Mr. B's Osteria — Restaurant in Ottawa

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If you're craving freshly made pasta, traditional comfort food, steak, or even seafood, Mr.B's is an amazing place to visit!

There are so many types of pasta you can try, ranging from rigatoni, linguine, fettucine, lasagna, penne, tortellini, raviolio, and mannicotti fiorentina!

Smelts: lightly floured & fried with tomato aioli & fresh lemon ($12): fried nicely, not too much batter, and not oily. Tomato aioli was perfect!

Spicy pork belly appetizer ($14): Make sure to check their specials on the chalkboard - this was one of the "specials"! The pork was really tender, and it wasn't spicy at all (in my opinion). A great start to the meal.

My favourite dish out of everything was the Fettucine with fruitti di mare (clams, crab, scallops, mussels, with large & matane shrimp, $24) - the pasta was perfectly cooked, and really soaked up the delicious seafood sauce. The seafood was very fresh - I couldn't stop eating this! Definitely a must-try if you like seafood. If you don't, you could choose the Alfredo version of the Fettucine with Parmesan Cheese and Cream (you can add chicken for $3)!

If you like thinner pasta, the Shrimp & Scallops Napolitana ($26) is also fantastic, sautéed in garlic, white wine, and tomato. The size of the shrimps and scallops was massive!

A classic comfort food dish is their Chicken Scallopine Marsala, with sweet wine & sautéed mushrooms - this was a nicely balanced dish, with decadent marsala sauce, mushrooms, capers, veggies, and potatoes.

The interiors are gorgeous, and really add to the dine-in experience, which I recommend. There is a lot of space with the lofty ceilings, and cream/muted colours.

They also have a nice cocktail list - I tried the lychee love ($12), as I'm a huge fan of lychee, and found it well-made. It goes especially well with...

My wife and I had been enjoying date nights at Mr. B's for 10+ years. The food and service had generally always been quite good. The last time we had dinner, my wife had requested a booth a week in advance, as I have been recovering from a recent lower back surgery and the chairs at the new Mr. B's location are not at all comfortable, especially to sit in for 30+ minutes in that condition. The night we were to have dinner, we were going to be an hour late so my wife called ahead and explained the situation. She was told not to worry, if we were able to leave by 8pm, a booth would still be available. We arrived at 6pm and although we explained the situation, the hostess chuckled and said the booths are strictly reserved for larger groups and they could not provide one. All but one were empty at that time. As we ate our meal, we noticed that as the booths filled, there were only couples seated at them. Why they wouldn't allow us to use one is anyone's guess. I know they love their "regular" customers, so that's the only explanation that makes sense... we generally order two apps, wine and dessert along with our mains, so it's not as if they would've lost much money by providing us the seating we requested a week prior. As such, we had our main and left. While my wife and I have great memories of Mr. B's, it's not a location we'll visit again after that fiasco. There's plenty of other restaurants in Ottawa that don't mind offering preferred seating, when it's requested a...

We had a great experience at Mr. B’s a few years ago, so we were excited to return, but unfortunately, this visit left us not wanting to come back.

Right from the start, our booth had visible crumbs all over the seat, something our host also noticed but didn’t address. The meal began promisingly, but we were very disappointed to find that the Frutti De Mare, which was advertised as containing crab, actually used imitation crab (Pollock). This was especially frustrating because our server had recommended the dish. When we asked our server, Maya, about it, she initially brushed it off but later confirmed with the kitchen that it was indeed imitation crab. The offered “solution” was simply to remake the dish without the imitation crab, missing the larger issue, that the item was falsely advertised. Once this was pointed out, the waitress said she would inform the manager. Instead of approaching our table to apologize or discuss the situation, the manager stood nearby with his back turned for long stretches, never once speaking to us (as opposed to earlier in the evening when he made weird comments).

Between the lack of cleanliness, the misleading menu, and the poor handling of our concerns by both staff and management, this experience was very disappointing and a stark contrast to our...