ALORA Ottawa & ALORA Rooftop

At ALORA, the plate that defines the kitchen is one nobody eats alone. The Alora Signature board arrives built for the middle of a table: a tomahawk steak ringed by grilled shrimp, mushrooms, market vegetables, fingerling potatoes, parm fries, bordelaise, and garlic aioli. It sets the terms for almost everything around it. This is a ByWard Market address on Clarence Street built to work as a social dinner house — a menu made for a group to order across, a bar with its own point of view, and an evening meant to keep moving after the mains are cleared.

The menu opens wide before it narrows. Starters run from Crispy Crab Bites — crab over crispy rice with avocado mousse, spicy mayo, and red chili — to a Whipped Feta finished with basil pesto, pistachio, honey, and grilled flatbread, to a Grilled Focaccia laid with stracciatella, confit tomatoes, and balsamic. A Broccoli Crunch panko-breads the vegetable and dresses it in Thai chili; Sliders come on brioche with bacon jam. A short sushi section turns up where a steak house would not bother with one — the Crunchy Shrimp Roll and a sesame tuna roll beside a Seared Tuna starter over crispy taro. Salads are built with the same hand, from a Summer Bowl of marinated tuna and shrimp over sushi rice to a Chopped Salad with corn ribs, avocado, and feta. Dinner proper holds its own, from rosemary-and-pistachio-crusted lamb and seared salmon under lemon beurre blanc to shrimp linguini and a twelve-ounce striploin with peppercorn sauce. Above all of it sit the sharing boards: the Mediterranean Board of grilled lamb chops with whipped feta and flatbread, a whole Chicken For Two, and the Signature board over them both.