Ottawa Foodies

I went to Stella's a little while ago for lunch and I was very impressed. I ordered and italian sausage and carmelized onion pizza, (not sure if that's the correct name) and a peach ginger dessert. The food was amazing, the atmosphere was lovely, the decor was very nice, especially the flower on each table. A couple near to us didn't seem very pleased with their meal though. If I were asked to rate my personal experience I would say I was VERY pleased.

Made a reservation online from their website. The reservation system seems a bit messed up, for example if you reserve for 20:00 the system says you have to vacate table by 20:30, so then you worry there might be a restaurant wide reservation for a wedding or something, so we ended up calling to confirm...which defeats purpose of trying to do it online and avoid calling. They said the system is screwed up a bit. Booked on Wed for a Fri night reservation, and got a nice table, not sure if it's cause we booked early enough or not, but good tip if you want to try to get nice table too.... and when we called to confirm the reservation in the afternoon (Fri) they said they were fully booked, so best reserve in advance.

When we arrived the hostess said table would be cleared out soon and we could go sit at the bar and grab a drink to wait, so we proceed to walk all the way around the bar and there is no where to sit, she should have known that since she's standing right beside the bar, so we had to walk all the way back to the door and wait there for our table. (seems kind of silly)

The place was packed and loud, we almost couldn't hear each other talk. The waiter was alright, he would refill the wine glasses but would sometimes disappear for great lengths of time, I think he had too many tables to attend to. Everyone loved their meals. One was pasta with shrimp, one was pasta with chicken, another person large ceasar salad as a dinner, and mine was the daily menu featured pork with walnut mash potatoes, asparagus, date/balsamic sauce. The only thing I didn't think about when ordering was that pork doesn't necessarily have to be cooked to 170 anymore, so it was very difficult for me to eat, the middle, looked almost raw, and I like meats well done, if I ordered again I'd have to ask for well done, I couldn't look down when cutting, it was pretty gross...but I should have realized before I ordered I guess.

Dessert I had a warm chocolate type cake with hazelnut icecream I believe. It takes forever to come out, they need to come up with a new way to make it, it's taking too much time for this warm dessert to come. The ice cream was delicious...the cake type thing, wasn't so great, it tasted like a tough hot brownie, extremely hot, so you try to bite/cut into the brownie and eat ice cream and it hurts your teeth. They need to rework this dessert come up with a more tender cake, takes less time. The coffee was very good.

Think for four without wine it was $118, that is one dessert, three meals, and big salad as meal, and coffee.

I know for some reason the picture makes it look gross, but it really didn't look like that in real life.

Very stylish place. Went there with a large group in an area where we could mingle before eating. The group was seated at several tables.

Complimentary bread with balsamic vinegar and olive oil was excellent but we were starving.

My table had the beef carpaccio, artichoke and spinach cheese dip, and lemon garlic shrimp. The dip was anything but mundane. Rich and creamy with the cheese adding the perfect saltiness. By now I was full. The beef carpaccio and shrimp were both very good.

I had the sweet and sour roasted duck. Presentation was beautiful with a bed of polenta, then a layer of with swiss chard, topped with a line, a long generous line, of sliced roasted duck. There were hints of white peach and chili sauce about the big bowl. I found the duck to be undercooked and the sauce too scant. There was so much duck the dish got boring. More sauce would have made it tastier but if you like rare duck, you'll love it.

For dessert, falling chocolate cake. This was a delicious dessert but the description said it had a molten center which I couldn't find. But it was rich and moist and chocolatey and came with ice cream. I just reread the menu and it says "white chocolate ice cream". I don't remember it tasting like that. I think the ice cream was a bit icy. Very good dessert but pricey at $10.

I was here for a dinner with work colleagues, and it was a good experience overall.

Pros:
* Service was friendly and informal (I like that, maybe you don't)
* When the server was asked to recommend a wine, she came up with a good one at slightly under the requested price range (smart move from a tipping perspective)
* Water was provided for everyone, and it was resupplied appropriately (incredibly, this is quite rare amongst restaurants in Ottawa).
* Food was good (see below for details).

Cons:
* The server didn't want to take appetizer orders separately from mains. She really pushed back, saying that the mains would take much longer if we did that. It was just kind of weird, that's all.
* When I asked for a Cinzano the server looked at me funny. I had to spell it out and she went to the bar and brought me one. Now, Cinzano has been made in Italy for 250 years and is popular in all Italian restaurants. I always order Cinzano using the correct pronunciation (chin-ZAH-no), which throws some servers off, but never in an Italian restaurant! And here I was thinking "Stella Osteria" was Italian... ;-)
* They were sold out of Farfalle, so they had to make the Stellafredo with linguine instead.

Food:
* Complimentary bread looked really appetizing, brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with salt. But it had very little flavour other than the salt.
* Caesar Salad - Generous pile of green romaine with pleasant garlic level, crumbled parmesan, and an amazing curl of pancetta on top. The dressing was an understated vinaigrette but in a very good way. No sickly creaminess in this bowl!
* Bouillabaisse - When done well, this is one of my favourite dishes. Stella's was no exception. A very generous amount of delicious lobster and tomato broth with loads of salmon and tuna chunks, some clams, a couple of little squid pieces, and two plump, delicious shrimp. Not filling at all, but absolutely enjoyable!
* Falling Chocolate Cake - Having a light main dish leaves room for dessert! The server recommended the tiramisu and the chocolate cake. I opted for the latter, a hockey puck-sized moist chocolate cake topped with a generous scoop of hazelnut white chocolate ice cream. It was very good and I left quite stuffed.

Again, my sticking point with this place is the fake Italian image. A server not knowing about Cinzano is pretty bad. Of course this isn't Preston Street -- Stella is owned by the Firestone restaurant group, who also own Luxe and Blue Cactus.

All in all, good food and decent service.

Stella Osteria felt like it was developed completely by someone in marketing. The decor here is upscale but a bit cramped and the atmosphere is busy and loud, but this is the type of market restaurant where ppl come to see and be seen. As for the food I gave in and ordered stellafredo, basically farfalle pasta with alfredo sauce, chicken and baby spinach. What I got was a nicely presented bowl with dry undercooked pasta (a bit too el dente for me), with an ordinary sliced chicken breast on top and 3 or 4 leaves of baby spinach. The sauce was to sparse and barely coated the pasta, or maybe they had made me carbonara instead. Well at least the bowl was nice and the portion was large, but no one ever came by to put fresh pepper or some parma on my dish. The other ppl at my table ordered some flat bread pizza which I think looked delicious, unfortunately when the manager was strolling by asking how things were and if anyone wanted to change dishes, I hesitated as I was to hungry to wait half an hour to eat again. Although I've been here only once, my experience wasn't to great and I'd hesitate on going here again.

Four of us went Saturday night. It was excellent. Our server was knowledgable both on food and wine and even pairing. Every order from appetizers to mains was delicious. We can't wait to go back. A reservation is highly recommended.

Had dinner at Stella a few months ago. We were a group of 6 and didn't have to wait for our table at all. The atmosphere is cool and clean with an 'interesting' selection of music in the background.

As far as our meals were concerned, they were not consistently good. The thin-crust pizzas are tasty and the pastas seemed to be very good. The rest was kind of flat. My husband had a veal piccata dish that had a sort of brown runny gravy which tasted like it came from a can instead of a white wine and lemon sauce which it boasted in the menu.

I made the mistake of ordering a Pad Thai (what was I thinking in a mostly Italian style restaurant??). It was no where near what I have experienced as a traditional type Pad Thai. Completely not what I was expecting. If they called it Pasta Primavera, then I might be giving it a slightly better rating but it had the same flavoured gravy type sauce that my husband's veal came with. There were a couple of other disappointments but I can't remember what they were. Will do better with remembering specific menu items from here on in.

The servers were not very attentive and I was aghast when we were charged $11 for a 750 ml bottle of water (and we ordered 3!!). The water was half the cost of the wine. I can drink tap water for that price. I rather put the $33 into a better bottle of vino if you ask me.

I am debating giving them another try...but first will try out some other restaurants before going back.