eternal, originally uploaded by mintyfresh.

One of the things you tend to forget when you live in a capital city – especially for a very long time – is that it’s a capital city. Sure, there are politics, and the local bars have things like “hill hour’ instead of happy hour, but you forget about the part of being a capital city that brings people who aren’t from here, well, here.

For me, Parliament Hill has always been a place that is part of the fabric of this city – and sure, it happens to be one of those places where we place those we’ve elected and ask them to look out for our best interests while valiantly hoping that they just don’t screw it up, more than anything else – but it’s also an Ottawa institution – for the people, for the politicians, and even for the cats.

Walking home from a night out recently, I was thinking about what I would miss about this town while meandering home from the market. And I realized as I walked past it, past the late night tourists, past the RCMP officer who always offers a polite nod but never a smile, past the lululemon lunchtime yoga spot, past where we used to feed the hill cats some treats and leave our spare change for the man who cares for them, that this place would be one of the things – so imposing and significant, yet a place where I always felt right at home.

It takes a special kind of chef to open up his kitchen to the paparazzi.

And no matter how you want to slice it, nor how enthusiastic our praise, that’s what we were, we dozen or so camera-weilding foodies, when we stepped off of the freight elevator into Chef Blackie’s kitchen on Wednesday night.

Having worked at the NAC for some sixteen months (an experience for which I will forever feel lucky), I am no stranger to the special moments that can happen within the giant walls and multiple storeys of the fortress-of-the-performing-arts, bound both to protect them and present them. But none were more special that this – a unique opportunity to not only step inside what some might consider one of the best kitchens in the city, but to participate. To cook! To tour! To plate! And to eat, in the company of the same chef who happens to be in the process of turning what has always been considered fine dining at the NAC on it’s head.

From the immense Chef’s Table (it can seat 24 in a pinch), to the personalized tour (if I could have snuck that new induction cooktop home in my purse, I absolutely would have), to the fabulous team of chefs who get to call the experience that we were part of on Wednesday their work, to the smiling faces of the staff, and the welcome from President and CEO Peter Herrndorf, we were spoiled, surprised, and I don’t think anyone sitting around that table would have been able to wipe the smiles of glee off their faces for anything.

While we were really there to get a sense of Blackie’s new Taste5 menu (which you can try yourself – and should – from Monday to Saturday on nights when there are performances in Southam Hall), this was about more than that. It was about embracing a community that very rarely gets to sit as a group and chat with some of the greatest chefs we can find and have a conversation. It was about showing a broader audience that just because a restaurant might have been around for decades doesn’t mean that there aren’t fresh ideas and surprises waiting for you.

The NAC should count itself lucky to have Chef Blackie blazing a trail towards something completely different (and delicious) for a place that represents, as do the NACs stages, some of the best that Canada’s culinary arts scene has to offer.

If you haven’t given the “new” Le Cafe a try, you should. I know, I, for one, will be back.

Check out my full set of photos and commentary from the evening here.

And to read more, check out the commentary of the rest of the very very good company I was keeping, including C’est Bon Cooking, Simply Fresh, Whisk, Shawn Dearn, Lana at Apron Strings, After The Harvest, Foodie Prints, Rachelle Eats Food, Kayahara, and of course we can’t forget our lovely hosts @jcovert and @michaelblackie. The entire night was such a pleasure, I can’t wait for it to happen again. I can only hope that I’ll find such a vibrant, interesting, and opinionated collection of foodies in my soon-to-be-adopted hometown.

(And sidenote: did I mention that he sent us home with recipes, on top of it all?)

61.365 Pint, originally uploaded by mintyfresh.

It has always been the ‘little corner pub’, whether I lived quite literally around the corner, or so very many blocks away. The corner booth (the regulars know it as the one with the bar window) has been home to nights out with friends, brunches with strangers, and those seats at the bar in front of the manx-tap? They were home to a steady string of ice-cold, air-conditioned nights that may or may not have qualified as dates with Brett some five years ago. There we would sit, with pints of apricot wheat and copies of exclaim in hand, listening to the latest kelp singer-songwriter-type perform while we dodged the 40+ degree humidex outside and plotted mini trips to Montreal to see our favourite bands-of-the-moment.

There is a lot about our impending move that is pretty-darn-exciting, but one of the things that is so very hard is leaving behind twenty years (yes…I have been living here that long) of favourite places.

The Manx is one of them.