Peter Hum's best Ottawa restaurant dishes of 2024 represent around-the-world, affordable eating

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This year’s survey of favourite bites might be my most budget-friendly and multicultural yet.

Let’s face it: Given 2024’s strain on everyone’s purchasing powers, it made sense to visit cheaper eateries, which in addition to providing value tended to reflect the cuisines of newer arrivals to Canada and to Ottawa. So, fans of West African chicken and Shanghainese buns, Vietnamese soups and Turkish kebabs, read on with gusto.

That’s not say that I shunned upscale, fine-dining restaurants this year. But after reflecting on what dishes were most delicious, value-packed and memorable, my list is short on $60 main courses and $300 seafood towers.

In all, I visited more than 40 restaurants, about a dozen bakeries, six ice cream shops, five cocktail bars and one high-end culinary competition while making my rounds in 2024. Below are my top dishes and some honourable mentions in nearly 20 categories.

Two caveats apply. My picks are not the city’s absolute tops in their categories. They’re simply faves from what I ate in 2024. Nor are they endorsements of everything available at the restaurants that earned kudos. Finally, some seasonal or even momentary items have left menus and now are only distant, delectable memories.

Best small bite

At Jfuse Aburi & Bar, the signature sushi roll of wagyu, crab, cucumber and fried shallots was truly enjoyable, made from components that proved their worth and sang together. Honourable mention: Bite & Bite Shanghai Fried Bun’s namesake specialities, in which crisp-seared dough balls wrap about juicy pork fillings and admittedly scalding liquid.

Best appetizer?

At Stofa on Wellington Street West, a five-course meal in November included two wonderful starters: a softshell crab bao bun and a tempura-fried betel leaf with Thai-flavoured chicken sausage. Honourable mention: Ember’s charcoal-kissed salmon crudo, which leaned in an Asian flavour profile.

Best sandwich

The shawarma sandwich at Allo Beirut on Carling Avenue is “not fast food,” said owner and chef Fadia Zakaria. This fall, it involved a mix of white meat and dark meat, seasoned and marinated in yogurt overnight and then baked before the chicken was cut to order. The resulting sandwich was fresher, more seasoned and more tasty than your standard Ottawa shawarma. It was better still wrapped in homemade saj bread, a step up from pita bread from a plastic bag. Honourable mention: Mi Amor Taco’s hefty beef brisket sandwich.

Best burger

Smash Daddy, which has locations in Little Italy, Bells Corners and downtown, made an unbeatable Oklahoma-style smash burger. Patties of halal, AAA antibiotic- and hormone-free beef were almost exaggeratedly flattened to yield maximum crunchy crust. Thinly sliced onions were cooked into the meat, while special sauce and pickles complete a magnificent burger to rule them all. You can even splurge on a Wagyu upgrade, although it’s not a must.

Best taco

My favourite taco at Mi Amor Tacos — meaning the juiciest and most flavourful — was the beef brisket “suadero” ($6.50). Honourable mentions: the cachete (beef cheek) and birria tacos at La Vaca Mexicana.

Best pizza

The wild boar pizza at Tennessy Willems is a long-standing top-seller thanks to its savoury-sweet-herby mix of local wild boar sausage, caramelized apple, sage pesto and two-year-old cheddar.

Best soup

At Merivale Noodle House, I was very partial to the novel pleasures of bun cha ca ($18.95), a Vietnamese soup in which fried fish cakes are the featured protein and a mild broth is studded with chunks of tomato. Honourable mention: Bite & Bite Shanghai Fried Bun’s seaweed-enriched wonton soup.

Best kebabs

The Bank Street restaurant Sultan Ahmet Turkish Cuisine served a range of consistently impressive kebabs, from lamb chops to chunks of chicken to ground beef, all impeccably char-grilled. Honourable mention: Of the fine kebabs served at the Persian restaurant Persis Grill in Bells Corners, the standout was torsh kebab, in which beef tenderloin was nicely charred and sweet and sour thanks to its pomegranate marinade.

Best barbecue

At the Orléans Farmers Market last summer, vendor Junior and The Kid BBQ served exceptional brisket and pork belly sandwiches starring meat that was smoked on pitmaster Chris “the Kid” Villeneuve’s 500-gallon offset smoked nicknamed Tilly-Mae. Honourable mention: An entirely different, but convivial and budget-friendly barbecue experience is the grill-your-own dining at Takumi BBQ on Merivale Road, which specializes in Northern Chinese tabletop cooking.

Best bargain

The $9.99 chicken-leg-and-fries lunch at African BBQ House is a fantastic, filling steal. Honourable mention: Those Shanghainese pan-fried buns ($9.99 for four) at Bite & Bite Shanghai Fried Bun.

Best spicy food

Ceylonta in Centretown deserves its long, sterling reputation as a champion of Tamil-made Sri Lankan fare. Honourable mention: Ottawa’s African BBQ House restaurants, thank the compelling spice rub on their chicken.

Best unique Ottawa cuisine

Ottawa is blessed to have one of Canada’s few Burmese restaurants, Rangoon in Chinatown, which also happens to be excellent. Get the shan noodles and the green tea leaf salad. Honourable mention: Everest Cuisine on Carling Avenue, which this year introduced Nepalese food to Ottawa.

Best poultry

At Stofa, quail stuffed with confit quail and chicken mousseline was as tasty as it was technical, and accompaniments including apricots, Brussels sprouts, money-pickled onions and puffed grains completed the plate harmoniously. There are so many honourable mentions: the Peruvian roast chicken to go from Lima Peruvian Rotisserie inside Raphael Peruvian Cuisine on Elgin Street, Ember’s superbly sauced roast chicken, and the Korean fried chicken from Pelicana Chicken, which came in a multitude of flavours.

Best red meat

At the Filipino restaurant Sanduk, the kare-kare pork belly is one of the best pork belly dishes in town, with lots of succulent meat topped with super-crispy skin and bolstered by a rich peanut sauce. Honourable mention: The striploin steak at Ember on Clarence Street.

Best seafood dish

Katha’s fish dish at Canada’s Great Kitchen Party in September, which starred branzino in a miso, turmeric and saffron broth, was my favourite at the Ottawa qualifier for next year’s Canadian Culinary Championship.

Best dessert

A dessert at Stofa was a mind-boggling mix of sour cream apple torte, poached apples, toffee screech rum sauce, cheddar and pecan streusel and apple cider gel, with the interactive fun of a salted caramel “nitro bomb” thrown in for good measure.?Honourable mention: The idiosyncratic but craveable ice creams from Sadie Beans Ice Cream.

Best treat

The superbly crafted Paris-Brest at Elina Patisserie was flawlessly made and supremely indulgent, even if it wasn’t too sweet. Honourable mention: The hot chocolate at Amandine Patisserie.

Best cocktail

At Stolen Goods Cocktail Bar, the Jungle Adventures was a whimsical but winning mix of fruity cereal-infused gin, dry cura?ao, maraschino liqueur, pineapple syrup, lemon juice and cranberry bitters under a gigantic dollop of fruit-cereal foam, plus some of that crunchy cereal as a topping. Honourable mention: At Bar Lupulus, the Dev’s Last Day is 6 Months Away, made with Japanese whisky, apricot brandy, lemon juice, lemon-thyme syrup, egg white, hopped grapefruit bitters and black lime powder.

Where to find Peter Hum’s favourite dishes of 2024:

Allo Beirut
African BBQ House
Bar Lupulus
Bite & Bite Shanghai Fried Bun
Ceylonta
Elina Patisserie
Ember
Everest Cuisine
JFuse Aburi & Bar
Junior and the Kid BBQ
Katha
La Vaca Mexicana
Lima Peruvian Rotisserie
Merivale Noodle House
Mi Amor Tacos
Pelicana Chicken
Persis Grill
Rangoon
Sadie Beans Ice Cream
Sanduk
Smash Daddy
Stofa
Stolen Goods Cocktail Bar
Sultan Ahmet Turkish Cuisine
Takumi BBQ
Tennessy Willems

phum@postmedia.com

Did you enjoy any of these dishes this year? Have a favorite you’d like Peter to try? Let us know!

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