Restaurant Reviews: Tea at the Chateau Laurier, Pork Fat, Supply and Demand

The Green Door at 198 Main street
Photo by Peter Blanchard courtesy of Flickr
(Creative Commons)

Kids in the Capital blog recently gave a very positive review of the Prince and Princess Tea at Zoé's Lounge in the Fairmont Chateau Laurier. If you have pre-teen or teenage children, and don't want to put them off by talking about princes, princesses or other fairly tale characters, you can call it High Tea.  With that in mind, the author of the blog post brought her pre-teen daughters and according to the review had an excellent time.

"The decor in both the Chateau Laurier and Zoe’s is beautiful and posh. Just walking into the lobby of the hotel made my girls stand up a bit straighter and carry themselves a bit more grown up," says the review.  "In Zoe’s Lounge, all the staff were extremely attentive, and everything they served was presented so elegantly. Both my girls were amazed."  My spouse also likes to go for tea with her girlfriends from time to time, so this this is not the first time I have heard someone rave about High Tea at the Chateau.

Capital Dining, meanwhile, recommends brunch at Murray Street, located at 110 Murray in the Byward Market, with the following caveat: "We call it brunch. They call it 'That Weekend Thing' at Murray Street, and best to recall its Mission Statement before you waddle over: 'Pork Fat… we put that #%$# in everything!' Indeed they do. Come hungry and come keen, ’cause if you’re looking for cool riffs on the bacon and eggs breakfast and have no interest whatsoever in seeing anything green on the plate, Murray Street delivers with unabashed enthusiasm and no shortage of heft."

Peter Hum, the Ottawa Citizen's food critic and blogger, reviews Da Santino Ristorante at 1491 Merivale Road.  In his story, he writes that: "During three visits, we had mixed reactions to the unfussy, homestyle fare on our plates, finding that some dishes delivered good flavour and value, while others would have made us happier with some tweaking in the kitchen or at the cash register."

Hum's review of  Supply and Demand at 1335 Wellington, which opened up about a month ago, is quite positive.  "[M]any dishes on (Chef) Wall’s compact menu are almost addictively delicious," he writes. "(The) others, while they wow a little less, are still satisfying."  The restaurant's one-page menu is tweaked daily.

Completing things out is Hum's review of 327 Wine Bar at, you guessed it, 327 Somerset Street West, in which he calls the menu straightforward and likeable.