Le Poisson Bleu

The kitchen at Le Poisson Bleu treats every whole fish the way a butcher treats a fine cut of meat — broken down on the bone, dry-aged, and worked into whatever preparation the week calls for. That premise is unusual anywhere; it is unusual on purpose in landlocked Ottawa, where seafood has long meant either a coast-imported special-occasion meal or a battered fillet at the end of a chip menu. Le Poisson Bleu does the slow work — fish butchery, seafood charcuterie, an ever-changing chalkboard — that a coastal kitchen could shortcut with supply and a generic seafood place would never bother to learn. The restaurant sits on Somerset Street West in Chinatown, runs Wednesday through Sunday with weekend brunch, and frames itself in three words — fish, drinks, family.

The dinner menu carries the kitchen's range without showing off. Lobster risotto comes with butter-poached lobster, parmesan, bisque, fried sage, and macadamia nuts. Dry-aged trout crudo arrives over aguachile with avocado, grapefruit, puffed Peruvian corn, and jalapeno. Aged amberjack lands on parsnip puree with a brown-butter almond lemon emulsion, broccolini, and sunchoke chips. Albacore tuna tartare keeps its classic fixings but folds in ancho chili mayo and a side of chips. The charcuterie section runs two rotating in-house preparations alongside local cheese — the kitchen's way of turning whatever fish came in well that morning into something the menu reads as a deli case rather than another seafood plate.