Alice - Ottawa, Canada
Alice is a vegan/vegetarian fine dining restaurant that has been rising in the ranks in Canada, from 93 pre-covid, 50 in 2022 and now ranked 31 in 2023’s Canada’s 100 Best. With a trip booked to Ottawa, I was intrigued to try out a vegetarian fine dining restaurant again, having had a horrible experience with L’Arpège in Paris and their vegan menu. During my research on the restaurant I saw that Executive Chef Brianna Kim and her team won the most recent Canadian Culinary Championship, which added to both my excitement and skepticism. Vegan/vegetarian cooking is notoriously hard as there is a limit to the flavors that can be achieved without animal fat. How would the kitchen at Alice overcome this challenge?
The main choice you need to make eating at Alice is deciding what drinks to have. I went with the juice pairing to try to be completely immersed in the chefs world, but to also see if the juice’s could justify the price of $120. From what I heard from other customers, the wine pairing fits with the menu as well. All the drinks were some sort of fermented drink, ranging from kefir to sodas.
Let’s cut to the chase, the kitchen at Alice is not here to play games. There is no doubt that they know exactly what they are doing and it comes to no surprise that they had just won the Canadian Culinary Championship. They were in full control for every dish, with the exception being the starting a rye sourdough with leek, and came with a fermented ramps and pine koji butter.
The real meal started with a beet bunelous, with compact, flavourful, and an amazing crunch. Next came an everything bagel tart made with tofu cheese that tasted exactly like an everything bagel with cream cheese. I was blown away by the tofu cheese as it tasted exactly like real cream cheese. This was served with a lilac honey kefir, which paired well with all three dishes above.
Next came a barley and mushroom porridge with celeriac oil, paired with the toasted barley amazake. The dish was a very light yet flavourful dish that made you want to keep eating more and more and more. The pairing with the amazake complemented perfectly with the porridge, boosting the barley flavours all around adding to an already flavourful dish.
Then came a taco with yellow pea tempeh and a pear and pistachio mole, paired with rhubarb ancho mint tepache. This was one of the less memorable dishes, but was nonetheless amazing, with a rich flavour in each bite of the taco, while the tepache added a hint of spice that contrasted perfectly against the taco. By this point of the meal I was surprised by how in control Chef Kim and her team was with each dish, as well as how each juice pairing served to enhance each dish.
Then came the star of the meal, the dish that won Alice the Canadian Culinary Championship, titled "Yeast & Yuba". Placed in front of me was a pine and basil veil supported by yuba schnitzel, tomatoes, and shio kombu, with a yeast soup, paired with a fig leaf and pine soda. This dish is undoubtedly the best dish of the evening, with another customer sitting across from me saying, "This is a dish I will dream about for months to come." While I will not be dreaming of this anytime soon, the contrasting flavours and range of textures were intense and overwhelming, yet so satisfying that I had to say "mmmm". The contrast with the fig leaf and pine soda was amazing. The pairing felt like walking through a pine forest, with the dish acting as the earth and the soda adding the freshness from the pine through smell and taste. The fig leaf and pine soda was the best drink of the entire pairing, and I would buy that soda in bulk if possible.
After hitting the peak, we came back down to earth to the main course of mushroom skewers served with a tonic, paired with an Elderberry Piquette. This was the least creative dish, with the mushrooms marinated in a teriyaki like sauce and grilled. However, the mushrooms were extremely high quality and was a nice way to end the savoury dishes.
Then came the sweets. First came a rye donut with corn miso served with a chamomile, liquorice, rye vermouth. It was a donut comparable to a really great donut, but animal fat does make donuts taste better. Then came a honeycomb dessert with juniper berry ice cream, and was a nice closer to the whole meal acting as a nice palatte cleanser (I forgot to take a picture so here is their official photo from their IG)
Brianna Kim and her team solved the problem of vegan cooking by creating super-concentrated, bold umami flavours that come naturally in vegan ingredients, especially in grains like barley and yeast, as well as the umami from mushrooms to make up for the missing umami that comes from animal fat. Their focus on these flavours allows the dishes to express the ingredients in their purest form, with a touch of love from the kitchen. The kitchen at Alice is extremely creative and executes their vision at a world-class level. I would not be surprised to see Brianna becoming a global cult hero in vegan cooking in the near future.
My only complaint is the price, with the meal costing $180 and both the wine and juice pairing costing $120, making the meal cost upwards of $350 after tax, which is about $30-50 more than I would have paid for the meal. However, I do not want to take away from the fact that this was the best vegetarian meal I’ve ever had. The meal was a 94/100 as a vegetarian meal, an 85/100 as a fine dining meal, juice pairing was a 95/100, and an 82/100 for the overall meal. Alice is a great date spot and an excellent place for a splurge fine dining experience that will blow you away, but its price point makes me reluctant to return.
