whalesbone is pretty special-occasion-y (read: pricey but worth it), but Supply and Demand is incredibly reasonable and the freshly opened Elmdale is dangerously low-priced (considering the huge number of oysters I ate last weekend, I thought they had made a mistake on our bill).

Allium

This little dining room is right around the corner from us, and they have a really clever way of packing the restaurant on a Monday – tapas! The menu is always changing and everything is delicious. In the spring and summer, they grow fresh herbs out front in big planters.

Foolish Chicken

The Foolish Chicken is what Swiss Chalet dreams of being – succulent roast chicken and ribs, great fries, and amazing cheesecakes. Sometimes our whole block smells like rotisserie and the dog goes nuts (okay, so do we). They also have a lot of gluten-free options.

The Wild Oat

This veggie heaven is up in the Glebe. When I used to work beside it, I would love to grab an Americano and a maple hemp cookie (I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to reverse-engineer them for years!). They also make amazing sandwiches – my favourite is the beet and sprouts!

Coconut Lagoon

Like shawarma, everyone has an opinion on the best indian food in town. My vote goes to Coconut Lagoon, a South Indian eatery in Vanier that has the best thali around.

***

Anyways, I’m sure I’m missing some Ottawa favourites, but this town is seriously full of great food. I’d like to try and get to them all one last time before we leave, but it’s coming up so fast that we’re going to have to start eating out a lot more to squeeze them all in!

Depaysment

As excited as I am about Amman, the closer our departure gets the more it hits me what I’ll be leaving behind. Friends and family, of course, but the sheer physicality of moving away from Canada is something I’ve never really considered before. Complaining about winter may be a national pastime, but I find it strange to consider that this is my last brush with snow for a few years (it doesn’t count unless it stays for months!).

Right now outside my window, the sun is shining and snow is falling straight down. It’s cold out, but it’s clearly spring. I can practically hear the sap running; soon they’ll dynamite the ice on the river and the entire city will smell like mud and new grass.

homegrown

Ontario doesn’t have coasts or mountains or even big sky-filled plains, but this landscape has been the backdrop to my entire life, and it’s strange to know that the next few years will play out among sand dunes instead of mixed deciduous forests. This country – this province – has always been home; the smells and the birdsongs and the look of rock-lined lakes and evergreen trees have always marked my internal compass.

I’ll adjust, of course – I’m resilient and globally-minded and all that. But I hadn’t been expecting that I’d want to say goodbye to the land.

Citric acid

sunny

My boss turned to me the other day and said (about the weather), “it may not quite feel like spring, but it certainly feels like the end of winter.”

He’s right. It’s -20C out today but people are walking slowly, with their coats unzipped, instead of the hunched-down speedwalk of January. The sun is waxing slowly towards it’s most powerful months, instead of the feeble and faraway white disk we’d become accustomed to.

Spring puts me in the mood for bright, tart flavours. We won’t have local produce for months, but I can whet my appetite for them with lemons and maple syrup, pushing aside rich and steamy depth-of-winter things for precursors to asparagus, three long months away.

Not for a few weeks, though. Tomorrow, Eric and I are mimicking the monarchs we’ll hopefully see by giving winter the slip and heading to Mexico, for limes and cilantro, for hiking and eating and generally engaging in relatively tame sorts of malarky (the kind we do best).

The blog will be quiet, but feel free to follow along on instagram, where I’ll be feeding my social media addiction whenever I can get wifi.

Winter weekends

The Great Canadian Pastime of talking about the weather is out in full force today, at least here in Ontario – it’s snowing! Thanks to technology, people are writing facebook updates, posting photos, and texting their bosses that they can’t make it in, all on account of the snowstorm we’re getting.

I’ll be picking up a few supplies on my way home tonight so that we can properly sequester ourselves indoors (hot chocolate, wine, flare guns…). In the meantime, here are some things for you to click on or look at if you’re also buried in snow.

Good satire is far too rare these days.

Another photo competition, another page of (mostly) mind-blowing photography (but raise you’re hand if you’re needlessly irritated by the “motherhood is the most important thing in a woman’s life” shot).

This looks delicious - definitely on my “things to bake” list.

36 hours in Mexico City  sounds like taco-studded bliss.

Go home, evolution, you are drunk.

This is sad.

Fashion!

sporty

On Sunday, Eric and I woke up relatively early, walked the dog to buy doughnuts, and then packed up a bag and a vrtucar and headed to Gatineau Park for some snowshoeing.

When we first strapped them on and started trudging across already-packed snow, I had some doubts. But once we got into the woods, where the paths wound tightly up and down through trees, over rocks, and across frozen creeks on which the crampons tapped out a strangely musical ping, I was sold.

The trees sheltered us from the wind, and the trails were challenging enough to keep us warm. We spent a pleasant three hours trundling through the park, occasionally crossing the groomed cross-country ski paths where we would pause to watch spandex-clad superathletes glide past us, arms heaving above their heads before each push.

We only got a little lost, when I started us around the path for a third time instead of turning back towards the parking lot, but luckily Eric didn’t ignore his déjà vu and said something before we got too much exercise.

It seems silly to have suddenly realized my fondness for a winter sport months before I move to a desert, but at least this will be a selling point for returning to Canada. And it will make a great icebreaker at fancy diplomatic parties, when I need to sum up Canada: “oh, -20 celsius? It’s nothing! We love to wear minimal clothing and ski uphill in that kind of weather, or if you feel like a gentler workout you just strap tennis racquets to your feet and go on a 6km hike through the woods.”

Better living through plastic explosives

A riddle: I did not grow up in Chicago, where the movie The Santa Clause took place, but it was filmed where I grew up.

That’s because, like many movies, it was filmed in Canada, but they brought in American police cars, busses, street signs, and actors as necessary to make everyone think it was in the US. Even books by Canadian authors will often take place in the states, which is understandable, but disappointing.

So I get an exciting little frisson when something takes place in Canada, and actually admits it. Better Living Through Plastic Explosives is a book of short stories by a Canadian that take place in Canada. It’s fun to read about a murderous yuppy cul-de-sac in Vancouver and recognize the landmarks, or be able to picture the view from a rooftop party in Toronto.

Maybe this whole time I’ve just been reading the wrong short stories.

Christmas Kicks

Despite my general aversion to shopping, there is one kind of marketing that is 100% foolproof on me (dear advertisers, please stop reading now).

If something is a normal article of clothing but is artisan, made by a master craftsperson, one-of-a-kind, or otherwise different in a non-kooky way, I am sold. Do I want a hand-made dress made from old jeans that someone’s selling on Etsy? No thank you. Do I want a purse that looks like every other purse but was made by a master pursemaker in a bucolic setting? Please let me throw money at you!

This is why I’ve been eying Schier Shoes for a while. Normal desert boots? Maybe. But they’re made BY HAND, by GENTLEMEN in NAMIBIA. YOU GUYS.

I had decided on a neon toe cap pair, but given their long shipping time I was going to wait and buy them in a few months, so that I could actually wear them when they arrive instead of locking them in my closet to wait out winter.

But then they had a sample sale on Instagram, and I saw these:

In my size! So I jumped on them. As I type this, those beauties are headed towards my feet. I might not get much use out of them for the next few months (unless I wear them indoors), but considering that we’re moving to a desert, I thought that they were a reasonable investment.

Do you ever make impulse purchases? Does this count as an impulse purchase, considering that I’ve been contemplating buying a pair for 8 months?

Early resolutions; or how to grow up

bittersweet chocolate – roasted nuts – peaty

Fall and my birthday always gets me thinking about what I want to do in life, but snowflakes and damp weather send me inside to think about who I am.

Despite being the kind of person who starts almost every paragraph in this blog with “I,” I don’t think I’m doing too bad. I have a small but wildly enthusiastic interspecies fan club, and I don’t even make them wear t-shirts with my face on the front.

There are still kinks to work out, of course. When I was in Haiti, I was really craving a charcuterie plate dinner – some thinly sliced prosciutto, those tiny french gherkins, cheese, olives, wine – and a few days ago I sent Eric a vague email asking him to pick up the goods. When I arrived home to unsliced prosciutto and the wrong kind of pickles (!), I got upset. Then I realized that I was being preposterous and became furious with myself for being upset. Nothing would do but to throw myself facedown on the bed and proclaim “I have ruined Wednesday, and Wednesday is my favourite day!”

In anticipation of one day becoming a fully-functioning adult, I’m going to work on fine-tuning my reactions to undesirable events (especially when they revolve around fancy pickles), and also that old cliché about not being the centre of the universe.

and now the wait begins…

After weeks months of googling, hair-pulling, international phone calls, coffee chats, resume revisions, and endless pros and cons lists, I submitted my posting list for next year.

I’ll miss this!

I don’t mean to be coy (and debated whether or not to post this at all), but I’ll just say that our list turned out to be a lot more varied than I initially expected. We managed to put down 4 (out of a possible 5) countries that we’d be excited to go to, so hopefully our odds are good for landing something.

Luckily, my top two picks seemed to be resoundingly unpopular with all of my colleagues (I don’t know why – they seem awesome!), so we may very well be in the running for one of those by default (or you know, my competence could play into the decision too!). I go back and forth about which one I should wish for at 11:11.

Now I plan to sit back and enjoy fall – it could very well be our last one in Canada for a while, and I plan to make the most of it.

Looming deadlines

I know I promised that I would give more detail about this year’s birthday list later this week, but YOU GUYS. We have a week and a half to submit our posting choices, and I’m in training for the entire time. So I’m trying to set up phone calls with people all over the world, prepare applications, google everything I can think of, and breathe into a paper bag.

Strangely, I think that I’ll actually feel better once my fate is in the hands of a mysterious shadowy committee who will decide where I’m going (or leave me to freeze in Ottawa, knock wood). At least then I’ll be able to forget about it? Just kidding, it will consume my thoughts.

But I have other things to look forward to that will hopefully provide a distraction – New York, Thanksgiving, a half-marathon, and then Haiti!

Fall is my favourite season, but I wish it was longer. I don’t know when I’m going to find the time to roll in leaves at this rate.