Capital Cuisine: Guide to the Restaurants of Ottawa and the National Capital Region

Nora T. Corley is a writer and librarian in Ottawa.

Cochrane is well known in the Ottawa area as a restaurant critic, food
writer, and cooking teacher. He admittedly loves to eat, and to eat
well.

Capital Cuisine (pun, I’m sure, intended) lists 101 restaurants in
the National Capital Region where Cochrane likes—not only for the
food—to eat and drink. He includes three national institutions—Les
Muses, in the Canadian Museum of Civilization; the Restaurant des Beaux
Arts, in the National Gallery of Canada; and the Café of the National
Arts Centre—because these are places that “showcase our national
heritage, places to which thousands of visitors to the region will
come.” Of the three, only the Café meets with his approval.

The restaurants are listed alphabetically. Each entry starts with the
usual practical information: address, telephone number, hours open,
availability of parking, smoking or nonsmoking areas, special access,
credit cards accepted, types of food served, and price range. There
follow detailed and often entertaining comments on the décor, service,
ambience and, of course, food.

The book concludes with several indexes: an alphabetical list of the
restaurants discussed; a list of type of food; another by location; and
another of the restaurants with easy access to the building and the
washrooms.

This book is well written, interesting, useful to visitors and locals
alike, and certainly a fine example of its genre.