Ottawa is a city bursting with vibrant culinary experiences, with dining experiences for vegan diets to dishes for those with athletic training in mind—all available from some of the best restaurants in Ottawa.
Ottawa’s dining scene has evolved tremendously, offering healthful options that are just as tantalizing as their traditional counterparts. Now, you can dine out without giving up on your healthy eating habits.
In this blog, you’ll find the top restaurants in Ottawa, some of our favorite healthy dining options for date night, and how you can save and eat healthy on those nights you might not feel like going out.
The Top 8 Restaurants in Ottawa
Pure Kitchen Westboro
With three locations across Ottawa, this restaurant serves vegan and vegetarian dishes that are both satisfying and nutritious. They also offer delivery, so if you’re too tired for a night out, they’ve certainly got you covered.
If you’re looking for a comfort meal that still keeps things relatively healthy, we have to recommend Pure Kitchen’s Awesome Burger—made with a mushroom walnut burger patty, topped with BBQ sauce, a ton of veggies, and house aioli. You can also choose from cheddar or cashew cheese.
If you’re craving something sweet for your night out, you can’t go wrong with the carrot cake. (Though you should know that this option does include gluten.)
Mad Radish
Combining gourmet and fast food, Mad Radish has three locations across Ottawa, offering quickly prepared, healthy, and delectable meals. They offer a variety of internationally inspired dishes packed in ready-to-go bowls, making fast, healthy dining incredibly easy.
Hitting both the vegetarian and Halal diets, Mad Radish’s Maple Farm Bowl offers a delicious combination of roasted curry cauliflower, sweet potato, and your choice between Luisa’s chicken or cilantro-lime tofu. All together, as Mad Radish claims (and we can confirm), this dish is really a meal inspired by fall.
If you’re looking for a spicier option, the Piri-Piri Bowl, which is vegan and Halal, offers spicy piri-piri chicken, roasted sweet potato, and Peppadew peppers, all mixed with brown rice, carrots, and cabbage to give your dish that extra crunch and zip.
Atelier
Looking to really change things up and go for fine dining? Atelier is the place to go, offering a 12-course tasting menu masterfully put together by a chef with experience with cooking around the world. Don’t let the number overwhelm you, however—each small plate is a tasting experience, making for something light but tastefully engaging.
Recent options offered at Atelier include citrus-cured tuna and turnip cake, with dishes offered with premier wines like Molino’s Mistral Moscato d’Asti. Atelier is seen as one of the nicest restaurants in Ottawa for a reason.
Fraser Café
If you find yourself on the go and need a good lunch in a fun environment, make sure you don’t miss out on Fraser Café. Though they offer both breakfast and dinner options (as well as bottle takeaway), Fraser’s menu really shines with their lunch offerings, from their crispy smoked salmon and shrimp cake sandwich to their fresh radiatori pasta.
We recommend their Japanese curry and rice, with its fantastic combination of local mushrooms, asparagus, potato, sushi rice, and chili crisp.
Did you know…
Source: Statistics Canada
The Green Door Restaurant and Bakery
One of the best restaurants in Ottawa, especially for vegetarians, The Green Door Restaurant is one of Ottawa’s oldest vegetarian dining spots, offering a diet-specific buffet with a hot buffet and salad bar.
On the hot side of the buffet, the Green Door offers tofu broccoli stir fry, mushroom spinach lasagna, red lentil patties, and basmati rice pilau, to name a few options. For the salad bar, the Green Door offers avocado salad, Greek salad, pesto noodle salad, and much more.
To us, The Green Door is one of Ottawa’s top restaurants for more than the delicious food they offer—it’s their emphasis on sustainability. Their menu changes with the seasons, with farmers delivering the best in-season produce right to The Green Door.
They also offer a fantastic wine list to choose from, with a chardonnay from Niagara and a cabernet sauvignon from Chile. (They also have some great beer options to choose from.)
Sidedoor
Offering a hip dining experience, Sidedoor offers some of the best tacos in Ottawa (just ask their customers!) Great for a lighter dining option, Sidedoor’s taco selection ranges from Bajan fish with sauce and red cabbage to park char siu made with pickled carrot and five spices.
But don’t stop at the tacos—Sidedoor also offers mains that are sure to make your dining experience stand out. We recommend the braised beef with red panang curry and roasted peanuts. You also can’t go wrong with either the spicy or mild noodles, even their naan bread, as a side.
Discover your dining options in Ottawa with these blogs:
- Eat Healthy On the Go With Vegan Delivery in Ottawa
- Eat Lean and Clean With These Keto Meals in Ottawa
- Eat Right With Halal Food in Ottawa
Level One
Game on! Level One is one of Ottawa’s best restaurants, offering a unique gaming experience along with your dining. Offering 1,300+ board games and over 1,000 video games, Level One is dedicated to putting the fun back into your Friday night. For $8, you can stay and play with a slew of craft beers and cocktails to choose from and some of the greatest pub fare in the city.
Dive into all the foods you loved as a kid, but with an added twist. Make sure you don’t skip out on their vegetarian fried mac and cheese, served with house buffalo ranch and ketchup. The Level Up poutine, made with a four-cheese blend and topped with a red wine gravy, pea shoots, and bacon, is one of our favorite dinners for a Friday night.
If you’re looking to keep things on the healthy side of town, you can’t go wrong with their kale Caesar salad.
Town
Planning to go a bit further and need to choose one of the best restaurants in downtown Ottawa? Town is the place to go. Billed as an artisanal Italian restaurant, Town is family-owned and -operated, offering dishes like the classic meatballs to falafel and sweet potato tahina. (And, frankly, you can’t go wrong with either.)
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