Grey’s is new place to be seen

From their website by owner Abbis Mahmoud: “Our thoughtfully curated, value-priced menu will celebrate international and Canadian classic feel-good dishes, all made in-house with the freshest, highest-quality ingredients and crafted with passion and love.” We’ll come back to that.

Nothing wrong with shooting for the stars of course but if you’re “a self-made icon and accomplished entrepreneur, who stands among the most revered and sought-after impresarios in the world of nightlife.”  (from their website), your language may want to be more measured to match the reality.

As with anything else in life, it’s best to let the work, or in this case the food, do the talking.

After a curious first visit I recognized that I would need to return to sample from what I was told would be “a new menu”. As such, this review will report on each visit separately.

Arriving during happy hour, I ordered a rye and diet highball ($6) and was disappointed to learn that the this was not technically a “highball”. The amount of ice was sufficient for a highball, but this was not the glass for it.

During regular hours, their fish tacos arrive as a trio and with fish portions that are, I imagine, considerably larger for $18. Happy hour pricing gives you two tacos with small portions of fish that I was told was halibut. I took their word on it, but it’s worth noting that halibut is frightfully expensive compared to haddock or cod.

On this occasion, the happy hour tacos cost $7 and were served on wheat flour tortillas, a little too dry to fold. They tasted fine but were not memorable.

The vegetable spring rolls fared less well. The kitchen crew responsible had little experience in rolling these and the result was loose fillings with the rolls falling apart as you attempted to eat them. Again, the taste was fine but unremarkable.

I was excited to see the fried calamari served, and how young and tender the serving appeared to be. These little rings are a little bit of a rarity when it comes to this appetizer and I couldn’t wait to dive in. 

They were nicely battered and indeed very tender but the salting to the batter was extreme, rendering them inedible.

Porcini are a favourite mushroom. They remain one of the most affordable of culinary luxuries, so I was pleased to see porcini ravioli on the main menu. 

Fresh porcini are challenging to come by in North America, but they are very common throughout Europ,e and when I’ve been overseas when they are in season, I eat myself silly on the things.

Curiously, Porcini are one of those mushrooms that result in a much more robust taste and aroma once they’ve been dried and rehydrated. That’s not the case with most funghi. Just a note of caution that with rehydrated porcini, there can be some earthy grit as these mushrooms are wild and not cultivated.

Management informed me that the supplier is Joseph's Gourmet Pasta from Massachusetts. Ironically, Grey’s Social Eatery is directly next door to Ottawa’s own fresh pasta company Dal Moro.

I was served the ravioli and there was a distressing uniformity to the appearance and upon the first bites that same issue of over-salting was abundantly apparent. There was also the matter of the aforementioned grittiness and it was just not something I could finish. The service was quick to inform me that they had taken it off the bill. 

The second visit

I found it odd that just a month after opening and my first visit, management informed me they would have a new chef and menu in a few weeks.  In fairness, I decided to wait to post my review and see how the new menu would be executed.

Some things had changed, but the fish tacos remained and I dove in once again. This time, I was told the tacos were “haddock, no wait… cod.”  They’d been overfried to the point of dryness and were served on the same, almost brittle, wheat flour tortillas. This time they came with Mexican Cotija cheese and had even less appeal than the first go-round. The happy hour price had also been increased to $8 for two.

The torpedo shrimp fared no better, with much too much time spent in the deep-fryer and a madly hard-shell batter that made getting at the shrimp a challenge. The in-house dipping sauce however, was delicious and if only that were the standard across the board. I would have been content just drinking the stuff.

Fish and chips were served alongside a colourful salad of food service mesclun mix that had mushy and decayed leaves. I recall the precise year when these salad greens hit the restaurant scene — it was 1996, and I was living in Toronto. 

Here we are 30 years on and this stuff has long outstayed its welcome. Kitchen staff everywhere almost never check the freshness of the product, relying on its “pre-washed” status as meaning that it’s ready to go.

Once again, there was confusion as to which fish was being served but soon it was agreed that it was cod. It had been battered from a fresh state and that was welcome and frankly, this should be the case in every restaurant for fish and chips.

The chips were of the slightly seasoned and battered variety, and while cooked from froze,n they were crisp and sweet.

Most happy hour items will also be found on the main menu at reduced prices. The cheeseburger however was not on the main menu.

I’d asked for the burger sauce on the side and I enjoyed every bite without the sauce. It was a hand-formed patty on a potato bun and the freshness of the vegetables made the sandwich sing. The delicious burger was a highlight of both visits. 

Our very friendly and attentive server asked what I thought of the burger sauce and I was polite in my reply: “I wouldn’t ask for the recipe.”

The finishing touch was the watermelon, arugula and feta salad. This has become a staple at many eateries, and while fairly common, I give it a pass as the salty-sweet combination is a hit for most palates. 

It came with fried triangles of thick-cut pita and the same dressing of twiggy dried herbs that left their indelible mark on the other mesclun side salads. While arugula was advertised, that’s not what was delivered, which I informed them about.

During my meal, I watched one of the servers at Lavender Grill across the street look out the window in anticipation of her first customers. I looked up their menu on the phone and found disturbing similarities to the Grey’s menu, and many others. Lavender Grill opened two years earlier but it hardly matters. The menu at both these eateries can be found at dozens of restaurants throughout Ottawa.

This is, unfortunately, cut-and-paste dining, not meant for serious food aficionados. The kitchen at Grey’s is undisciplined and in my opinon, is in need of some more professional training if it wants to be more of a food-forward spot.

However, Grey’s Social Eatery scores big points for being an attractive destination in which to be seen. It’s a place to enjoy drinks with your colleagues after work and to have a very good cheeseburger if you’ve had one too many.