Grounded Kitchen in Westboro is a BBQ destination worth seeking out

Shortly after returning to Ottawa a friend invited me to lunch at a little spot on Gloucester. According to her it was very good and all the buzz appeared to confirm its popularity. 

I enjoyed my lunch. It was a quality experience from the ingredients to the execution and I remembered it fondly. 

They then expanded to a second location on Carling and closed Grounded in the downtown core.

With that move, owner Amir Rahim also shifted the menu focus. I remember it as coffee house health-conscious dining and now my experience was as a BBQ-centric meat feast. What remains the same, is the commitment to from-scratch cooking.

I began with a stick-to-the-ribs 20 Hr. Burnt Ends. This is Alberta beef brisket slow-cooked for shy of a full day. 

At $18, it would be a full meal for the average person. The portion was generous and came with appropriately fabulous house-made pickles and a lovely, fresh-baked focaccia.

Coated in their own mildly spicy BBQ sauce, once the beef hit the palate, it fell apart. Sometimes you recognize immediately when a dish is exemplary. The texture of that beef enrobed in a sweet and savoury sauce, at that moment, stood out as a memorable BBQ experience.

The charring (grilling) of vegetables as a cooking method has gained popularity over the past decade. When it’s well executed, the results exceed expectations. 

So it was here. The brussels sprouts were cooked through but with a little resistance when eating. The finely grated parmesan and balsamic glaze added the requisite tang and the toasted pumpkin seeds, a sweet crunch.

A bold dish like this is easy to get wrong. The flavours are sufficiently strident that they can mask a myriad of technique errors. Yet the cooking was on point, with the brussels sprouts themselves still taking centre stage.

If you look at their menu you’ll be struck by the dominance of protein. This makes it less likely to cut a swathe through their offerings. 

I did however finish with a burger and fries and a side of their homemade gravy. They certainly got the beef cuts right in the mix. 

Chuck is the most common burger cut, but at Grounded, they add a fattier and flavoursome cut of beef, short ribs. It makes it just more memorable when the beef is what you remember.

The skin-on fries were brought in frozen, and they were fine. The gravy however, made from brisket drippings, was a rising star during this lunch. If you grew up in a culture that valued gravy as a side at the dinner table, you’d be glad you stopped in.

Understandably, I couldn’t finish everything in front of me and asked for it to be packaged up. Several hours later, I was looking forward to dipping the warmed fries in that gravy but found they’d neglected to pack it. Even now, as I write, I’m struggling to forgive the oversight. The gravy was just that good.

Grounded Kitchen is curiously situated in an office building complex on Carling across the road from Dymon storage. You wouldn’t normally think of this as a great lunch/brunch destination, but now you know.