Lost in Mediocrity

Reviewing a concert by Taylor Hicks after spending an evening with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones at Carnegie Hall, is roughly how I felt the other night when I dined at one of the most recent additions to Ottawa's restaurant scene, Stella Osteria. I was seated, the night before, at the community table in Mario Batalli's newly opened restaurant in New York, Lupa. It was obviously pure coincidence that Mario himself was dining at Lupa the night I ate there, as was the owner of Stella the night I found myself in his restaurant - and that's where any comparison must stop.

Stella opened a few weeks back in the location recently vacated by Clair de Lune. The decor is what I would term urban chic - simple leather chairs, a few booths upholstered in light tan leather, white table cloths and a granite-topped bar that runs down one side of the restaurant. An interesting glass motif, that features transparent images of Tuscan stone friezes, is used to divide the restaurant into two sides. The Executive Chef is Derek Benitz, who also overseas the kitchens at Blue Cactus and Luxe Bistro, and the Chef de Cuisine is Evan Pritchard.

I typically measure a restaurant's worth on 3 elements: the service, the food and the atmosphere. Sure, there are other things that can make the experience more pleasurable - I carried on at length about washrooms in my recent culinary tour of some of the top restaurants in Eastern Ontario; but at the end of the day I believe it comes down to these three variables.

A frequent line of mine when asked what I'd like as an aperitif is "what kind of beer do you have?" What I don't expect in a newly opened Italian restaurant whose cuisine is supposed to be "modern Italian rooted in tradition" is a list consisting of Heineken, Stella Artois, Upper Canada Dark and Rickard's Red. What I would expect, as a minimum, is Moretti.

Stella's menu has some interesting dishes that tempt you with the idea that this might be something new. Like so many mediocre restaurants, however, it seems to think that a lengthy menu is a measurement of quality. Instead it makes me suspicious that there is any one dish that is exceptional. Nevertheless, Stella refrains from offering the ubiquitous muscles, featuring instead, clams prepared with spicy Italian sausage and fennel. The clams were good - while small, they were tasty, nicely cooked and tender. The broth had a serious kick to it without sacrificing flavour. The broth was not complex - using Italian sausages, I wouldn't expect it to be - Italian sausages are what I call "cheap and sleazy" food - guaranteed high taste return with little effort.

But like muscles, if you have clams in a broth you should provide a spoon; and while you're at it, perhaps consider a side bowl for discarding the empty shells so you're not beachcombing through the bowl to uncover the one's tenaciously clinging to their roots - in the end, I gave up and assumed that a few got away. I did request a spoon, but it was tough to get at the broth through the pile of discarded shells - so much of that was left too, like a small tide pool.

As a main, I ordered what the menu described as "whole, partly boned wild striped sea bass, with a lemon marmalata." The lemon marmalata was exactly as described - I'm sure it would have been fine on toast, perhaps a scone, but why mask the wonderful taste of a whole sea bass... unless you're trying to mask the taste of your sea bass. It turns out that they weren't - it was quite flavorful and the skin was nicely crisped - which again made me wonder why they felt the need for this marmalata as an accompaniment.

The partly boned concept did leave me stumped. My fish was about as de-boned as the cadavers from a first year med class that had failed registration. I picked out enough bones in the first 5 minutes to build a raft. I generally don't mind the odd bone in fish, but in this case it was difficult and messy to eat, and as a result far too much went to waste. The previous night, at Lupa, I was served a whole Sea Bream with only the skeletal bone remaining. Mr. Pritchard, please take note - that is how a whole fish should be served.

Moving on from the main course I ordered an espresso and a zablione. As with the muscles, it was nice to see that Stella had chosen a slightly more original route on its desert menu, foregoing the typical creme brulee in favour of zablione. Their serving, however, was a disappointment. It was served in a small glass bowl mixed in with strawberries that were lazily cut in half and too large and cumbersome to eat. These strawberries were not fresh - they were so pale that the yellow of the zablione provided a perfect camouflage. And they were crunchy. I don't know what inspired the chef to think that these would be a complement to this desert - personally, I wouldn't serve them to in-laws. They would have been better used as table decorations over the summer season until they ripened in time for the influx of tourists on the Labour Day weekend.

Finally the bathrooms - they are quite funky. They're tucked away upstairs, providing a nice quiet interlude from the "madding crowd". Instead of the preferred individual terry towlettes, Stella's washrooms offer plush individual paper towels stacked neatly to the left of the sink. While not terry, they are a close second.

As for the bill, if priced reasonably I would have thought this to be an enjoyable evening over a meal that, while not particularly memorable, was a nice complement to the conversation with friends. But instead, the owners of Stella Osteria felt compelled to charge comparable prices to those of a much better restaurant, such as Beckta. Main course prices, such as the Filet chosen by my regular dining partner, were in the area of $35 each. I can only surmise that the owners felt they were only going to get one crack at their local patrons, so they would extort from them as much as possible without having to appear before a magistrate.

The crowning glory in this experience was to come across the review written a few weeks earlier by Citizen food critic Ron Eade. To read Mr Eade's column you could well expect that you would have to reserve several weeks in advance to get a table at Stella Osteria. He throws around superlatives like "delicately seasoned", "heavenly fall-off-the-bone tender" or my personal favorite "utterly perfect" for everything he tried. The only hypothesis I have for this contradiction is that some time between his dining experience and mine the owners of Stella Osteria were unfortunate enough to have lost their chef de cuisine.

Or perhaps there's one other theory. When a food critic comments that "squid ink" as the basis for pasta is "unique" you begin to question the level of complicity between the restaurant and the critic. It's possible that among Ottawa's mediocre restaurants squid ink is something to marvel at - but it is not something that a credible, and more importantly partisan food critic should acknowledge.

It's unfortunate that Stella Osteria has opened in such a prime location as that vacated by Clair de Lune. It's also unfortunate that a great opportunity has been missed by the addition of yet another insignificant food spot to the many others that characterize Ottawa's mediocre restaurant scene. And finally, it's unfortunate that we can't rely upon traditional food critics in the popular media to take an objective view when they're given a free meal at one of these new establishments. Unlike Mr Eade, I think that Stella Osteria is just one step away from what he thinks it isn't - "just another tourist trap dispensing tired cannelloni".