Spark Beer & Pizza — Restaurant in Ottawa

UPDATE, OCTOBER 2024: Spark has totally shifted their food identity, so the below review no longer applies. Great beer, good pizza. You're not going to have your mind blown like you might at City Goose, but Spark knows who they are and do what they do well. Leaving the woeful tale of wet hot dogs below so you can see how far they've come.

--

Alright, let's get the good out of the way first: their beer is incredible and their service was friendly. Really great, inventive beer made locally. Cocktail menu and the flights of beer are nice touches, too.

So why three stars? Well, we ordered food.

Spark has a pretty sparse food menu, which is fine for a brewery. One of their options is hot dogs - veggie or sausage, with sauerkraut and mustard. We ordered three dogs, two as veggies.

Half an hour later, the staff brought us three lukewarm veggie dogs. The buns were wet (from the sauerkraut?) and damn near Wonderbread. The hot dogs don't get grilled; they could have been microwaved, maybe boiled. The dogs are served with some chips and a small wedge of pickle.

Dear reader, I will be clear about this: no matter who you are, you do not want to pay $36 for three wet hot dogs and some chips. Come in, order a beer, look at their nice decor and drink their good beer, and leave. Do not order a tragic hot dog. You have been warned.

EDIT: Can't respond directly to the owners, but only some of these problems could have been remedied by noting the issues on-site. You can't un-wait half an hour in a mostly empty bar, and you can't magically make better veggie dogs, buns, and an actual grill appear. We waited too long and were ready to go; that's just how it...

Came here for beer and pizza. Love the names of their beers. Tried their sour weissbeer and I was hoping more of the weiss would come through, but it just tasted like a typical, but nice sour.

Also tried their sausage pizza. The pizza itself, the toppings were good, but the slices were so small that it was like 1 bite of toppings and the rest was crust. The pizza was also a bit misshapen which led to the slices being all different sizes. The crust felt a little doughy and was unevenly cooked, with 1 side of the pizza barely rising at all. Was a bit floppy and didn't hold it's shape well.

Service was okay. We had ordered the sausage pizza with a Donair dip to go with it, and they brought out a donair pizza instead of the sauce, which we sent back and they didn't charge us for, and they apologized because they punched it in wrong...apparently this happens at least once a week, because the sauce and the pizza are basically called the exact same thing? Maybe change the name of one of them then if this keeps happening? They did bring out the donair dip eventually, but it took quite a while, like...we had finished eating all but the crust of the pizza before they were able to bring us the dip, and we'd even waited for a bit expecting the dip and for it to cool. The dip itself was I think a little too sweet, and a little too thick to the point it kind of coated your entire mouth and that's all your could taste. It was good, just not exactly what I...

Disappointed in the whole experience there. We visited Ottawa’s Chinatown on Thursday night. We were seated and wanted to order some drinks and food.

We ordered a pitcher of beer for 3 people and before I could order the server had turned around and left. The pitcher of beer was brought to our table after a long wait so while waiting we were playing cards, the server put the pitcher of beer directly on top of our playing cards, soaking them in beer. The pitcher of beer only filled 2.5 cups.

I ordered the Paper Plane $16 cocktail that had about 200ml of a drink in the glass. The server spilled my drink on the table, my bag and all over the floor - he didn’t come back to help. I wasn’t given a new drink, he came back a second later after we watched as he had just topped it up to make it appear new but it ruined the taste and made me feel sick We had a long wait to order food.

We finally ordered food, I ordered a caesar salad, while eating the salad the butt of the romaine lettuce was in my salad

It honestly felt embarrassing to tip a small local business so low but the whole experience was sad. Once the server realised we tipped low he treated us with a “whatever” attitude and made us uncomfortable

The place felt understaffed, I felt bad since it was only him running the food and making drinks but he wasn’t that...