The Price of a Cocktail Seat

Ottawa used to be a place where a cocktail bar was just that — a place for drinks. You’d slip onto a stool, order something stiff, and maybe get a bowl of spiced nuts if you were lucky. Dinner was elsewhere.

Now, bars are asking for something more. The lines are blurred. Cocktail bars are quietly setting full tables, pouring multi-course menus, and turning a spot at the bar into the most coveted seat in the room.

Some of this is economics. Square footage is expensive; liquor margins alone aren’t enough to carry a space in 2025. To survive, bars push food as hard as restaurants do. And diners are game: people like the idea that their Negroni comes with a tartare and a dessert. The full evening, without moving addresses.

But something is shifting in the culture of dining here. When a bar doubles as a restaurant, does it raise the stakes — or dilute them? Is it possible to be great at both?

There are examples in Ottawa that pull it off: menus written as carefully as the cocktail lists they’re paired with. The kitchen doesn’t feel like an afterthought; the food belongs. Charlotte proves a cocktail bar can balance its drinks with dishes worth sitting down for. Stolen Goods manages the same, with a kitchen that feels every bit as intentional as the bar.

But there are others where the food menu is little more than cover for the drinks program, dressed up in adjectives but stripped of intent.

The price of a cocktail seat is no longer just the drink. It’s the expectation that you’re in it for dinner, too. Whether that’s a blessing or a burden depends on where you sit.