The City of Reservations

Ottawa books tables. That much is true. But the real reservations aren’t on OpenTable — they’re in the way the city approaches food itself.

This is a place where diners hesitate. A new restaurant opens and the first question isn’t what’s it like? but who else has been? Word of mouth has to be safely filtered, validated, and confirmed before people step through the door. Risk is outsourced. Curiosity waits until someone else has already paved the way.

It’s why so many restaurants here play it safe. The audience demands it. A dish too strange, a flavor too bold, a dining room too ambitious — Ottawa will pause, hold back, wait for Toronto or Montreal to weigh in. Only then, maybe, does the city follow.

The irony is that some of the best meals here depend on the opposite of reservation: chefs willing to leap, to ignore the caution, to serve something untested. But until Ottawa diners stop treating restaurants like experiments someone else should try first, the city will remain exactly what it is — a place where reservation means more than just dinner plans.