Renovations are underway to turn the Grant House into a steak and seafood restaurant.
An English-style, high-end steak restaurant and pub is scheduled to open next spring at the renovated former home of Friday’s Roast Beef House – the historic Grant House on Elgin Street.
Renovations should be completed and the restaurant ready to launch on May 1, says co-owner Marisol Simoes.
“Right now, we’re still in the planning stages,” says Simoes. “Construction won’t start until January.”
At the moment, Simoes and her husband, Zadek Ramowski, along with a third owner – a silent partner who is also the couple’s lawyer – are drawing plans and waiting for approval from the city.
Simoes and Ramowski currently own Kinki and Mambo restaurants in the Byward Market.
Stuart Lazear, the City of Ottawa’s co-ordinator of heritage planning, says the new owners have complied with requests from the city to paint the exterior of the building in order to protect the exposed wood.
“It was really grey, really dull. It was covered with vines. So we just removed all the vines and gave it a bright new paint job,” says Simoes.
Grant House has been designated a heritage building because of the unique architecture of both the building’s interior and exterior.
The building, a stately Victorian dwelling built in 1875 for Dr. James Grant, was at the centre of a heritage conservation battle in the early 1970s. The structure was saved and served for decades as the home of Friday’s, one of Ottawa’s best-known restaurants.
“We had meetings with Heritage first in order to determine what we’re allowed to do,” says Ramowski, who is in charge of the restaurant’s renovation. “We didn’t even sign the lease until we knew what we could do.”
Lazear says Simoes and Ramowski are working with designer Ernst Hupel of 2H Interior Design.
The additional regulations that are in place because of the history of the building are adding time to the refurbishment of the restaurant, says Simoes.
“We’d like to open it up. It’s an old-style house so it’s very boxed in. It’s got a lot of little rooms,” says Simoes. “For the concept that Friday’s was, that worked. But now everyone’s into open concept.”
The new restaurant – the name of which has not been revealed – will have a pub on the first floor with limited dining, while an extensive menu will be offered in the restaurant on the second floor.
“We still want to be able to appeal to . . . middle-class, everyday people,” says Simoes.
Ramowski says Friday’s was in rough shape and lacked certain key amenities, such as a patio.
“They were closed most of the time during the day,” says Ramowski. “I think it’s in the city’s best interest to have something lively.”
Simoes says there is going to be a twist to the restaurant's concept.
“We’re definitely going to do something there that we’ve never done before, and that’s high-end,” said Simoes. “The manner and the location, the architecture, the house just calls for it. I don’t think you could dumb it down. You could not put something that wasn’t elegant in there.”