Lavender Grill

Most restaurants named for a flower stop at the sign. Lavender Grill puts it on the plate: a lavender cream sauce coats the gnocchi with mushrooms, and the cheese ravioli alongside it, two pastas that turn the name into something a diner can actually order. The same thread runs into dessert and the bar — a lavender tart, a blueberry cheesecake finished with a lavender reduction, even a lavender-scented gin and tonic — so the idea reads as a kitchen decision rather than décor. It anchors a restaurant and lounge in Ottawa's ByWard Market, and gives an otherwise sprawling menu a single, legible idea.

The pasta is where Lavender Grill is most itself, but it is not the whole story. A steakhouse runs alongside it: AAA Canadian beef, hand-cut and finished with rosemary garlic butter and thyme, from an eight-ounce filet mignon to a sixteen-ounce rib steak. The starters lean toward a slower meal — a salmon tartare brightened with citrus, a steak tartare built on AAA tenderloin, calamari hand-breaded in Cajun flour. Seafood holds its own with grilled salmon under garlic butter and gremolata, and tiger shrimp in herb butter. Add burgers, salads, sandwiches, and a deep dessert list, and the menu covers most of what a table might want without making anyone settle.

That breadth is the point. Lavender Grill is built so a table never has to agree on one cuisine — a steak, a plate of pasta, a piece of grilled fish, and a Beyond Burger can all land together, and the lavender motif is the connective tissue that keeps the range reading as deliberate rather than scattered. The theme is not only on the plate; it carries through the colour and feel of the lounge that gives the restaurant its name. It is a downtown formula aimed at the full night out rather than a quick meal, and the kitchen backs that up by staying on until midnight every day it opens.

The bar and the weekend brunch each make a case for timing a visit. The bar is a real program rather than a back-of-menu afterthought — the Midsummer, a New York Sour, the seasonal Lavender Royale — and it pairs as naturally with the pastas as with a tartare. Brunch runs Saturday and Sunday, broad enough to swing from Eggs Benedict and steak and eggs to lighter avocado toast and smoked salmon toast on sourdough. The draw is a standing one: a complimentary mimosa arrives with every brunch main, which gives the weekend a reason beyond convenience.

The restaurant comes out of the ByWard Market's steady churn of openings. It arrived in the summer of 2022 in the Time Square building on Clarence Street, and local reporting at the time named Reza Khakbaz as the owner and quoted him on the menu's direction. The address does much of the work: Clarence Street sits in the middle of the Market's dining and nightlife grid, a short walk from the bars and the Saturday-morning crowds, which suits a place meant to be both a dinner reservation and a later drink.

What ties it together is occasion. Lavender Grill markets itself for private dinners, cocktail parties, and receptions, and the menu is broad enough to feed a celebration without funnelling everyone into the same order. Even its standing offers reward showing up for the evening rather than the discount — a complimentary glass of wine with any main course on Tuesdays through the summer is built to fill a quiet night, not to move inventory. The smart order rarely changes: a lavender pasta, a tartare to start, a cocktail that picks up the same note — and on Clarence Street, that is usually enough to turn an ordinary Tuesday into a night worth dressing for.