I found out about this event the week before from a good friend of mine. The conversation went something like this…
“What’s a dishcrawl?” I asked, having never heard of the concept before in my life.
“It’s like a pub crawl, but with food,” he answered.
“No more questions, where can I sign up?!”
I mean really, how can anyone not be hooked at the idea of going to four different places, eating four different meals, with a bunch of people who are just as obsessed and shameless about their love of food as you are? This event was made for me.
Ottawa has hosted a couple dishcrawls in the past, most notably in the Glebe and in the Byward Market, but the event had fallen by the wayside in recent years. This year’s organizer Mat Wong decided to bring it back with an ambitious new theme that would combine two of Ottawa’s most well-known culinary neighbourhoods: Chinatown and Little Italy. Additionally, you only find out about the first restaurant the day before, and the rest are a secret until you arrive!
The night started at La Favorita on Preston Street. From the outside, the restaurant seemed small and unassuming, sandwiched between two larger eateries on each side. The interior, however, was a different story. With a wood-burning stove and overhead star-like lighting, the inside was positively charming.
Forty anxious and hungry diners were seated at two long tables that took up the majority of the restaurant.
The meal started with an amuse-bouche of baguette slices topped with goat cheese spread and shrimp or salmon. They were very tasty and I would’ve had two had there not been so much more food to come!
The first course was a slice of their signature five cheese pizza with onions and tomatoes over hazelnut pesto, a mixed Italian salad and a slice of bread topped with bruschetta and cheese. The pesto added an earthy flavor and an unexpected but welcome extra crunch to the pizza, and the springy crust was the perfect balance of crispy and soft. The salad was very lightly dressed with only balsamic dressing, olive oil and a lemon wedge but it was a welcome accompaniment to the more decadent parts of the meal. The tomato cheese crostini was extra crunchy, but not too much to cut the roof of your mouth like with some crusty breads, a definite plus! But it would’ve been nicer to have more variety though as the flavour was very similar to the pizza.
The next stop was Il Primo, also on Preston. This restaurant was a lot cozier, with small tables of eight set up throughout. The butternut squash soup was so good – silky and buttery and subtly sweet. It was paired with a mixed green salad, this time topped with warmed milky soft goat cheese and chickpeas, which added a nutty crunch that complimented the soup. I splurged on a glass of red, and I’ll admit I don’t know much about wine, but it was absolutely divine.
The third restaurant was La Dolce Vita, another Italian place which was a tad disappointing as I’d been hoping for an even split of the East meets West. Additionally, the seating was very cramped and all the bodies made the room uncomfortably hot. The meal was a spaghetti bolognese (spaghetti with a red pepper cream sauce for the vegetarians), a slice of their five-cheese pizza and a stuffed mushroom cap. While I’m not the biggest fan of mushrooms, I actually liked this one, which I think says quite a lot! The bolognese, however, needed a little oomph. I actually preferred the vegetarian version better that my friend ordered. The pizza was delicious, but didn’t quite measure up to La Favorita’s version. However, being the third Italian restaurant out of three can’t be easy.
The last place was My Sweet Tea on Somerset Street, a Taiwanese-inspired tea shop that features classics like bubble tea, but also sushi and desserts. Here we enjoyed a lovely dessert of brick toast, essentially a slice of thick sweet white bread, topped with various garnishes like condensed milk, strawberries and custard, coconut, and chocolate hazelnut spread with bananas. The flavour of the bread was reminiscent of French toast, and I was surprised that such a simple dessert could taste so good! The coconut was my favourite, a rich, golden sweet spread with undertones of vanilla, but they were all delicious.
I ended the night with blooming tea, where a flower actually blooms in the cup and flavours the water! It had a very mild flavour, like an extremely light green tea, but a teaspoon of honey improved the flavour immensely. (Although one diner called it cheating!)
All in all I had a lovely night and would certainly recommend the Dishcrawl to anyone who loves good food and meeting new people! While the $60 price tag for this event would be pretty steep for most university students, other events in the past have been closer to $45-50. If you do the math, that’s only about $12 a restaurant for a full meal. And it’s a great way to get out and get to know Ottawa just a little bit better. Or check out the restaurants on your own time!
Follow them on Twitter @DishcrawlOTT to get updates on the next one!