Weather as Ingredient

Weather isn’t just something outside the dining room. It walks in with people. It settles on their coats, their appetite, the way they read a menu. In Ottawa, the seasons don’t change the city so much as they reshape its hunger.

On the coldest nights, dishes taste different. Fat hits heavier. Heat lingers longer. A broth that felt excessive in July suddenly feels like a small kindness. Diners stay quieter in winter; they hold their spoons differently, as if to pull the warmth closer.

Then spring arrives, not gradually but in a single weekend, and everyone orders as if they’ve been released. Citrus tastes sharper. Herbs seem louder. Even plating shifts—lighter colors, shorter cooking times, a little more risk on the tongue. You can feel the room exhale.

Summer makes food faster. Crisper edges, colder centers, plates meant to be touched lightly. The air outside is already a kind of sauce—humid, floral, dense—so kitchens aim for contrast. Diners lean toward things that feel like the absence of heat rather than its continuation.

Autumn is the most dramatic. The light goes gold and suddenly everything tries to match it. Pumpkins get credited for this, but it’s really the light. Chefs feel it long before the first frost, that slow tilt toward deeper flavors, longer reductions, darker plates. Guests come looking for comfort they don’t yet admit they want.

Weather is an ingredient not because it’s on the plate, but because it shapes how the plate is received. A dish is never tasted in isolation. It’s always filtered through whatever the sky has been doing that day—rain, snow, heat, wind. Seasonality isn’t a trend; it’s a mood.

And moods, after all, are what we really cook for.