Founder Susan Hamer built SuzyQ Doughnuts from Parkdale Farmers’ Market experiments into a Hintonburg bakery with a distinct premise: handmade Finnish-rooted doughnuts stretched through an inventive seasonal menu. The Summer 2026 selection moves easily from cardamom-sugar munkki to mango-coconut, Earl Grey-blackberry and hot-honey-peach combinations, with several vegan choices woven into the same creative range.

Chef Michael Blackie's NeXT turns west-end Ottawa dining into a shared, chef-led experience, with a bold Contemporary Canadian menu, blind tasting waves, and a full Sunday brunch tasting format.

Di Rienzo's Grocery is a Little Italy Italian deli and grocery where numbered sandwiches, custom cured-meat builds, cannoli, and pasta work best as generous takeout. Start with #14 or cannoli, then use the hot sandwich and pasta options when you want something warmer and more filling.

The Whalesbone Elgin Street is the roomier, more social expression of Ottawa’s oyster-house institution: a 140-seat dining room where the oyster bed remains the first move, while an in-house beef-aging room and double-fired charbroiler give non-seafood orders real purpose. Open on Elgin Street since 2016, it suits a premium night out built around sharing, with lunch on Thursdays and Fridays and a backyard patio in summer.

Les Moulins La Fayette is a Hintonburg bakery-café where French bread and pastry traditions meet the habits of a neighbourhood daytime stop. The Ottawa shop's three co-owners have built the visit around a broad bakery counter, from French and long-fermented-style baguettes to cheddar bread, pastries, viennoiseries, and prepared foods.

A tiny Old Ottawa South room built around sharing plates, brunch, and a menu with real personality: Belmont Doubles, Turkish Eggs, Beef Tartare, piri piri chicken, and a few smart planning details.

Ciao Italia is a dinner-focused Italian restaurant on Somerset Street West with a menu that does more work than its compact footprint suggests: homemade Gorgonzola gnocchi, chicken parmigiana, saffron seafood risotto, Calabrese pizza, and sambuca shrimp give the order clear anchors.

Tennessy Willems is a Hintonburg wood-oven pizzeria built for a focused, sociable meal: start with a house pie such as Wild Boar or Elmdale, use Helen's as the bright counterpoint, and take advantage of the small-room intimacy and daily happy hour when timing permits. Owner Lisa Braun remains part of its neighbourhood identity, while the menu's local ingredients and named combinations give this long-running Wellington Street restaurant a character beyond the usual pizza night.

Chef-led Ottawa sushi room with omakase tiers, signature maki, vegan options, and weekday bonus-roll offers on the current ordering menu.

A long-running Ottawa seafood market-and-grill where freshly shucked oysters, lobster, haddock fish and chips, shellfish happy hour, and a working seafood counter define the visit.

ALORA is a ByWard Market dinner-and-cocktail room built around shareable boards, a weather-permitting rooftop, and weekly bar rituals.

Wild Oat Bakery, Cafe & Farm is a long-running Glebe bakery cafe where organic-flour breads, croissants, vegetarian comfort food and a farm-grown ingredient thread all matter. The order is strongest when it moves between the pastry case, the soup-and-sandwich side and the take-home freezer.

A 1988 Old Ottawa East vegetarian buffet and bakery where pay-by-weight plates, seasonal cooking, and current takeout staples make plant-based dining feel established rather than trendy.

The Laff is Ottawa tavern history still doing daily work: a ByWard Market room opened in 1849, family-run in the present, with no-cover music, tax-included pub food, late kitchen hours, and happy-hour windows that make it useful beyond a single tourist stop.

Pili Pili centres the visit on natural-hardwood charcoal grilling, from whole-chicken platters and larger group dinners to red snapper, with plantain, bisap, and clearly priced lunch and side options giving the compact Dalhousie Street menu its West African shape.

Gezellig is a polished Westboro bistro where warm hospitality, a flexible two-plate lunch and brunch format, and a serious wine list make the room feel both neighbourhood-friendly and occasion-ready.

Gongfu Bao is a Centretown bao bar and Hong Kong cafe built around handcrafted steamed buns, plant-forward options, halal-friendly ordering, and a Saturday brunch lane with real menu depth.

Brown Loaf Bakery is a family-run counter bakery at 268 Elgin Street, where verified owner Zhimin Yang anchors a neighbourhood operation built around straightforward breads and pastries. Cheese buns and pecan butter tarts are the clearest current menu markers, while the single-dollar price tier and 7 a.m. opening make it an easy walk-in stop for breakfast or a take-home box.

North & Navy is a Centretown Northern Italian restaurant with Venetian Bacaro DNA, a current menu of antipasti, pasta, statement mains and dolce, plus a tasting-menu path for a fuller night out.

Riviera is a polished Sparks Street dinner room built around a former bank setting, a serious cocktail bar, seafood, lobster spaghetti, and chef-led comfort with sharp edges.

Trofí turns the Greek On Wheels lineage into a polished Somerset Village dining room built around hanging souvlaki brochettes, shareable mezze, Hummus Royale, happy-hour timing and a dessert list anchored by Baklava + Vanilla.

Corazon De Maiz is a ByWard Market Mexican counter built around burritos, tacos, quesadillas, tortilla soup and homemade salsas, with Mariana Torio Sosa and Erick Igari giving the compact room its personal spine.

Atelier is an Ottawa modernist tasting-menu restaurant built for a planned night out: seven expressions, about three hours, and a kitchen that makes precision and surprise feel like the point of the meal.

Fatboys is a ByWard Market Southern barbecue room built around dry-rub ribs, brisket, pulled pork, fried chicken, bourbon flights, a covered patio, and a road-trip smokehouse backstory.

Equator Coffee Westboro is a daytime cafe built around fair trade organic coffee, breakfast sandwiches, fancy toast, salads, seasonal drinks, and counter treats. The useful order starts with the Roasted Red Pepper and Pesto Breakfast Sandwich, then flexes into plant-forward lunch or a pastry-and-coffee stop.