Arlo Wine & Restaurant is a polished Somerset dining room where seasonal Canadian cooking, natural wine and warm service turn a red-brick house into one of Ottawa’s clearest special-night choices.
Mediterranean share plates, seasonal cooking, and a wine-led Kanata Centrum dining room built for slow dinners.
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.
ALORA is a ByWard Market dinner-and-cocktail room built around shareable boards, a weather-permitting rooftop, and weekly bar rituals.
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.
Aroma Meze is a downtown Ottawa Greek Mediterranean meze room built for shared ordering, with Garden, Sea, Earth and Dips sections that turn dinner into a group-wide spread.
Citizen is the Gilmour Street half of the Town/Citizen family: a contemporary Canadian room with a shared June 2026 menu, composed global bistro plates, reservations, walk-ins, and the long-running Marc Doiron and Lori Wojcik continuity behind it.
Bar Ocelli is a ByWard Market cocktail lounge where Witek Wojaczek turns the market-crossroads idea into precise cocktails and small plates. Gunpowder Fried Chicken, Gui Hua Gao, Chicory, Halloumi Fries, and Black Shallot Beef Sliders define the first order.
A cozy Kanata dining room built around polished sharing plates, wine, cocktails, and a Spring 2026 lineup that moves from charcuterie and ceviche into game, seafood, risotto, pasta, and braised lamb.
Fauna is a polished Centretown dinner room built around seasonal plates, natural wine, cocktails, and a decade-plus Ottawa story led by Jon Svazas and Billy Khoo.
Apothecary Lounge is a cocktail-forward ByWard Market speakeasy in an 1875 cellar under the YOW 54 York umbrella. The draw is the apothecary-themed drink list, a food menu built for sharing, live jazz and bingo nights, and a late-night happy-hour window.
Rabbit Hole is a Sparks Street cocktail-lounge restaurant built around oysters, pizza, polished drinks, a hidden Jackalope room, and a weather-dependent rooftop tiki bar.
Buvette Daphnee is a ByWard Market Quebec wine bar built around seasonal small plates, Canadian and Quebec bottles, and a chef-led kitchen anchored by Sean Karwowski with Jordan Holley in the mix. The current menu has real dinner weight: scallops, tartare, casarecce, pickerel, short rib, and fruit-forward desserts.
Speakeasy Tapas Lounge is a ByWard Market basement lounge built around cocktails, live music, and internationally minded shared plates. The best path is to treat it as an evening room: start with Beef Tataki or Duck Confit Spring Rolls, order a house cocktail, and let the music shape the pace.
Charlotte is an upstairs Elgin Street cocktail-and-wine lounge built like a living room: sofas, low light, sharply described cocktails, vegetarian-friendly snacks, and weekend DJ energy without turning the whole thing into a club.
Erling's Variety is a family-run Glebe bistro from Liam Vainola, built around an ever-changing small-plates menu, seafood-leaning current dishes, happy hour, and a wine list that makes the room feel planned without being formal.
