Peter Hum revisits 16 favourites from six years of eating around Preston Street, where Italian mainstays have international company.
You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.
“It’s good to see that Preston Street… is beginning to pulse with renewed vitality,” Tom Ford, my counterpart five decades ago, wrote in the Oct. 10, 1977 Citizen.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
You have to wonder what Ford would think, nearly 50 years later, of the street’s dining options now. The vitality, both on Little Italy’s main drag and its side streets, is off the charts.
In that 1977 review, one of Ford’s restaurants under consideration, the Prescott, is still open and turns 75 this year. Ciccio Caffe and the Mona Lisa, which he also wrote about, are gone.
But in 2026, Little Italy keeps on raising its culinary game.
The quality and diversity of choices continue to draw Ottawa’s food lovers, with everything from nationally ranked fine dining to luscious lamb tacos to Southeast Asian soups to crispy smash burgers flattened within an inch of their lives on offer.
And of course, premium pizza, gelato, pasta and other glories of Italian cuisine are just a short walk away.
My rounds keep bringing me back to Little Italy, thanks to its ongoing culinary vitality. Here’s a recap of 16 of my favourites, just a fraction of the neighbourhood’s culinary attractions, gleaned from the reviews and features that I’ve written in the last six years.
Opened in May 2025, Ek Bar is the brainchild of Toronto-based chef and restaurateur Hemant Bhagwani, a globe-trotting culinary industry veteran who has opened five dozen restaurants in multiple cities. Bhagwani conceived of Ek Bar as a modern Indian restaurant with fusion dishes and an eye-catching cocktail program. In August 2026, Ek Bar began featuring a special Burmese/Balinese menu that borrows from the cuisine served at Popa, a Toronto restaurant that Bhagwani opened in 2019. The special menu is to be in force through August 2026, and perhaps longer if it proves especially popular. Dishes worth sampling include Steak kebat, a decidedly spicy, tomato-ey, Burmese spin on kebabs, laphet thoke (Burmese tea leaf salad) and shan tofu, an appetizer consisting of pillowy chickpea-based bites.
338 Preston St., 613-762-7297, aylassocial.ca
Ayla’s Social Kitchen opened just four days before the pandemic forced it to close, but Amir and Maryam Aghaei didn’t let that stop them. The couple, who named the restaurant after their daughter, persisted through COVID-19 restrictions and now run a cosy, basement-level eatery where Amir Aghaei, a self-taught chef with a curious palate, serves flavourful dishes that can blend Mediterranean and Persian influences. Well-made dishes like ginger garlic shrimp bowl, lamb shanks with broccolini and risotto, and assorted elevated kebabs with distinctive garnishes merit consideration, as do desserts by Maryam Aghaei. While there are halal options on the menu, not everything is halal and the restaurant is licensed. — Reviewed July 16, 2026
Read the full Ayla’s Social Kitchen review
