The second annual celebration of the city's most exciting culinary stars will be held Oct. 19, in partnership with the National Arts Centre, featuring an eclectic and fresh lineup as selected by our restaurant critic, Peter Hum.

As exciting as last year’s first ever Ottawa Citizen Best Restaurants event was, its follow-up this fall promises to be bigger and better, with 200 more tickets, a larger venue, and a more diverse selection of chefs.

In line with the paper’s steadfast commitment to keeping readers in the know about Ottawa’s premier places to eat and drink, the Citizen is throwing a cocktail reception-style bash in partnership with the National Arts Centre, on Monday, Oct. 19 from 6 to 9 p.m. Sixteen excellent Ottawa restaurants, bakeries and food businesses — selected by yours truly — will be offering their wares to guests. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage purveyors will also be on hand to slake your thirst, including Beyond The Pale Brewing Company and Casa-Dea Estates Winery, who are both returning to the event for the second year.

This event offers a chance to not just taste some of the best bites the capital has to offer — but to meet the chefs on the cutting edge of Ottawa’s creative culinary scene, and mingle with fellow Citizen readers, and newsroom types too.

In 2025, our inaugural event attracted a sell-out crowd of 400 people to the Canadian Museum of Nature, where 13 restaurants served sweet and savoury small bites. We’ve moved this year’s party to the much roomier Canal Lobby of the NAC, and we’ll cap ticket sales at 600 guests. Regular tickets are to go on sale on Wednesday, Sept. 2 at 1:30 p.m., and the Citizen and NAC will be donating a portion of proceeds to the Ottawa Food Bank.

Citizen subscribers will get exclusive dibs to the first wave of 120 deeply discounted tickets priced at $150, plus tax, per person. That goes for those who opt for the newspaper’s sweetheart-deal, introductory six-month online subscription for just $1, too.

For readers who have subscribed to the Citizen’s free arts and life newsletter, Out of Office, 30 tickets priced at $175 will be up for grabs. Otherwise, general admission tickets are $200, plus tax. A limited number of VIP tickets will be available for $250, plus tax, guaranteeing early access with shorter line-ups to meet the chefs and sample their offerings.

Citizen journalists including myself, editor-in-chief Nicole Feriancek, city columnist Bruce Deachman, digital editor and fellow food reviewer Sofia Misenheimer plus many others newsroom writers and editors will be on hand throughout the evening, and we’re looking forward to meeting and chatting with readers. I’ll be happy to talk about Ottawa’s dining-out scene, which fascinates me on a daily basis, and to give out and receive restaurant recommendations that will surely figure into my ongoing coverage.

If attending this year’s Ottawa Citizen Best Restaurants event appeals to you, best not to dither. Last year’s event sold out in four days.

I’ve enjoyed curating the featured food purveyors invited to this year’s soirée, and relied heavily on the stories that I and my colleague Sofia Misenheimer have written over the last year and a half. My goal was to assemble a mix that includes not only fine-dining favourites of mine but also hidden gems and up-and-comers. I think I’ve succeeded, and that you won’t see a similarly eclectic and fresh lineup anywhere else in the city.

You can learn more about the event and buy tickets online at ottawacitizen.com/bestrestaurants —  but in the meantime — let’s get into the great restaurants who are part of this year’s event.

1 Elgin St., inside the National Arts Centre; nac-cna.ca/en/lelgin

The event’s host and the Citizen’s partner this year was featured at last year’s inaugural event, and with good reason. The National Art Centre’s restaurant frequently participates at Ottawa culinary events, contributing crave-able plates for refined palates. The institution’s resident chef program, which showcases rising food stars from across Canada, is a testament to its own talent-searching skills. It’s only fair play to give the NAC a seat at our event’s table, so to speak.

340 Somerset St. W., restaurantarlo.com

The kudos keep rolling in for this warm and welcoming Centretown restaurant, which in its six years has become a well-established go-to for food lovers and oenophiles. This year, Arlo is ranked 77th on the annual Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list. Just last month, it became the only Ottawa restaurant to crack the exclusive and prestigious 50 Best Discovery guide, a global database at the fingertips of tourists who travel for food. As much as I dine out as part of my rounds, I make a point of eating at Arlo just for fun, because chef and co-owner Jamie Stunt’s sophisticated but unfussy dishes have never disappointed me. Wine choices, especially of the natural variety, always intrigue, thanks to sommelier and co-owner Alex McMahon’s expertise.

117 Centrepointe Dr Units 123/124, aroundtheblockbutcherandmarket.ca

In March of this year, I went on a particularly satisfying quest for the best smoked meat in Ottawa, and found it in Nepean, declaring Around the Block Butcher and Market’s Montreal-style smoked meat sandwich as the best in the city. The destination butcher shop’s in-house chef Kat Ferries makes a truly ambrosial, dry-brined, uber-beefy smoked meat sandwich that matches or surpasses its rivals that I’ve had in Montreal. The sandwich is only available at Around the Block sporadically, and its many fans rely on alerts on the butchery’s social media to know when they’ll need to queue up. At our event, Ferries will serve a scaled-down portion of this now legendary sandwich, which in its full, 12-ounce glory costs upwards of $30, a steep price that I would gladly pay week in, week out if only it were available. If you haven’t tried her smoked meat, you’ll likely become a convert.

1242 Wellington St. W., barlupulus.ca

Bar Lupulus may look casual and unassuming, but the food that chef Cam McGihon turns out is among the most thoughtful and ambitious in the city. That should come as no surprise, given that McGihon spent three months in early 2024 cooking at Frantzén, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Stockholm that has ranked as high as sixth in the world on the taste-making World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. At Lupulus, McGihon shows off multiple masteries, from charcuterie to house-made pasta to elaborate mains. This summer, when I paid a discretionary visit and sat on the eatery’s disarmingly casual patio, I was wowed by a McGihon dish that combined kombu-cured guinea fowl with a smoked anchovy and horseradish emulsion, fondant potatoes cooked in boar fat, comte cheese foam that was to die for, amaretto-poached apples, haskap gel, caramelized parsnip and chicory. I don’t know what he will surprise us with at the Citizen’s event, but I expect it to be a delicacy.

853 St. Laurent Blvd., coconutlagoon.ca

It really wouldn’t be a foodie event in Ottawa without chef Joe Thottungal, of Coconut Lagoon and Thali, serving his crowd-pleasing Indian dishes to guests.

Born, raised and trained as a chef in India, Thottungal has ascended to the top ranks of Ottawa’s restaurant community since he opened Coconut Lagoon more than two decades ago in a former St. Laurent Boulevard sports bar. Championing the food of Kerala on India’s southwest coast, Thottungal popularized the thrilling pleasures of food in which coconut milk, curry leaves, ginger, garlic and freshly ground spices play starring roles. Thottungal has had many culinary dreams come true. In 2017, he represented Ottawa at the 2017 Canadian Culinary Championship, where he took home silver. He opened a second restaurant, Thali, in downtown Ottawa, just before the pandemic, and he is eying a third restaurant in Almonte. Thottungal has also written two award-winning cookbooks, one for each restaurant. In 2020, the Citizen named Thottungal one of the year’s top local newsmakers, in part to recognize his philanthropy when he stepped up during the COVID-19 pandemic’s early days to help direct the Ottawa charity Food For Thought. No wonder Thottungal in 2022 received the Order of Ottawa and an honorary degree from Algonquin College.

820 Somerset St. W., kozhi.ca

Opened this summer in Chinatown, Kozhi is the latest venture from Ottawa chef Teegavarapu Sarath Mohan. In the last decade, Mohan proved his prowess at cooking first traditional and then more elevated and personal Indian dishes, most notably at his sadly shuttered restaurant Katha on Preston Street. But at Kozhi, Mohan has unexpectedly decided to focus on making fried chicken of the highest order. I think Kozhi succeeds in getting its fundamental premise right. I would make Kozhi a regular stop for fried chicken and cocktails if I didn’t have so many other restaurants to go to. It will be exciting to see where Mohan takes this restaurant, and I thought that adding him to the roster of the Citizen’s culinary event acknowledges his high standards and tremendous potential.

60 Rue Bégin, Gatineau, Hull sector, lapetiteprimerose.ca

For Ottawa food-lovers, including myself, Gatineau’s eateries can sometimes tumble off the radar. In that case, La Petite Primerose, a cosy 28-seater in Gatineau’s Hull sector where the acclaimed restaurant Chez Edgar used to be, is a solid reminder of how good the eating can be on the other side of the Ottawa River.

Opened in the spring of 2025, La Petite Primerose calls itself a “hyper-seasonal” restaurant. When I had dinner there shortly after it opened, spot prawns, white asparagus and rhubarb were fleetingly on the menu. Right now, among its stars are tomato with caviar, eggplant with apricot molasses and chanterelles with smoked beets.

Chef and co-owner Lewis Robinson, 34, has some notable fine-dining experience under his apron, including stints at Eleven Madison Park and Restaurant Daniel in New York, as well as at Canoe in Toronto, all large and lauded haute-cuisine destinations for both diners and cooks. He was previously the chef at Ottawa restaurants Bar Lupulus and Bar Laurel.

226 Nepean St., Ottawa, northandnavy.com

North & Navy, which entered its second decade in business this year, serves some of Ottawa’s very best pasta dishes in a fetching, classy Centretown space that’s a fine-dining destination for Ottawans and visitors to the city alike. At last year’s Citizen Best Restaurants event, the North & Navy crew served a undeniable crowd-pleaser — spaghetti cacio e pepe, the classic cheese-and-pepper pasta of Rome, made by tossing the noodles in the hollow of a tremendous parmesan wheel. This year at another culinary event, I saw North & Navy reprise its cacio e pepe show. Perhaps it’s their go-to. If the Nepean Street restaurant repeats its offering this year, I’ll be more than fine with it because you can never have too much quality pasta.

78 Mill St., Almonte, northmarketalmonte.com

Like my choice of La Petite Primerose in Gatineau, North Market in Almonte nods to the quality of the restaurants if you venture further afield of Ottawa and its urban core.

When I ate last summer at North Market, what really impressed me was chef-owner Amanda Herrera’s simple but wonderfully flavourful way with vegetables. While North Market is not vegetarian, it does give pride of place to the bounty from the garden right behind it. Just recalling Herrera’s hakurei turnips sitting in a generous puddle of bagna cauda makes me crave it. While Herrera hasn’t yet settled on a dish to serve on Oct. 19, the self-taught chef told me that stressing vegetables will likely be her guiding principle. 

300 Preston St., perchottawa.ca

If someone asks me “What Ottawa restaurant has the best tasting menu?” I suggest two places — chef Briana Kim’s recherche, vegetarian, cutting-edge Antheia and chef Justin Champagne-Lagarde’s all-Canadian, eminently sophisticated and sustainable Perch. His narrow Preston Street restaurant lands intermittently on the annual Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list, and I’ll guess that the only thing stopping Perch from being perennially recognized is that not enough of the list’s judges are visiting Ottawa.

634 Somerset St. W., rangoonrestaurant.ca

In the last 10 years, I’ve twice sung the praises of Burmese chef Ngun Tial and the food she serves at Rangoon Restaurant in Chinatown. I appreciate her food not only because it’s tasty, but also because Burmese food is hard to come by, not just in Ottawa but across Canada. Frankly, I went to a well-regarded Burmese restaurant in New York City earlier this year and I think Tial’s food is better. And yet, she has been candid with me recently that her restaurant is far from flourishing, and she’s fortunate that her landlord is supportive. Although Rangoon represents a more common kind of eatery in Ottawa — a mom-and-pop restaurant operated by new Canadians — that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be celebrated at the newspaper’s event. I feel it’s quite the contrary. Come try Tial’s food, which may well include some of Myanmar’s national dishes, and see if you agree.

The saddest story that I wrote last year had to do with the death of the young Ottawa cook Joshua Qiyuk. He was a 21-year-old Inuk man, a graduate of Algonquin College’s culinary program and a diligent cook at Absinthe Cafe on Wellington Street West, and he was killed last fall, fatally stabbed in Ottawa’s east end. What I wouldn’t give to have him cook at this year’s Citizen culinary event.

In part to keep his memory alive and to recognize a young Inuk chef, I invited Sienna Conboy to be part of the gathering at the NAC. Happily, she accepted. Although Conboy is still attending Algonquin, she runs her own business, Tuktu Catering. She is also the recipient of the first memorial scholarship that Algonquin has given in Josua Qiyuk’s name. Conboy was friends with Qiyuk and I hope cooking with him in mind will make her feel good. She’s already told me that she plans to make Arctic char ceviche, which sounds just right to me.

50 Baywater Ave., ahhcoffee.com

After you’ve visited Ahh!!! Coffee in Hintonburg, you won’t likely forget owner and operator Kyle Ratchford or his unique and wacky coffee- and tea-based drinks.

Better known by his nickname “The Booj,” Ratchford is off-the-wall cool personified and one of the most personable baristas you’re likely to meet in Ottawa. His beverage concoctions are just as quirky as he is, and yet do the trick. At the NAC on Oct. 19, The Booj, a former bartender who gave up alcohol to champion booze-free beverages, will make one of his tea-based mocktails. It should appeal to those who abstain and those who partake alike.

Ask those in the know who Ottawa’s best pastry chef is, and there’s a good chance that Elina Olefirenko’s name will come up. The Ukraine native has been wowing people with sweet teeth in Ottawa for almost a decade. She taught pastry-making at Algonquin College and C’est Bon Ottawa before she opened Elina Patisserie, her jewel of a business on Sussex Drive. My impulse purchase there is Olefirenko’s perfect Paris-Brest. My colleague Sofia Misenheimer is nuts for the store’s trompe l’oueil fake-fruit pastries. Let’s hope that Olefirenko brings an assortment of her wares to the NAC on Oct. 19, and that sweets-lovers restrain themselves when they’re faced with the choice of what to try from her station.

1130 Wellington St. W., Unit 1, mooshuicecream.com

Liz Mok’s much-admired ice cream business, which turned 10 last year, is one of my required stops when I’m in Hintonburg with an empty stomach. I either quickly devour one of Moo Shu Ice Cream’s unique, small-batch, Asian-themed frozen treats on site or raid its freezer and bring home a pint of ice cream or an ice cream sandwich for some delayed gratification. I’m partial to Mok’s Hong Kong milk tea and extra-irresistible salted malted Chocolate dulce brownie. But whatever flavours she brings to the Citizen Best Restaurants event on Oct. 19 — whether it’s blueberry, ricotta and basil, chèvre and cherry fig chutney or salted honey and crostini — you can be sure that the Moo Shu station will be a favourite generating a long line.

No Ottawa pastry maker is more esteemed than Joe Calabro, who opened Pasticceria Gelateria Italiana on Preston Street in 1979. Although the veteran pastry and gelato business is a few years shy of 50 years old and Calabro could have retired years ago, he still revels in creating new sweet treats such as his on-trend pistachio and Dubai chocolate gelato. Although Calabro is self-taught, he’s notched some impressive accolades. He was part of teams that competed at the 1992 and 1996 World Culinary Olympics and he was one of five Canadian chefs invited to cook a prestigious dinner in the fall of 2011 at James Beard House in New York. There’s not a more hospitable pastry maker in Ottawa, as you’ll see if you come out to the NAC on Oct. 19.

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