Al's Steakhouse

Al's Steakhouse is a downtown white-tablecloth dining room whose signature salad dressing is sold by the bottle in Ottawa grocery stores. That detail is the easiest way to read what this Elgin Street steakhouse actually is. It has built itself out of small, repeated choices: the live-charcoal grill, the certified Angus beef cooked over it, the starter-salad-and-side service that comes with every steak, the house garlic dressing made in enough volume to leave the building.

The beef finishes its journey over live charcoal, the kind of grill that builds crust and pulls smoke into the meat, and the steaks are structured around starter-salad-and-side service with a seasoning choice. The 20 oz. Bone-In Rib Steak is the cleanest expression of that identity, cut from certified Angus beef and run through the same grill the kitchen has built its name on. Al's Famous Shish Kabob Filet Mignon turns filet onto a skewer with peppers, onion, tomato, and garlic rice. The Black Peppercorn Filet is finished with cognac sauce and mushroom caps. Tomahawk and Porterhouse Steaks sit on the menu for tables that want presence; Australian Wagyu Striploin is there for cuts that travel furthest from home. The starter side of the menu carries the classic-steakhouse roster: P.E.I. Oysters, Steak Tartare, Roasted Bone Marrow, French Onion Soup au Gratin, Crab Stuffed Mushrooms, Lump Crab Cake. Seafood and pasta give the table somewhere else to land — Lobster Linguini, Pan Roasted Sea Scallops, Mushroom Ravioli, Salmon Filet.

The same discipline carries past the steak menu. On-site butchery and aging keep the supply chain inside the kitchen rather than on a printed origin claim. The Butcher's Board — sliced New York striploin, lamb chops, bone marrow, chicken kabobs, house sausage, jumbo garlic shrimp, vegetable skewer, and crispy smashed potatoes on one shared platter — turns a mixed table into a single coordinated meal. Private dining lives inside the same building, with a main dining room sized for a substantial sitting, a banquet room for larger gatherings, and seasonal patios when the weather lets them open. The full lunch and dinner menu is available for takeout, which keeps the kitchen reachable on the nights when the dining room is not the plan. Lunch carries the format intact — Al's Steak-Frites, bistro plates, sandwiches and burgers that keep the dining-room feel without demanding a celebration dinner.

Halim Saikali came to Ottawa restaurant kitchens from Lebanon, worked his way through the city's dining rooms, and opened Al's on Elgin Street in July 1967. The restaurant has stayed in the Saikali family in the decades since, with the dining room now approaching its sixtieth anniversary, and local reporting has tracked the kind of detail a long-running family steakhouse accumulates — the on-site butchery, the in-house aging, a main dining room sized to host most occasions, a banquet room for larger ones, seasonal patios, free customer parking behind the building when roadwork made the front of Elgin Street harder to reach. The name on the door is the short version of Halim, and the kitchen running behind it has been kept inside the family for every year of its run.

Classic cocktails and a deep wine list run beside the food rather than behind it, with pairings that the rib steaks, the peppercorn filet, the oysters, and the Pan Roasted Sea Scallops ask for. The dining room moves at the pace of planned tables — celebrations, business dinners, the kind of visit that has been thought about ahead — and lunch carries the lighter version of the same identity with Al's Steak-Frites and bistro plates. Elgin Street has shifted shape around the restaurant in the decades since the doors opened; the live charcoal, the starter salad and side, and the dressing on every plate have not.