Centretown will see new life come into an old downtown building in the upcoming weeks. North and Navy, a fine dining Italian restaurant, will soon open its doors at 226 Nepean St. The location was recently vacated by Beckta – widely acknowledged as one the city’s finest dining spots and now situated on Elgin Street.
The restaurant’s launch will be notable for both its location and its cuisine. North and Navy will be Ottawa’s first restaurant specializing in northern Italian food.
The little brick house that has been home to such restaurants as Tibitz, Ritz and most recently, Beckta, is full of hubbub as walls are being painted and other finishing touches made. The new owners, Adam Vettorel and Christopher Schlesak, say they’re excited about renovations wrapping up.
The long-time friends first met when they were working at Fratelli in the Glebe. Vettorell was a cook and Schlesak was a server. They then started their own catering company and have been talking about starting their own restaurant ever since.
Vettorel, whose family is from the north east of Italy, always wanted to incorporate that heritage in his cooking. However the idea of serving unique meals from the north of Italy only came to the young chef when he was on his honeymoon in Venice and visited the its bacaros – the Italian version of a vine bar and similar to Spanish tapas bars.
“When I saw those bacaros in Venice, it sort of clicked as something that would really work in this area and wouldn’t be your traditional red-sauce Italian joint,” he says.
The foods in northern Italy are, according to Vettorel, very similar to some of the food from our region. Since both climates are similar, the game meat that’s found in northerly provinces, like Lombardy and Veneto can also be found in eastern Ontario and western Quebec.
Vettorel also explains what he considered Italian food growing up is not the same as what Canadian restaurants serve. “It’s kind of this hodge podge of southern Italian food and just not-Italian-at-all food,” he says.
Don Chow, a local foodie and co-author of the book Ottawa Food: A Hungry Capital, agrees with Vettorel and anticipates the imminent opening of North and Navy. “Considering the majority of the Italian restaurants in town really serve a Canadianized take – more sauce, more meat, etc. – what Chris and Adam plan to bring to Ottawa will be quite different,” he says. “It’s one of the restaurant openings I am looking forward to.” Chow is also a food blogger and founder of foodieprints.com.
Other local foodies like Mark Warburton, are also looking forword to the chance to dine at North and Navy. He says he follows them on Instagram and wrote on an Ottawa foodies forum that the concept is “promising!”
Among the reasons the two 34-year-old owners chose the Nepean Street location was its warm, familiar vibe.
“We love the idea of a stand-alone house as a restaurant. We wanted it to feel like you’re going over to your grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner in our restaurant, and that’s very easy to do in a house,” says Vettorel.
The duo believes choosing a location where high-end restaurants previously occupied is important.
“There’s a few ways to look at it. I think that what comforts us is that we know that a couple of restaurants have succeeded here in this location. But, we’re doing something totally different so it’s important for us to fill the shoes but in an entirely different way,” says Schlesak.