North & Navy — Restaurant in Ottawa

Beautiful ambiance, excellent service, and open kitchen experience!

This little gem was found by my boss on a work trip to Ottawa recently. Located in a converted Victorian, North and Navy transports you to an old-school cozy Italian eatery with charm and a sense of home and belonging.

We got the coppa plate, chard eggplant w/ yogurt, peach and ricotta anoli, short ribs ravioli, and the vegetarian steak, which was a charred cabbage wedge, and tiramisu for dessert.

The coppa although in house made was good but nothing impressive. It was a flat plate of charcuterie topped w/ honey and sliced plum. The charred eggplant was absolutely fantastic the textures and flavourful combination were a serious win with this dish smokey,tangey, and subtle sweet harmonized lovely together 👏 My shortrib ravioli was pretty good. A decent size although still smaller than what one would want, but good for a tinier eater. Short ribs was soft the egg yolk in the center gave it an added richness which was nice but it already came with alot of sauce and I could see it being to wet for some. The waiter had said their was goatcheese in the dish but I didn't taste it and I didn't care much for the toasted buckwheat on top which gave it like an unnecessary burnt crunch which it would be better off to without.

The peach and ricotta dish was interesting and had a good balance. And the vegetarian cabbage steak was actually much better then I expected since I'm a hard core carnivore. The textures were complimentary and was topped with mustard seeds that kinda exploded in your mouth similar to fish roe atop sushi...

The tiramisu was the 🌟 of the show! And tbh one of the best if not the best I've had to date. First of all the presentation of it is stunning almost like a pillow dolloped igalloo of mascarpone cream encasing a mound of perfectly soaked lady fingers. This is an absolute must have if you hit this spot up!!

Ps. The crusty bread and espresso butter were incredible as well!!! Definitely ate 2 -3 plates of that too !!😋

Overall a 4 stars for ambiance,service, creativity and plating presentation.

Still a few flavors that I found needed to be refined in minor ways and a slight cut back on the sauce for certain dishes. I also wish that the menu was a bit more expansive although i get the whole curated take on things, not many more thing but another 2-3 options woulda been nice.Also I know it's fine dinning but I'm still gonna complain about portion sizes as I'm a big eater and despite having share in a 4 course meal along with bread butter and wine I was sufficiently full but not completely satisfied. 🫣😋😅

Definitely a nice treat as I haven't been to a ton of fine dinning restaurants and overall had a lovely experience together...

Went to this dinner for a special occasion with my fiancée, and ultimately came out quite disappointed.

First of all, the service was good, extremely friendly staff and they’re very thorough walking you through the menu and willing to explain every detail. They’re also very accommodating, as my partner doesn’t eat pork and they were happy to oblige.

Unfortunately I don’t go to restaurants for the staff, I go for the food, which is where I was extremely disappointed. Nothing really tasted great, the food was bland and rather uninspiring, which is really unfortunate for the price point. For appetizers, we ordered a fish crudo dish that was completely under seasoned and flavourless, and we also ordered some assorted crostini’s which came with 3 different flavours, where my partner and I only really enjoyed 1 each.

The biggest disappointment was with the entrees. I ordered a quail dish with some rapini and while it was relatively good compared to the appetizers, extremely lacking in quality for a dish that almost costs $50. My partner got a flank steak with some potatoes, broccolini and potatoes and this was extremely bad. This steak was sous vide, and while the middle of the steak was done well, the outside “sear” was unfortunately completely burned. All you could taste was the bitterness of the steak, which completely ruined the dish. Thankfully, the wait staff being so great, we let them know that it was burned, they immediately offered a new dish, and comped the steak.

The dessert ended up being quite nice, we got an affogato and tiramisu, both were quite delicious. The gelato in the affogato was great quality, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Unfortunately, I won’t find myself coming back here though. With the comped steak and 20% tip the dinner cost is $217, and for the quality of food that is much much higher than I would be willing to pay. I do hope this place can up their quality again, there’s no way they built their reputation off food that tastes like this, there must have been a time that it was better. The staff is so passionate too, it’s just unfortunate that the kitchen is letting them down so much. Personally I would not recommend spending your money here, plenty of great restaurants in Ottawa at this price point that can give you...

FIRE HAZARD! North and Navy is one of our favorite restaurants, but we won't be going back.The food and service are excellent, however our last two visits were very concerning - let me explain.. Back in November 2020, my husband I were seated in the front room facing the beautiful bay window. The lights were dim and the room was filled with candles. There was a lovely couple sitting at the front window. The woman moved her body ever so slightly and BAM - HER ENTIRE HEAD OF HAIR WAS ON FIRE! Her hair must have touched one of the candles on the window sill. The fire was put out in a matter of seconds, however her hair was badly damaged and the smell of her burned hair lingered throughout our meal. The staff were very apologetic, paid for their meal and offered to pay for her hair services (I could hear the manager offer this). We chalked this up to being a horrible accident and hoped that the restaurant would remove their candles to avoid this type of situation in the future. Fast forward to present day. My husband and I went back to North and Navy this past weekend. When we first sat at our table, I blew out the tapered candle as I didn't want a repeat of our last visit. As usual, the food and service were excellent. My husband and I were just paying the bill when from the corner of my eye I saw a large flame. At first we thought it was a sparkler, perhaps for a birthday cake. Within seconds, a large floral arrangement on the ledge (within close proximity to patrons) was ENGULFED IN FLAMES! The waitress tried to wave it with a rag, which only made the flames larger then she grabbed it and brought it in the front hall where the fire was put out. To the management - STOP USING REAL CANDLES at your establishment! These were two very close calls that could have ended up much worse and we don't want to be eating there the next time a fire breaks out. As much as we have enjoyed your restaurant, we won't be back. Hopefully management will read this and make some immediate changes for the safety of...