Le Poisson Bleu — Restaurant in Ottawa

I came here last night to celebrate my anniversary. They put a note on the table saying happy anniversary and had champagne to celebrate when we sat down. Already off to a great start! The restaurant itself has a front dining area and bar as well as a back dining area with the chef's tables. We were sat at the back with a perfect view of the kitchen, and it was a bit quieter thanks to a smaller number of tables.

These restaurants (ones with a very small menu of a few apps and mains) is what I like to call a "heart and soul art restaurant". They aren't just there to serve you food, they exist because the owner/head chef truly has a culinary vision they want to share with other foodies. This 1000% is the case of this restaurant.

To start we split the dry aged steelhead trout crudo. Our mains were the weekend special Swordfish lasagna and I got the Lobster risotto. Both the mains were very good. However That crudo. Was. THE MOST DELICIOUS thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. With no exaggeration, genuinely I was licking the plate. When we went home after to watch a movie I couldn't stop thinking about that dish. I went to bed thinking about the bright delicious flavour. (Basically the crudo is fish sliced in a sashimi style on a plate of quality olive oil and citrus with dill, red pepper paste, tomatoes and some crispy puff chip pieces) It's so simple but truly that dish stuck with me. Next time I might just order 4 servings of that dish. I was inspired to try it by other reviews here and they were so correct in saying it is incredibly delicious.

Our waitress was very sweet and knowledgeable of what the menu items' flavour notes are. She was very attentive to us and overall made us feel very welcome.

This place will be a repeat for us for sure in the future. The prices are JUSTIFIABLY high. Truly the quality of the food speaks for itself. If you go here you MUST get the crudo.

We will be back more in the future. I hope you have many years of success and a long and bountiful history making Ottawa's food scene...

We've gone twice in the past several weeks. The first time was a flat out 5, amazing service with a great server, incredible food (we had multiple plates to share between four of us, from the foie gras sturgeon terrine, to the beignets and the 4-piece charcuterie, etc). All of the food was unbelievably great, really fresh and interesting experience that I haven't had before. The charcuterie, especially the cod tongue and shrimp sausage blew us away. One of my friends who we dined with is a sous-chef in Toronto and she thought the place would do crazy well in the Toronto food scene for its different take on fish.

I brought my parents there again and it was incredible how much had changed on the menu in a few short weeks. The charcuterie was completely different this time around and equally as amazing. My parents raved about it all. We also had the squid which was tender and fantastic but the sauce was slightly too tangy, overpowering the squid just a bit. Finally, we shared the butterflied sea bream which was crispy and perfectly tender and the highlight of the meal. The only downside was unfortunately the tail wasn't fully cooked and my partner took a bite out of it before realizing it was raw. They quickly re-cooked that piece for us. So the second time was slightly more uneven but they did mention being shortstaffed when we walked in so I can't fault them too much for the slight misses. Overall, this restaurant is a fresh take on fish and a really exciting addition to the food scene in this city! Really happy to see something like this in my...

EDIT: response from owner noted and I have changed the star rating to 5 to keep your ranking unblemished as our night was affected by circumstances beyond your control. Maybe we could have just spoken to the loud party ourselves to let them know they were disrupting everyone in the room. All the best.

In all fairness I will preface this by saying our experience was probably very unique to us and may not apply to every diner but I was asked by the establishment via email for a review so here goes. We were excited to finally try this restaurant after reading so many positive reviews and seen pics posted on Google. We booked well in advance to have the best choice of seating. Our party of 4 was unfortunately late by 40 mins due to a 6 car accident on the Queensway and thus seated in the back room facing the parking lot. Not a big deal, but we ended up sitting next to a very large party of 8 which was so loud and disruptive that it spoiled our evening of planned good food, wine and conversation. The server tried hard to move us to the main dining room and its superior ambience but had no luck so we soldiered on and finished the night as best we could and left. It was so raucous at some points we couldn’t even hear the server’s description of the food presented.

Overall the food was nice, the lobster risotto was a tad salty but the charcuterie plate, salad, duck and salmon were good. If we return in the future we will have to specify the main dining room or walk away. The server was excellent and we tipped her well for her efforts to...