The restaurant on York Street offers attractive small plates and shareable steaks in woody, heritage dining rooms.
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Because Adrian Vezina lives on Sussex Drive, he has a front-row seat for the trials and tribulations of the ByWard Market.
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“It’s been a challenging five or six years down here,” Vezina says. “After COVID, it got pretty dark.”
He doesn’t need to elaborate. If you live in Ottawa, you know of the historic downtown neighbourhood’s ongoing woes. For many, the ByWard Market is synonymous with visible homelessness,open drug use, petty crime and violence— not with vibrant, thriving businesses. It saddens me that, in casual conversations, people tell me the ByWard Market is best avoided.
Vezina disagrees. “There’s a shift in what’s happening in the ByWard Market. It feels like the city is trying to actively change things,” he says.
Let’s hope he’s right. For now, we can say that Vezina, a restaurateur, is chipping in to help make the ByWard Market a better place.
In late June, he opened the upscale eatery Ruby’s in a practically hidden, National Capital Commission-owned heritage space on York Street. From 2017 until 2024, that prime Market location was Oz Kafe, until that veteran eatery folded, owing the NCC nearly $40,000 in rent.
Ruby’s is an attractive and overdue replacement for Oz Kafe. I ate at Ruby’s last week, and, apart from some small gripes about the food and service and a larger complaint about the ambience, I can recommend it as a solid reason to come and eat in the restaurant-heavy ByWard Market.
Named after the Corgi-Collie mix that Vezina had when he was a kid, Ruby’s is Vezina’s second, more polished restaurant. Its older sibling is Belmont on Bank Street in Old Ottawa South, which opened in late 2014.
I’ve enjoyed satisfying small plates from eclectic Belmont menus over the years and think Vezina’s accurate when he describes the food at Ruby’s as “Belmontesque food with a little more elegance, a little more elevation.” Executive chef Phil Denny oversees both kitchens. Ruby’s chef de cuisine is Jakob Van Regan, an Ottawa native with lots of experience in Toronto kitchens and a short stint at Arlo Wine & Restaurant on his résumé.
I’ve tried more than half of the 20-odd items on the Ruby’s menu, a one-page, light-on-the-details document that groups items as “snacks,” “smaller,” “larger,” and “desserts.”
Our three snacks each hit the mark. A distinct win for the kitchen’s deep-fryer was the fried Humboldt squid ($20), bolstered by a meaningfully pungent, fish sauce-based dipping sauce that will suit palates that prefer punchier flavours over more subdued ones. Another win for the kitchen’s deep-fryer chef was the shrimp toast ($19), the beloved Hong Kong appetizer that deep-fries minced shrimp paste in the embrace of sandwich bread. A slather of Dijon mayo and a splash of tobiko vinaigrette gave this plate oomph. In place of a charcuterie program, Ruby’s offers a plate of superior smoked ham ($15), with pickled mustard seeds plus thin slices of caper berries and lardo as bonuses. Even my friends who can take or leave ham were impressed.
