During the month of June, Don and I temporarily relocated to Kanata Lakes as our home underwent renovations. Though we both grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa, we have been living in Hintonburg for the past six years. We have grown accustomed to shopping at our local bakeries and food shops, sipping on coffee and tea at Bridgehead and CycleLogik, and eating at small locally-owned restaurants. One of the best things about living in Hintonburg is the strong sense of community that has been built over the years. Everything is within walking distance and the businesses surrounding the area are predominately locally-owned. Residents and owners develop a relationship with one another. Don and I feel incredibly lucky to live in such an area. So, it was with some sadness we packed our suitcases and essentials and headed to Kanata.

Living in the west end, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by big box-style restaurants and stores. Although there were a handful of local chain stores and restaurants around the Centrum area (Campeau Dr. and Kanata Ave.), nothing really caught our eye until we drove along the intersection of Beaverbrook and Teron Roads. Right at that intersection is the Beaverbrook Service Centre, a place for cars needing oil changes, a tune up, etc.

Signage for the Beaverbrook Service Centre

Established in 2002, its proprietor Tony Richardson opened the service centre with a focus on providing his local clients with good old-fashioned customer service. Now, you might be thinking, "Isn't this a food blog? What's with the car service talk?" Well, located in the centre is a whimsical shop, Roslyn's Old Kanata Ice Cream.

Signage for Roslyn's Old Kanata Ice Cream shop

Opened seasonally (late spring to early fall, and depending on the weather), Roslyn's Old Kanata Ice Cream has been serving soft serve ice cream for several years now. During the hot summer days, young and old alike flock to this location to cool off with a delicious treat.

Welcome and come in!

It is a charming ice cream shop inside the service centre. From the moment you walk in, there is just the slightest scent of motor oil in the air. Two young people with smiles on their faces are immediately ready to take your order, with one person to handle cash and the other to fill your order. As you can see in the picture below, there is a variety of ice creams, sundaes, and even "slurpee" (frozen drink) floats to choose from.

Menu for Roslyn's Old Kanata Ice Cream

Soft Serve Ice Cream Machine

Don ordered a small swirl on a regular cone. For those who have forgotten, a swirl is half chocolate and half vanilla soft serve ice cream. This was once a very popular treat at McDonald's, but was eventually phased out. I ordered a small swirl on a waffle cone.

Swirl Cone vs Swirl Waffle Cone
Don and I quite enjoyed our treats, as the soft serve ice cream tasted less sweet than what Dairy Queen serves. Don also thought mine tasted better simply because it was on a waffle cone. He preferred the different textures, particularly the crunch my waffle cone offered.

Since that evening, Don and I have been back for more, usually on foot. With each visit, we see young and old alike sitting on the benches and large stones around the parking lot happily licking their cones. Others still are sitting in their cars with the doors wide open. You won't be disappointed with your cool treat!

Update: A photo of the Roslyn's on a sunny afternoon.

Beaverbrook Service Centre

Particulars:
Beaverbrook Service Centre
Beaverbrook Road
(613) 592-2529

On Monday, February 1, 2010, a new set of Ontario Restaurant Hotel & Motel Association (ORHMA) awards were handed out. Deserving winners in my mind included ZenKitchen (634 Somerset Street West) for Ottawa's New Restaurant of the Year, Social Restaurant and Lounge (537 Sussex Drive) for Best Restaurant Design, Play Food and Wine (1 York Street) for Favorite Fine Dining Restaurant (our reccomendation for small plates in Ottawa), and the Works for Favorite Casual Dining Restaurant.

What surprised me was Chef Neil Mather's win. He, the Chef of Graffiti's Italian Eatery at Holiday Inn & Suites Kanata, beat out the likes of fellow finalists Chefs Marc Lepine (Atelier), Steve Mitton (Murray Street), Michael Moffat (Play Food and Wine and Beckta Dining and Wine) and John Taylor (Domus Café) . Everyone, save for Chef Mather are recognizable to anyone familiar to the food scene in Ottawa as either Chefs or Chef/Owners of higher end fine dining restaurants. Chefs Lepine, Moffat, and Taylor have even been fierce competitors or winners in past years' Gold Medal Plates, a national culinary competition that raises funds for Canadian high performing athletes, future Olympians.

Confused, I checked with the ORHMA website to determine how nominees were selected, how finalists were chosen, and how finalists won. Accordingly

Ottawa chefs are judged by an independent panel including previous winners, culinary media and educators. The panel uses both objective and subjective criteria made up of: education and training, industry participation, awards received, work practices, artistry, creativity and ingenuity. Three finalists from ORHMA member establishments [were] announced

Finalists are then voted for via ballot to determine a winner.

When Jenn and I started dating, we visited Grafitti's twice. Twice we deemed the restaurant about as authentic Italian as chicken balls and egg rolls are authentic Chinese. Essentially, the restaurant met, but did not surpass, my expectations for an in-house Holiday Inn & Suites restaurant. We found the food, on par with sit-down fast-food restaurants like Denny's, Kelsey's, or the former Olive Garden.

Curious that Chef Mather had had a positive effect on the restaurant during his tenure, we made reservations with Paola (@cestboncooking) and a pair of fellow local food bloggers, Shari (@whisk_food_blog) of Whisk and Rachelle of Rachelle Eats Food. I had high hopes Chef Mather had reworked the entire menu, offering more authentic Italian fare. What was I looking for? Food that is conservative on technique, but employs extremely fresh ingredients, including seafood.

What did we encounter when we returned? In the 6 years since Jenn and I set foot in Graffiti's, the restaurant has not changed ostensibly.

Interior
The same yellowish beige stucco walls line the dining room and bar area (called a saloon on its website). The same floor to ceiling columns, encased in dark stained wood panels, stand between booths and tables. The restaurant still sports the same green patterned carpets.

The menu was a throwback to earlier days too. In it, we found a "1999 Sample Table D'hote" menu for $19.99 that included classic Caesar salad (yet it included no coddled eggs), linguine salsiccia, and tiramisu.

Menu
But, for a restaurant that boasts "modern Italian cuisine - complemented by Mediterranean influences", I found the options rather pedestrian. Soups included a vegetarian option, a minestrone ($5.99). Appetizers included tomato bruschetta ($7.99), cheese crostini ($8.99), garlic mussels ($8.99) and calamari ($9.99). Pasta entrees included a pesto pasta, a spaghetti with meatballs (suspiciously described as "Bigga" Meatballs) ($14.99), cheese stuffed pasta, and potato gnocchi. Mains included a veal scaloppini ($24.99), a tusacani portfolio ($24.99), a focaccia burger ($13.99), chicken parmesan ($21.99), and an ossobuccu milanaise ($27.99). Also, the menu includes clay-oven-fired, not wood-oven fired, 12" personal pizzas, topped with "Italian mozzarella cheese."

What did we order? To start, the salad special of the day, a "classic" casesar salad, the minestrone, and the bruschetta.

Specials Menu
While the Chef signed menu stated that the salad special included julienne capicola ham, my salad included what looked like processed lunch meat ham.

Insalata Cucina with Julienne Lunch Meat Ham
My fellow diner enjoyed her bruschetta with various toppings. My better half found the minestrone heavily flavoured with wine and another unidentified strong flavoured.

Disappointing Minestrone
Graffit's was also stingy with ingredients, the entire bowl having 9 pasta shells.

For mains, the tuscani portfolio, the ossobuco milanaise, the spaghetti (substituting "bigga" meatballs for chicken), the seafood linguine with pesto, and chicken parmesan. The tusacani portfolio did not come in a pastry crust as our waitress explained. The chicken supreme was tender. The accompanying starch, a baked potato the menu said would come with sour cream and chives, came dry. The osso bucco was braised tender. The truffle risotto that accompanied it was devoid of any truffle or truffle flavour, again contrary to what the menu described. The rice was also under cooked. The spaghetti was overcooked and tasted as if it had been washed prior to plating, having absolutely no starch coat.

Overcooked Spaghetti
The accompanying chicken was dry and bland. My seafood linguine was over-seasoned and oily, leaving a significant pool of olive oil on the plate.

Oily Pesto Linguine
The scallops were slightly overdone, just bordering on tough. The pasta, however, was toothsome.

For dessert, we split an apple pouch ($8), cooked apple in crisp filo, served with store bought vanilla ice cream (it melted very quickly). The filo was somewhat singed at the edges, but the dish was enjoyable.

What was the best part of our meal? The cheese stuffed bread that was served to us before any of the dishes.

Cheese Stuffed Bread
It came with a nutty hummus and salted eggplant.

With cliche Italian dishes, sauces and soups that taste like they came canned, dishes that do not adhere to the menu half of the time, badly made starches, and overcooked proteins, I was left to wonder how the restaurant's chef won his award. His cooks made mediocre dishes.

Did I mention our waitress hovered impatiently over us throughout the meal, hurrying us through the courses, impatiently busing our table and repeatedly reminding us new dishes were ready? No? Well I guess there are a number of reasons to find another Italian restaurant in Ottawa to visit.

Particulars:
Graffiti's Italian Eatery & Saloon
101 Kanata Avenue
Kanata, ON K2T 1E6
(613) 271-0921

More after the jump...

In all honestly, I try my darnest to avoid outings to "big box" strip malls in Ottawa until it becomes absolutely necessary and I can "cluster-shop." That is, I tend to put off trips to Walmart until I find myself needing to visit stores around it as well. Why? I find the Walmart shopping experience infuriating. An impossibly large number of shoppers is always rushing about at high speeds pushing carriages overflowing with everything from traditional groceries to electronics, clothes, shoes, and the odd rug. Then, there are those purchasing furniture who decide to pickup their big box item first and wander the aisles aimlessly, forcing innocent bystanders to leap heroically aside for safety. Then, there are the teenage Walmart employees who are more interested in flirting with each other or texting their friends who are themselves working part time than help you find your next purchase. You know, when you reluctantly go to a Walmart to purchase that one item; when you are trying to navigate the maze of nonsensically placed merchandise in aisles that are marked by lying signage; when you are valiantly trying to avoid colliding with other shoppers and their purchases.

There are times I think the big box store shopping experience is purposely engineered to cause anxiety because Walmart and their ilk are in league with surrounding big box restaurants. Anxiety tends to make shoppers hungry. Hungry shoppers are so frustrated when they leave the stores they fall prey to the lunch or dinner specials at the nearby McDonald's, Harvey's, Montanna's, Moxie's, Denny's, or Kelsey's.

Such was the case this past Saturday when I found myself having put off certain chores and purchases to the point that I was forced to visit Kanata's Centrum, sadly the center of the west-end suburb. There, after my better half and I did some banking, we visited Walmart to find me a low cost pair of running shoes for the office. And, we went to Loblaws and Chapters', searching for the latest issue of the Ottawa Magazine. Speaking of which, can someone tell me why magazine purveyors in Ottawa are selling three issues of the Ottawa magazine? In the past two days, I have found the September and October issues on news stands, the former with its 101 Tastes piece and the latter with a profile of Chef Josh Brokington and his Rockland Gastro. The November issue was released Friday, containing Chris Knight's Top 10 list of fine dining restaurants in Ottawa. But, I digress...

After developing an anxiety-induced appetite, Jenn and I wandered into Kelsey's, she hearing there is a new lunch menu and me oddly craving a burger. Indeed, the restaurant that bills itself as somewhere that "knows your name", adopting the famous Gary Portnoy-sung theme song from the former sit-com Cheers, changed up their lunch menu for the fall. Served by a very friendly, personable, and helpful waiter, who just graduated from Algonquin college's advertising program, we ordered a peppercorn burger with a house salad and a new fall lunch entree, the Sheppard's pie. What we were served reinforced my misgivings about big box restaurants. Not knowing that we would be encountering crimes against food that day, I neglected to bring my camera.

Here is what the sheppard's pie is supposed to look like according to the Kelsey's website:

Kelsey's "Ideal" Sheppard's Pie (cheese-less), $11.99
Firstly, when "sheppard's pie" is made with beef, it is "cottage pie." Sheppard's pie is made with lamb. What Jenn was served was later confirmed to be made made from beef. It looked like three disher-portioned mounds of mince were put in a gratin dish, topped with mashed potatoes, baked, and more than likely finished under a salamander to colour the potatoes. After taking a bite, Jenn exclaimed, "This tastes like cheese!"

Indeed, grated processed mozzarella cheese seemed sprinkled over and crusted along with the mashed potatoes. We called over our waiter and consulted the menu again. There was no cheese in the menu description. Our waiter even exclaimed in surprise, "Cheese? Are you sure?" I scraped off a grating of cheese that had been baked onto the gratin dish's wall and responded, "Yes, cheese!" He then graciously offered to replace the dish, sans cheese topping, leaving Jenn with a plate of overcooked "buttered" peas. What surprised us about the peas, were the pearl onions. They tasted pickled! I always thought pickled onions only accompanied mushy peas and the dish had fallen out of fashion. What was served were sauteed from-frozen garden "sweet" peas.

My peppercorn burger ($11.49) came from the regular dinner menu. I asked it be accompanied with a house salad, instead of fries. The burger itself was made from frozen, its bun slightly over toasted and its topping of breaded onion rings, soggy and greasy. Why big box restaurants often neglect to drain their deep fried offerings for even a minute or two after frying is slightly beyond me. However, the burger met my expectations for a big box restaurant burger. The house salad was another matter. It too was topped with a prodigious amount of shredded mozzarella, resembling a McDonald's salad.

Our waiter returned, sheepishly telling us the cooks "make up the batch of beef in the morning and add cheese to the mix." He then asked us to order something else. Jenn chose the fish and chips, again from the new fall lunch menu.

Kelsey's Ideal Fish and Chips, $8.99
In making her choice, Jenn scanned the dinner menu as well. The lunch version of the sheppard's pie, which is guaranteed served in 15 minutes after ordering or free, is the same price as the dinner version, $11.99.

The fish and chips were marginally better than the cottage pie. The peas were somewhat better cooked, this time with no pickled onions. The haddock portion was small, only 4" long, but fried crisp and not grease soggen. Contrary to the image on the Kelsey's website above, the entree included one piece of fish, not two. Her fries were also unevenly seasoned with a barbecue chip-tasting seasoning. Jenn actually had to scrape off the excess to eat them.

In total, with an ice tea, taxes, and refunding the value of the disastrous cottage pie, the meal ran us $26.29

According to our bill, we can enter to win a chance at a $500 gift card if we complete a guest survey at kelseysfeedback.com with an access code. Let me think about that: $500 translates into many servings of small portioned fish, overly seasoned chips, over cooked peas and sauteed pickled pearl onions, and cheesy cottage pie. No thank-you!

The next time I go to Walmart in Centrum, I'm going to bring a sandwich with me. I have no wish to develop any sort of familiarity with Centrum's Kel-Cheese.

More after the jump...

Two weekends ago, Jenn and I found ourselves wandering around Kanata Centrum, running errands. I needed to purchase tax software from Future Shop. She needed to go shopping for frames for a new pair of glasses. We ended up picking up some knickknacks for her from Home Outfitters and a pair of khaki's for me from Mark's Work Warehouse.

Shortly after we arrived at the Terry Fox station, via the 96, we noticed that Kanata Shawarma, formerly Mom's Shawarma, had been closed by the landlord and was advertising for new tenants. Its furniture and equipment had also been seized for auction.

Kanata Shawarma - Out of Business

Notice of Distress
That's two failed Shawarma houses in the same location.

When we finished shopping, it was nearly 2:00 pm. We had skipped lunch and were famished. Craving noodles and soup, we went to the Ox Head Restaurant, which is situated between the AMC theater complex and O'Connor's bar and tavern.

There, we both order pho, Vietnamese rice noodle soup that happens to be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. The flavorful soup is typically a stock made from beef, including such cuts as knuckles and ox tails. It is traditionally served with a communal plate of bean sprouts and aromatics like Thai basil. Everyone at the table "customizes" their bowls of pho to their tastes by adjusting the amounts of sprouts, aromatics, and freshly squeezed lime they add.

Pho is eaten with both chopsticks and a soup spoon by carefully piling noodles onto the spoon, topping with aromatic condiments, dipping it in the soup, and taking slurp. Some eaters sauce every spoonful with either hoisin (the black stuff in squeeze bottle) or sriracha (the red stuff in the other squeeze bottle). I prefer to flavor the soup.

While Jenn "made her own" pho by choosing various components from the menu, including thinly sliced beef and tendons, I opted for the Ox Head Special. Its soup comes already "spicy." It also comes with thinly sliced beef and tendons

Here's what I was served. Notice the Frenched onions. They're a nice touch.

Ox Head Special Pho
The advertised, the "spiciness" comes added chili oil and chili flake.

As per my preferences, I like to add texture with lots of sprouts, earthy flavor with Thai basil, and brightness with lime juice. They supplement the savoriness, coming from soup that is almost always flavoured with fish sauce.

Personalizing to my Taste

I kicked the spiciness up a notch with some siracha.

Ready to Eat

Mine was a good bowl of pho. The herbs and bean sprouts were wonderfully fresh, not a blemish in sight. The soup was not over seasoned, as we have found in several pho houses outside of Chinatown. The rice noodles were perfectly cooked, neither aldente nor falling apart. It was served with a generous amount of beef.

Best of all, the beef tendons were soft. At Pho Bo Ga, Ottawa's original pho house, the tendons are plentiful, but they are crunchy. At Pho Van Van in the Wellington Village, they are hard.

As we ate, we also noticed that the soup, while genuinely made from stock and quite flavorful, tasted of garlic and ginger. This is somewhat atypical of Vietnamese pho. After listening to the owner and her family speak to each other in Cantonese, we understood. They either were of Chinese descent or grew up amongst people who were. Adding garlic and ginger to flavor a clear stock or broth is typical of Chinese cookery.

That said, the Ox Head noodle house offers much more than rice noodle soup. As the author of the Nooschi blog writes, the restaurant also serves a fine bowl of seafood noodle soup with transparent noodles and plenty of seafood. They also serve traditional cafe sua da (slow drip coffee), rice paper rolls, and a fried banana dessert with ice cream.

Unfortunately, Jenn and I only had room for bowls of pho, which ran us $18.04 after taxes, before tip.

Speaking of which, the pho at the Ox Head Restaurant is by far the best we've tried outside of Chinatown. We're definitely going back.

Here is their business card:

Front

Back

Particulars:
Ox Head Restaurant
790 Kanata Avenue
(613)592-0630

Typical of Canadian suburbs, Kanata is replete with strip malls. Principle amongst them is the Kanata Centrum, a sprawling retail and entertainment hub for residents of the west end of the greater Ottawa area. Centrum is strategically located at the intersection of two major arteries, Terry Fox Drive and Kanata Avenue. Ottawa's Queensway (Highway 417) also exits onto Kanata Avenue within seconds of Centrum.

Typical of big strip malls, Centrum hosts a number of large chain restaurants. Here is a somewhat incomplete listing as new eateries seem to appear every 6 months, including a soon to open Montana's Cookhouse:

• Baton Rouge
• Boston Pizza
• Extreme Pita
• Harvey's
• Jack Astor's
• Joey's Only Seafood Restaurant
• Kelsey's
• Mexicali Rosa's
• McDonald's (inside of Walmart)
• O'Connor's Irish Pub
• Pizza Pizza
• Quizno's
• Scores Rotisserie and Ribs
• Starbuck's (inside of Chapter's)

Interestingly, Centrum once hosted one of Ottawa's 5 Denney's. Today, only 2 survive. The Centrum's closed shortly after 2004/2005 NHL lockout, blaming slumping sales on lower patronage during the hockey season. Scotiabank Place, home of the Ottawa Senators, is a 5 minute drive from Centrum.

What few family run restaurants at the Centrum serve ethnic fare and seat far fewer patrons than the large chain restaurants. They include Sushi Kanata, Ox Head Restaurant (a Vietnamese Pho house), and Thi Fusion (a higher end Asian fusion restaurant).

Recently, another large chain restaurant, popular in Western Canada, joined the fray, Moxie's Classic Grill. Previously, Ottawa's only exposure to Moxie's was in the form of a small establishment at the Bayshore Shopping Mall. The Moxie's restaurant at Centrum is much larger and more elaborate, capable of hosting approximately 200 patrons at any time in its dining room and lounge areas.

At the Centrum Moxie's, the atmosphere is intended to be sophisticated with dark coloured furniture, high seated tables, and an otherwise low light interior. It also features a very long bar with hundreds of bottles of 5 major brand liqueurs neatly displayed in a back lit floor-to-ceiling display case.

Jenn and I tried to go to the newly opened Moxie's at Centrum three times since the summer. Each time was with her family to celebrate a birthday. Each time we were given unreasonable wait times for a table to seat six people for dinner. Like the other 21 Moxie's establishments across Canada, the Centrum location does not take reservations for dinner on Fridays or Saturdays. This is problematic Friday and Saturday evenings when Kanata suburbanites tend to swarm the Centrum's eateries for dinner.

One Saturday afternoon, I accompanied a number of Jenn's colleagues to Moxie's for a celebratory lunch to mark the end of the fall semester. There, we discovered that Moxie's has a slightly modified front-of-house line-up.

According to its human resources (HR) website, the Centrum Moxie's employs, managers, supervisors, servers, lounger servers, bartenders, and hosts. To match its high end decore, Moxies employs multiple hosts and hostesses to create the "first impression", greet guests, "determine tables", "manage guest flow", take care of waiting guests, "create anticipation", seat guests, create the "last impression" and be the "last line of defense." At the Centrum Moxies, hosts are all female, blonde, skinny, and provocatively dressed. Waiters are all female, blonde, skinny, and provocatively dressed. This also seems to be the trend at other Moxie's as well. Take the Moxie's at the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto. Seven of the ten reviews on the restoronto-reviews.com website mention "stunning" female staff whose uniforms leave little to the imagination: "very short skirts" and "low cut tops." One, even likens the restaurant to a "top notch Hooters."

In Ottawa, there are rumors floating around that Moxie's contracts for its hosts differ from those for its waiters. Resembling more modeling contracts, there are specific clauses that involve weight gain and pregnancy. While I could find no evidence of such in the job descriptions from its HR website, all server positions mention "Quality, Service & Cleanliness (QSC) criteria " as duties. Hosts and hostesses have no such criteria listed.

This said, service during our lunch was replete with mistakes. Each was unforgivable because it was lunch time, there was no lunch rush, the majority of the tables were empty, and there was little turnover.

Mistake 1:
My better half ordered a glass of 7-up before we ordered our dishes. One of her colleagues ordered a club soda. The drink Jenn was served tasted like club soda, carbonated, but not sweetened. When we inquired, we were told that there was no mix up. The waitress then left to inquire about the odd taste. She returned telling us that "someone" had mistakenly not added any sugar to the batch made. She then dutifully took back the unsweetened glass and informed us that another will be forthcoming. When she returned, she told us that they were out of 7-up. This culminated in apology number 1.

More after the jump...