Tag: Ottawa

Clarissa in Ottawa, Day 2

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

We dedicated our second day in Ottawa to exploring the city. First, we went to the Byward Market. There are several stalls selling these funny Canadian hats and mittens:

Downtown Ottawa is beautiful:

Even though there are weird looking buildings like this one:

I’m kidding, of course. I liked the weird building. I’m just trying to make this post more controversial.

Of course, no visit anywhere with my sister could do without an exploration of every baby store in the area:

And then we had to start on our way back. These beautiful clouds accompanied us on the way:

I’d really like to be praised for my improving photography skills now.

Clarissa in Ottawa, Day 1

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

Ottawa is a great place, people. It’s both cozy and sophisticated, safe and fun. The city is not huge and it has a comfortable, welcoming small-town feel. However, it’s a city with great universities, exquisite restaurants, and interesting stores to discover. The trip to Ottawa that I took this week started at Tim Horton’s. I couldn’t visit Canad and never see the inside of a Tim Horton’s, could I?

As soon as we arrived in Ottawa, we went to our hotel to register. Here is our room:

After that, I rushed to St. Paul’s University where my conference was taking place:

Here is the poster for our conference:

I have to tell you that at no other conference had I ever been offered food and wine of the same high quality as a did here. At many conferences, you pay a registration fee that is 3 times greater than the one I paid here and don’t get as much as a bottle of water in return. Here, however, we were fed and offered coffee and alcohol several times during the day.

In the meanwhile, my sister was having a pretty great meal, too, at Social restaurant:

I was kind of sad to be missing the meal at Social because it’s such a lovely restaurant. I stopped feeling sorry that I missed the dinner, though, when I heard the brilliant talk by Daniel Innerarity, a Spanish philosopher I admire:

After the conference ended, I went back to the hotel and spent the next four hours talking to my sister. We’ve been talking for almost 30 years now but there is still a lot to say.

Domus Cafe in Ottawa, Canada: A Review

~ Clarissa ~ 20 Comments

Today in Ottawa, I decided to take my sister to lunch to show my gratitude to her for driving me to Ottawa for my conference and back. We chose to visit Domus Cafe whose talented young chef uses ideas borrowed from Canadian country food by takes them in the direction of haute cuisine (I still can’t get out of my French-speaking mode, so please bear with me until I go back to the US).

Here is how Domus Cafe looks inside:

It is located in Ottawa’s vibrant Byward Market, so it’s very easy for any tourist to find. Here is how Domus Cafe looks on the inside:

We came right after the restaurant opened at 11 am, so it was still empty. It really filled up for lunch, however, even though this is not a cheap place. Of course, the food is so good and the service is so spectacular that there is no mystery to Domus cafe’s popularity. Here are the lattes we ordered with our lunch:

I’m trying to learn to take better photos. How does this one look? I think it’s better than the ones I usually take. W

We had a long way back to Montreal ahead of us, so we decided to order a big lunch. For appetizers, we got mushroom bisque. I loved it because it was not oversalted, like mushroom bisques often are. One huge differences between US restaurants (even very expensive ones) and Canadian restaurants is that food is always grievously oversalted in the US. Here is this beautiful bisque that smelled and tasted of mushrooms:

As an entree, my sister had a mushroom barley risotto. I’d never tried a barley risotto before and I’m glad I did because it’s a very interesting dish that I now plan to recreate at home. The risotto was very delicately seasoned and perfectly done. Here it is:

And I had smoked trout with rosti, apple and endive salad and caramelized pearl onions. This dish was divine. The rosti were very crisp and fresh and the salad was very refreshing, offering a great counterpoint to the saltiness of the roasted trout:

Of course, after this kind of lunch, neither of us was interested in the dessert. In order to fulfill my role of a blogger who faithfully records all aspects of reality, I even took a photo of the bill:

This was an expensive lunch but we were enjoying a special occasion, so it was absolutely worth it.