StarBite Resto, Happy Goat Donuts

Good morning,

I admit that I was unconsciously drawing parallels between a certain tariff “policy” and the snow/melt, snow/melt cycle of the last few weeks. I was starting to take it as a kind of psychological warfare. Both felt exhausting in equal measure. Happily, the weather will now sort out one of these issues!

We will soon return with a special edition of our profile of Canadian whiskies but today we take you to a modestly priced eatery recently opened and we have another story in our series The Dessert Course.

Let’s get started.

Ralf Joneikies, food and drink editor. [email protected]

SANDWICH

High quality, affordable sandwiches? Starbite Resto has it

• Name + address: Starbite, 92 Montreal Road

• Diet: meat, modest vegetarian

• Prices: $7-$16

• Wheelchair accessibility: No

• Licensed: No

• Website: www.starbiteresto.com

After 15 years as an executive chef, Salim El Afouz felt the need for a change. In December of 2024, he opened Starbite, in part to set his own pace and to work more closely within a local community.

Although the fare is familiar, burgers, sandwiches, the daily soups, you may not want to think of this as fast food. Salim takes his time making everything, including his sauces, from scratch and to order. 

His restaurant comes at a time when Canadians are anticipating some economic upheaval and Salim’s timing could not have been better. He offers very good versions of North American classics with quality ingredients from suppliers like Art is In Bakery and L’Original Packing. You also need to respect his pricing. It’s almost a public service.

Salim brings his extensive kitchen experience to bear even on the presentation of his cheeseburger and it’s certainly the first time at a modest eatery that I’ve had such a photogenic burger presented to me. It even came with a deep-fried pickle spear on top. An attractive sandwich for just $10.

The beef had been hand-formed and tasted naturally seasoned meaning this was not a commercial/frozen patty. Salim's very decent burger sauce was sharply acidified cutting through the richness of the “real” cheddar he uses on his sandwiches.

As seems to always be the case, the sauce had been too liberally applied. At this point I’ve given up hoping that someone will get it right and going forward I’ll be calling for this “sauce” to be served on the side rather than on the burger.

A kielbasa sandwich was not what I was expecting. Frankly, I’ve not seen this sandwich anywhere. Yet when you grow up in German culture, you grow up eating charcuterie from all over Europe from Spain to the Caucasus. Kielbasa was a normal part of either the breakfast or dinner table. 

Salim’s sandwich involved slices of award-winning L’Original kielbasa lightly grilled to extract more flavour and topped with white cheddar, caramelized onions and too much of that Starbite sauce. 

My interpretation, given how well mustard goes with pork, would have been to leave out the sauce and replace it with a good and sharp mustard. Simple, classic and delicious. It was a good sandwich and would have benefitted from tweaking.

Starbite is offering Vanier residents elevated casual dining options at very reasonable prices. The fact that Salim is going out of his way to use fine local suppliers, is something we can all support. 

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COMMUNITY CORNER

Who has the best ramen in Ottawa?

We asked readers which ramen place was their favourite. Here’s how readers voted and what you had to say.

DESSERT COURSE

Happy Goat Donuts is a hole in (more than) one

Happy Goat Donuts founder Amy Tucker has a bit of a track record with donuts. She had a role as general regional manager for Mavericks Donuts and left that post during COVID.

For two years now she’s found herself building a loyal following with her own donuts at her recently acquired Happy Goat franchise location in Westboro. Her spot is located at 3071 Richmond Rd.

My introduction came about as a result of getting to know her husband, Cody Munro, lead brewer at Kichessipi Beer Co. On a recent visit to the brewery, he proudly announced that he and his life partner Amy Tucker were now operating a Happy Goat franchise. He also felt that Amy was making the nicest donuts in Ottawa. Given his relationship, that assertion needed to be taken with a lump of salt and tested.

Every once in a while you stumble across a like-minded food creator and you find yourself in a soulful bonding over taste, food philosophy and what you’d like to see on the restaurant landscape.

Last year it was Sung Hae Lee of J n’ J Bakery whose sweet and savoury Korean buns are the finest examples of their kind. This year it’s the super-talented Amy Tucker. Over the course of almost two hours, she revealed her approach to donuts, how they should taste, and what NOT to do with a donut. 

We’d just talked about my dislike of donuts in general and how the reason is the inevitable synthetic flavours and inferior doughs. 

As if staged, her version of a maple donut was placed in front of me. There was none of that over-inflated chemically enhanced maple character and I loved it. Just pure maple flavour with all that subtle mineral electrolyte effect on the finish. 

In Germany a jam-filled donut is known as a Berliner. JFK’s speech Ich bin ein Berliner was the stuff of legendary ridicule when he announced to the world that he was a donut. 

Amy makes yeast-raised donuts rather than the cake versions and to this palate that’s the only true expression of a donut. The full pillowy texture folded lovingly over the raspberry filling with each bite. The sharpness of the fresh raspberry melded with the sweet yeasty character of the dough and unlike commercial donuts, the filling was generous from one end of the thing to the other. Beautiful and as it should be.

Allow me to be clear: Amy Tucker’s donuts are the finest things of their kind available to us in Ottawa. For her, it’s about the quality of the dough and the purity of the flavour components. 

Her donuts are not about ridiculous additions such as third-rate bacon chunks or that abomination to all good taste, crushed Oreo cookies.

Amy Tucker is a woman working with a refined sensibility in a space that is generally seen as something for the working class. Fine, if that’s how people want to see it. But it’s important to remember however that the working class, like all groups, are not a monolith.

I’ll say it now: Amy’s donuts will bridge all divides, class or otherwise. May world peace be next. 

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QUICK BITES

• Here’s a bit of culinary fun from the past. [YouTube]

• Toronto Food Truck operators are at war [YouTube]. 

• Americans can soon expect to pay more for their coffee (yikes). [BBC]

• In loony food news, a restaurant in Thailand is offering discounts to skinny people. [Ottawa Sun]