Restaurant e18hteen

Restaurant e18hteen runs a butcher's block and a raw bar off the same kitchen, and most tables order from both. It is steak and seafood under French technique, the kind of dual menu where a Canadian Angus tenderloin and a tier of East Coast oysters can land on the same table without either feeling like an afterthought. The cooking leans seasonal and Canadian beneath the classic sauces, the pricing sits at the top of the scale, and the whole operation occupies a heritage corner of the ByWard Market, downtown Ottawa's oldest dining district.

Start with the Angus Reserve Steak Tartare, the dish that reads the kitchen fastest: hand-cut beef over a crisp potato pave with smoked egg yolk, whipped bone marrow, and house pickles, built up rather than simply dressed. The raw bar runs alongside it. East Coast oysters come by the half-dozen or dozen with seasonal mignonettes and fermented hot sauce; a jumbo shrimp cocktail arrives in confit garlic and parsley with a Cognac cocktail sauce, or a spicier Calabrian chile version for the table that wants heat. Seared Quebec foie gras lands on toasted challah. For the indecisive, the seafood platter stacks oysters, chilled crab legs, jumbo shrimp, an Atlantic lobster tail, and scallop crudo onto one tier.