Sidedoor

Sidedoor builds a contemporary kitchen and bar out of food that began on the street — tacos, bao, dumplings, and sashimi that arrive continuously and land in the centre of the table for everyone to reach. Plates come out as they're ready, not plated in courses, a family-style rhythm the kitchen treats as the default, not a special request. Set in Ottawa's ByWard Market, the restaurant runs on a single premise: order broadly, pass plates, and let the meal build instead of committing each diner to a private main course. The street formats come plated in a polished ByWard dining room, not off a cart, and a table that agrees to share gets the most out of the kitchen.

The first-order identity is the street-food lane. The Spicy Braised Beef Taco carries tasty sauce, pickled red onions, and crispy shallots; the Tempura Bajan Fish Taco answers with red cabbage and togarashi. Bao run alongside — Sweet and Sour Crispy Tofu Bao under citrus slaw, Stone Fruit Seared Pork Belly Bao with stone-fruit chutney and crispy plantain chips, a Spicy Dill Crispy Chicken Bao slicked with garlic dill aioli. The Sidedoor Banh Mi stacks cha lua and creton on a focaccia bun with nuoc mam, carrots, cucumber, and bread-and-butter pickles, and comes with a choice of soup, salad, or fries.

From there the menu widens, and a method shows itself. Pork + Shrimp Dumplings come in peanut pesto and oyster sauce; Green Papaya Salad arrives with nuoc mam, cashews, and crispy taro; Chicken Satay leans on shishito peppers and Thai basil. The kitchen works in contrast — yuzu against miso, dashi against panaeng curry, pickles and fresh herbs cutting whatever is fried or sauced. Tuna Sashimi, dressed with cashew salsa, miso yuzu, and furikake, resets the middle of a heavy order, with Salmon Sashimi and a Hamachi Crudo rounding out a raw-bar section that does real work between richer plates. The Miso Glazed Black Cod over soba and dashi broth shows the same hands can plate a serious seafood course; the tofu bao and a Coconut Fritter under turmeric panaeng curry keep vegetarians in the spread rather than on its edge.

The template comes from further afield than the Market. Sidedoor opened in 2011 around Southeast Asian street food, and the kitchen leans on Vietnamese food stalls and Thai street markets — regional fish sauces, fresh-ground curries, exotic spices, and Ocean Wise seafood — not a single national flag. That sourcing is what lets a Vietnamese pancake, a Korean-inflected bao, and a Bajan-spiced fish taco share one menu without reading as a grab bag.

Dessert is treated as part of the plan, not an afterthought. The Hand Rolled Donuts rotate through white chocolate cranberry, dark chocolate, cinnamon sugar, and a chef's selection, while the house-made Ice Cream Pops come in miso caramel, black sesame, chocolate fudge, and vanilla; the sweet menu also turns out a Kyoto Rose Tea Cake and a Mini Donut Tower for a table splitting one finish. The drinks list keeps the same range — cocktails and classics, draft beer and cider, a broad wine selection — with mocktails and non-alcoholic beer for anyone building the spread without the alcohol.

The throughline is use more than theme. Sidedoor works across more than one occasion — a lunch menu built around the Sidedoor Banh Mi and a Sidedoor Lunch Box for a tighter midday visit, a brief late-afternoon snack window that trims the menu to smaller tacos, dumplings, and Tomyum Arancini, a full dinner spread, and an event room with a lower bar when a group outgrows a standard reservation. The menu keeps giving the same instruction the centre of the table already implies: order it as a group, not as a private main course.