Pelican Seafood Market & Grill

Pelican works a fish counter and a grill out of the same Bank Street address, and the overlap is the point. The chilled case that sells Atlantic haddock or a fillet of Arctic char to take home stands a few steps from a kitchen that will batter that same haddock and send it back out with chips. It is a family-owned seafood market and grill in Ottawa's South Keys end — unfussy enough for a Tuesday lunch, stocked widely enough that a table of mismatched appetites can still settle on a single order. Most seafood restaurants ask you to trust their sourcing. Here you can watch it on ice on the way to your seat.

Three orders carry the menu. The freshly shucked oysters change with the day's delivery and arrive with mignonette, citrus horseradish, lemon, and hot sauce — the cleanest first read on what the kitchen is doing. The wild Atlantic haddock fish and chips is the plain-spoken anchor, served as a one- or two-piece lunch and as a full dinner main. And the showpiece is the whole lobster poutine: a whole steamed lobster splayed over fries with cheese curds and lobster gravy, a seasonal order that has turned up on the Food Network and works best as the centre of the table rather than a side.