La Terrasse — Restaurant in Ottawa

This was bad. Will not return. Come at your own risk. You have been warned. Food is supbar, service is OK, view on the patio is amazing, wait times are horrendous. Full scoop below…

We were late for our reservation by 15 minutes and so they gave up our requested high table… We weren’t told about this rule before arriving for the meal, but fine, I guess rules are rules. For reference, our reservation was at 7pm and we arrived around 7:18 or so. Roads near wellington were blocked off, it took a little while (ok maybe more than a little while) to park the car, and we had a guest who was walking disabled. They said we can start dining at another seat and move to a high table when one becomes available, so we thought fair enough. Fair warning though, if you’re trekking from the west end on a Sunday night like we did, prepare to leave well in advance of your reservation.

Long waits are a feature here, not a bug. We couldn’t flag down a server to order food for about 60 minutes. On one occasion, we noticed a high table had freed up and asked a server to move us there, but he responded that the ladies at the front desk were responsible for seating, and hurriedly left before I could say “we’re ready to order food”.

When I asked the ladies at the front to move us to the available high table, they said there’s a waiting list for the high table and they’d let us know when the waitlist frees up before moving us. Fair enough. However, that vacant high table would remain vacant for the rest of the night… so much for letting us know.

After finally being able to order food some 60 minutes after sitting down, we were pleasantly surprised that our appetizer (crusted tuna) came rather quickly (~15 minutes). You can probably understand out disappointment when we found out we had paid $28 for the 5-6 thin, bland sashimi slices and some deprived lettuce skeleton garnish (I’m not sure what I mean here but you can see in the picture… the greenery looked like dried lettuce with the leaves removed.) Hit the mouth like unsalted lays chips. Delicious…

Our mains would not arrive for another 75 minutes, some 2h+ after arriving. It was past 9pm by the time we were served more than 6 skimpy pieces of raw tuna and water. Somewhere along the way of waiting for food and asking the servers about our mains, 3 additional high tables opened up, for a total of 4. At this point, the view of the sunset was phenomenal from the balcony and we just decided to up and move to the high table. We carried our own dishes and drinks. No harm no foul, we’re happier with the balcony view and the servers figured out quickly enough that we had moved. The ladies at the front desk never came around to even check on us or the high tables for the rest of the night. At all times for the rest of the night, there were vacant high tables, so I’m not really sure what happened to this waitlist they earlier claimed to have accumulated.

Mains were OK. We ordered the crab pasta and the cod. Both were VERY heavy in cream and VERY lacking in seasoning. If that is a flavour profile you like, then you may be in luck. I understand that the burger and steak frites are classics here, but these seafood dishes were also highly recommended by the servers. Not impressed, especially at the price.

It’s always impressive when tables that arrive 1.5h after you do, end up leaving before you do. That’s what happened to us, as the high table guests beside us finished their meal and left. I remembered them because they arrived after we had moved to the high tables and thought “I wonder if those other vacant high tables will fill up too” (they didn’t).

In summary, obscenely disappointing for what was billed as a casual dining experience attached to the Fairmont building. The view is a redeeming factor, and it really is one of a kind, but it is only really visible from the high tables and if it didn’t take us 3.5h to finish at meal that started at ~7:20, we might actually have had time to stroll around the lower balcony and admire the view at our leisure from there....

This is the only meal of my life that I can honestly describe as “so bad it was good.” The Chateau Laurier should lose a star just for this meal.

My colleagues and I were in Ottawa for an international conference. We arrived to a half-empty restaurant and were told we could only sit in the “lounge,” where they have the tiny tables only big enough for a beer. One member of the group, who was staying at the hotel, seemed very disappointed, perhaps because he didn’t understand how we would eat dinner off tiny tables, so I asked how long we’d have to wait for a real table.

The hostess seemed surprisingly annoyed by this question, but answered “35 minutes.” Her colleague answered, “yes, 35-45 minutes.”

We didn’t have anywhere to be so we said we’d sit and have a drink in the lounge and wait. We were told we’d have to pay the drink bill before moving to a table. I don’t understand why the bar tab can’t be transferred to a table, but not a big deal.

Five minutes later, they return and announce they have found a table. I’m not sure where they found it, but we move there.

So we order drinks. My European colleague asks for a beer, “do you have something Canadian?” The waitress says she doesn’t have that. We are all briefly puzzled that the Canadian restaurant has no Canadian beer. I don’t realize until ten minutes later that she probably meant “Canadian brand beer.”

Our Middle Eastern colleague orders a burger, no bacon, medium. He is informed burgers can only be well done. He acquiesces. The European also orders the burger. Two Americans choose the beef carpaccio instead, lol.

Then the food arrives. Of course this is the kind of restaurant where they hold up the food and say “who had the…?” This isn’t a five-star ho…oh IT IS! “Ah, burger without bacon, here you are,” they say, handing the Middle Easterner the burger with two slices of bacon clearly sticking out from under the bun.

The baconless burger arrives with fries and the bebaconed burger comes with a salad. This is intriguing since neither customer was asked what they wanted on the side.

The Qatari reaches for the fries. The waitress exclaims, “oh, you had the salad,” and literally reaches over and GRABS THE FRIES AWAY FROM HIM. “I wanted the fries,” he says nicely. “You had the salad,” she replies coldly. My American colleague turns to her and very kindly says, “I don’t think he asked for a salad.” The waitress shrugs and says, “well, that’s what I have written here.”

I think even a one-star hotel restaurant, at this point, would just have said, “oh, I’m so sorry, let me go get you some fries,” am I wrong? Are the fries gold-plated?

Plus, the fries turn out to be important, because the burgers are cold. My single tomato sliced into four pieces, embellished with a dozen or so chickpeas, occupied the upper third of a normal-sized plate, and it was lovely if stunningly little food for $24.

Do have a drink here and enjoy the view. Or better, have a drink elsewhere and then enjoy the same view from...

Not all that

This was our first visit here and we were greeted with big smiles and a beautiful wall of fresh herbs. Sadly what was to come was not as greeting. The high prices for the items on the menu do not quite justify the picturesque setting of 'La Terrasse', especially when you get stale food from what you would think should be top quality dishes.

I ordered the pulled pork tacos ($26). 3 regular sized tacos with the usual trimmings, but be warned they don't give any additional sides with them, no quacomole, no chimichurri, no sour cream. Fries are included and were good. The tacos themselves weren't very good, the tortilla was stale and the pulled pork was dry and flavorless. Even the garnish, a hand full of cilantro leaves (with stems) made me feel like I was eating grass and overpowered the other ingredients in the taco. The server was kind enough to give a side of chimichurri upon request. Do yourself a favour visit taco taqueria, I've reviewed that place and it's incredible.

My wife ordered the steak frites and it was nice. She asked for it medium rare and it was prepared correctly. I don't recall the cut of meat but it was good and flavourrful and was topped with a layer of chimichurri. The tiny greens you get with it weren't so appetizing, it amounted to about two forks full. Still not worth the +$30 price for the dish. Service was decent, server was attentive and pleasant. But at that price point we were expecting some first class...