Ottawa and Gatineau

Ottawa, Ontario, and Gatineau, Québec

Some people, I guess, assume Ottawa must be a bit boring or bureaucratic, since it’s the seat of government:



But I had a great time on the Gatineau, Québec, side at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, with its spectacular exhibits, housed in a dramatic building:



Curator of Ethnology Stephen Augustine welcomed us the first morning with a pipe ceremony by the Ottawa River.




That day ended much less solemnly, with Elvis Presley tunes sung in Plains Cree and “Besame Mucho” in Micmac, a first for me, I don’t know about y’all. In between my poutine at lunch was served up with enthusiasm (sorry about the picture quality):



And I found time to get across the river to Ottawa’s Byward Market, in pursuit of my project of bringing home some interesting Québec cheeses.* What a great place! To echo a recent thread, why can’t Chicago have something like this? The heart of the market is a long brick building housing a number of vendors and cafés:



The market building is surrounded by outdoor stalls selling produce and crafts:



And the surrounding streets are filled with small specialty food shops: cheese shops, fishmongers, a paté and foie gras place, French pastries, Hungarian products, Middle Eastern, etc. etc. It was like the places we have to drive all around the city of Chicago for, collected in one central spot. Moreover, this has not surprisingly become a tourist attraction for Ottawa, so there are plenty of restaurants and bars in the district as well. Somebody please send Mayor Daley to Ottawa (or Montreal, or…) so he can get excited about doing something like this!

I did a fair amount of shopping at various spots: maple syrup from an outside vendor, maple cream cookies (really fabulous), saskatoon berry preserves, Inuit herbal tea, a couple refrigerator magnets from Native Northwest, and a few treats for the next day’s breakfast at Le Moulin de Provence bakery. For cheese I first tried La Bottega Nicastro, recommended on Chowhound Canada as a good source. This was in fact a very impressive salumeria for all sorts of things Italian, but their non-Italian cheeses were not so numerous and just all together in one bin. I found there Oka Classique and a triple crème Canadian brie-style cheese (Des Bois Francs) but felt sure there had to be a better shop for the local products.

After an enjoyable browse through a few more places I walked into International Cheese and Deli, a Lebanese grocery/cheese shop that had exactly what I was hoping to find: a display featuring Québec products, extensive and well labeled.



The woman there was great, really knowledgeable and helpful. I picked up Chevre Noir, Moutonniere Brebis, and Grand Chouffe, all discussed in the thread over here. I’d highly recommend this little shop to anyone going to Ottawa.

I’d also like to mention one really good dinner I had during my trip, a French meal in Gatineau at Le Tartuffe, a place recommended by the hotel’s concierge. It’s a small, moderately elegant restaurant on the ground floor of a house on a residential street, obviously popular with local residents. I think my friends and I were the only non-Francophones there. I had (cutting and pasting here from the online menu) market salad seasoned with shallot vinaigrette, rustic wild game terrine with red wine and black peppercorn onion compote, deboned rabbit saddle stuffed with apples and oyster mushrooms in a calvados sauce, and raspberry crème brûlée, all quite delicious, for 40$ (Canadian) before tax and tip . (I was too shy in those surroundings to take pictures, sorry.) Two of my companions had Yukon caribou, which had sounded tempting, but its accompanying sweet and sour blueberry sauce didn’t appeal to me. Anyway, this is definitely a place worth visiting if you find yourself in Ottawa or Gatineau, themselves worth a visit and not at all a food wasteland.


Le Moulin de Provence Bakery
55 Byward Market Square
Ottawa K1N 9C3
(613) 241-9152

Bottega Nicastro
64 George Street
Ottawa K1N 5V9
(613) 789-7575
labottega.ca

International Cheese & Deli
40 Byward Market
Ottawa K1N 7A2
(613) 241-5411

Le Tartuffe Restaurant
133 Notre-Dame-de-l'Île Street (corner Papineau)
Gatineau (Hull Sector),
Québec J8X 3T2
819 776-6424
www.letartuffe.com
__________________________________________________

* P.S: Adventures in Cheese Tourism

I had thought through my cheese project beforehand like Schwartzkopf planning Desert Storm: requested a fridge for my hotel room; ran mapquest on Bottega Nicastro; made sure my flight home would be right after I checked out of the hotel; packed a small insulated bag with a blue ice thingie to cool the contents. On arrival I happily stowed the blue ice in the fridge’s ice tray, procured some milk for coffee in the morning and thought I was all set.

Imagine my shock the next afternoon when I came back to drop off the kilo (total) of cheeses I had purchased and discovered that the housekeeping staff had thrown out the milk and the blue ice! I was Extremely Annoyed but didn’t have time then to pursue it.

I got up super early the next morning to finish my paper and thought I would first say hello to my cheeses. When I opened the fridge I was stunned to discover it had stopped working! I called Housekeeping, getting ready to exclaim “Le frigo, ça marche pas!” Luckily the guy who came up was anglophone and not only got me a new fridge but also located the blue ice thing which had been taken away the previous day (something I could never have explained in French). Before leaving I wrote a bilingual note to the cleaning staff imploring them not to toss out les fromages, and things went well after that. (And let me add that the hotel, Four Points Gatineau, was in all other respects superb.)

Even though the refrigerator magnets got me and my suitcase pulled out for a special search at Customs, bringing in the cheese was not a problem at all and the night in an unrefrigerated box seemed not to have a deleterious effect on their quality. A review of the cheeses themselves will be posted in the other thread once Antonius and I have gotten to sample all of them.

Nice post Amata. I found myself, somewhat unexpectedly, in Ottawa for 4 days early last year. I went there for a very last-minute business trip - a co-worker basically called me on a Friday I had taken off and asked if I'd mind going to Ottwa for her (basically a glorified courier trip.) When I said yes, she said I'd have to be at O'Hare in 2 hours time to check in. Which is to say that I had no time to do any research or preparation for the trip (I barely had time to pack). I was so ill-prepared that I am ashamed to say that I spent the entire trip under the impression that I was near the sea (what can I say, my Canadian geography could be better ). The only stuff I had ever heard about Ottawa before this trip had been fairly negative, but I thought it was a very nice city.

I also ate very well there. I loved Byward Market and also had a couple of very good meals at a Vietnamese place near my hotel (it reminded me a bit of Pasteur, but was much cheaper). The names of everywhere I ate escape me though. Sorry.

Despite the obvious French influence, Ottawa - for some reason - really reminded me of Southwestern English cities like Bristol or Bath (although Poutine is much more of a Northern English-type dish). A nice place to spend a long weekend for sure.

Being of Plains Cree decent, I would have found the singing of Elvis songs rather curious, I'd have gone for Buffy St. Marie.

Tânisi, pîtositê kâ-wî-nitawi-mîcisot!

(‘Hi, the-one-who-wants-to-go-elsewhere-and-eat.’)

LikestoEatout wrote:Being of Plains Cree decent, I would have found the singing of Elvis songs rather curious, ...

Tâpwê! Nîsta ôma.

(‘Truly! Me too.’

Note to LTH: And y’all thought Antonius’s languages were obscure… )

The performer who sang the Presley songs is Dolores Sand from Muskeg Lake, Saskatchewan, a daughter of Freda Ahenakew. Dolores also sang for us Ave Maria in Cree, and her translation of Rock Around the Clock. Dolores is a Cree language teacher who uses the songs as a fun way, one of many, to help maintain the language among the younger generation. She’s recorded a CD “Classics in Cree”, which she is selling for $20 Canadian. There doesn’t seem to be a website for it, but if anyone is interested PM me and I can give you Dolores’s email address. In my Google search for a website I learned that her recording of “All Shook Up” was on the Top 30 list last month of NCI FM, Manitoba’s aboriginal radio network.

Likes to Eat Out, what part of Plains Cree territory is your family from?

Amata

My dad was born near Winnipeg but his parents moved him to Chicago in 1924. I really know little because they always tried to pretend they we're Indian but would talk about it every now and then, unfortunately they are all long gone. I do have a 2nd cousin in Winnipeg who is involved with tribal affairs but I've had little contact with her, guess I'll have to go there some day.

BTW, I am impressed with your Cree language knowlege!

Thanks, LikestoEatOut. I think Winnipeg and the surrounding area is quite interesting: several varieties of Cree and Ojibwe/Saulteaux are spoken there, as well as Michif, the language of the racially mixed Métis, in which the nouns are from French and the verbs are from Cree. As for other ethnicities, there are Icelanders nearby in Gimli, a longstanding Ukrainian and Jewish presence in Winnipeg itself, and French speakers across the river in St. Boniface. I’ve been to Winnipeg a number of times and always eaten interestingly and well. The only Sri Lankan restaurant I’ve been to was in Winnipeg, for example. Winnipeg is a real city -- as opposed to, say, Saskatoon -- and yet, about a hour’s drive north of there, most of the roads just … stop.

LionRock wrote:.... I loved Byward Market and also had a couple of very good meals at a Vietnamese place near my hotel (it reminded me a bit of Pasteur, but was much cheaper). The names of everywhere I ate escape me though. Sorry.

LionRock, I wonder if the Vietnamese place you went to was Café Indochine?

Café Indochine
105-B Clarence,
Ottawa, ON K1N 5P5
613.241.6378

As long as I’m listing places at which I didn’t eat in Ottawa , I’ll add a couple more, for the possible use of anyone who might be going there.

A friend at the conference raved about her meal at Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro – upscale indigenous food.

I thought Café Spiga Trattoria looked interesting, not so much for its Italian dishes but because the owners are from the Azores and about half the offerings are Portuguese.

Finally, on the Gatineau side, I tried to have lunch at a Breton creperie, L’Argoät, where the savory crepes are made with buckwheat flour. But it was impossible without a reservation. Next time, maybe. Here’s a review.

Sweetgrass Aborginal Bistro
108 Murray Street
Ottawa, Ontario
(613) 562-3683

Café Spiga
271 Dalhousie St.
Ottawa, ON K1N 7E5
(613) 241-4381

L'ARGOÄT
39A RUE LAVAL,
GATINEAU (HULL)
TEL: 771-6170

Amata wrote:

LionRock wrote:.... I loved Byward Market and also had a couple of very good meals at a Vietnamese place near my hotel (it reminded me a bit of Pasteur, but was much cheaper). The names of everywhere I ate escape me though. Sorry.

LionRock, I wonder if the Vietnamese place you went to was Café Indochine?

Café Indochine
105-B Clarence,
Ottawa, ON K1N 5P5
613.241.6378

That's the one! Not the most interesting Vietnamese food (quite a small menu if memory serves), but very good and very affordable. Like I said, think Pasteur at Argyle prices.