Six Ottawa eateries make Canada’s 100 Best restaurants of 2024 list

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Six Ottawa restaurants cracked the prestigious 2024 Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list released Monday night.

Top-rated among the Ottawa six was Riviera, the classic, big-city eatery on Sparks Street favoured by Parliament Hill’s denizens. Riviera ranked 28th this year, up from 49th last year.

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The next highest Ottawa restaurant was chef-owner Marc Lepine’s sophisticated tasting menu destination Atelier on Rochester Street, which rose markedly from 88th last year to 43rd this year.

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Also returning to the list were:

• The Centretown restaurant Arlo, where chef and co-owner Jamie Stunt runs the kitchen and sommelier and co-owner Alex McMahon is an unstinting advocate for natural wines (71st this year, 62nd last year);
• Supply and Demand, a quintessential neighbourhood restaurant on Wellington Street West where chef and co-owner Steve Wall specializes in small plates and pastas (75th this year, 63rd last year);
• and North & Navy on Nepean Street, where chef-owner Adam Vettorel serves elevated Northern Italian food (95th this year, 96th last year).

New to the list is the William Street wine bar Buvette Daphnée, which ranked 97th. Opened in late August 2023, Buvette Daphnée also cracked the Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants list of best new restaurants. On that list, it ranked eighth of 10 restaurants.

In a comparison of cities, Ottawa’s total tally of six restaurants on the list came far behind Toronto (25), Montreal (21) and Vancouver (18), but ahead of all other Canadian cities, including Calgary (4), Winnipeg (3) and Edmonton (0).

Jacob Richler, publisher and editor of the list, said in an interview that Ottawa’s showing this year proves that it’s “a good culinary destination.

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“We’re fulfilling a mandate to recommend the best places to go,” Richler said. “Six restaurants is a lot of places to choose between for somebody who’s unfamiliar with Ottawa.”

Richler said that 150 judges cast votes for this year’s list and that the judges are distributed across the country in proportion to populations in regions and urban centres.

Each judge, including reporter Peter Hum, submitted a ranked list in early January of 10 favourite restaurants that they had visited in the previous year or so. At least three of the 10 picks had to be outside of the judge’s region.

Last year, local chef Briana Kim’s cutting-edge plant-based restaurant Alice fared best of Ottawa’s restaurants, ranking 31st. It didn’t make this year’s list, but only because Kim closed Alice several months ago with the intention of opening its successor, Antheia, later this year.

Two other Ottawa restaurants that made the 2023 list dropped off this year’s list. They were Perch, a tasting-menu restaurant on Preston Street that ranked 85th last year, and Gitanes, a French-influenced restaurant on Elgin Street that ranked 97th last year.

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Richler said many judges cast votes for Alice, and it would have ranked in the high 20s had those votes counted. “We don’t recommend restaurants that are closed,” Richler said, adding that he was keenly looking forward to Antheia opening.

Richler added that he wants to visit Buvette Daphnée. “That room looks gorgeous,” he said. “The menu concept looks good too, but what a stunning spot. Wow.”

The Montreal restaurant Mon Lapin, which specializes in imaginative small plates and recherché wines, was this year’s top-ranked restaurant, as it was in 2023. Next were the Toronto fine-dining restaurants Edulis, Alo and 20 Victoria.

Each of the three Toronto restaurants also has a Michelin star to its name. Mon Lapin does not, as Michelin inspectors do not survey Montreal restaurants as they do the dining-out scenes in Toronto and Vancouver. The inspectors also do not consider restaurants in Ottawa.

Richler said the restaurants on this year’s list are very diverse. “There’s so many different kinds of dining represented,” he said. “It’s really a struggle to think of something that unifies them all, except for great cooking and great service and a super all-round experience.

“That’s the way I want it. To nominate a bunch of very similar restaurants would be unexciting for the consumer. To have a whole bunch of incredibly varied, different sorts of places, unified only by their incredibly high culinary standards, is a great thing.”

phum@postmedia.com

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