The Shore Club

The chilled seafood tower is the order that announces what The Shore Club is about: a tiered spread of lobster tail, jumbo prawns, oysters, ceviche, salmon tartare and seared tuna, set down for the whole table at once. Then comes the other half of the kitchen: a steak tartare of hand-cut Canadian AAA tenderloin, and a seven-ounce filet plated beside an Atlantic lobster tail. The dining room sits downtown inside the Westin on Colonel By Drive, a short walk from where the Rideau Canal meets the ByWard Market. Steak and seafood carry equal weight here, and the menu is built so a table never has to choose between them.

The steak side runs from a bone-in rib in eighteen- and twenty-four-ounce cuts, sliced for the table on request, to a New York striploin in ten- and fourteen-ounce sizes. A short rib rounds out the steaks and chops for anyone who wants slow-cooked beef over a seared cut. The seafood side is just as deliberate: fresh market oysters, a crab cake under green goddess sauce, pepper-crusted bigeye tuna with a lime ponzu, wild halibut over smashed peas with a salt cod croquette, and a roasted Atlantic salmon finished in white wine and capers. Starters lean rich — a beef tenderloin carpaccio with crispy capers and a grainy mustard-horseradish drizzle, a lobster bisque built on Atlantic lobster, brandy and cream. Even the outliers are considered: a fried chicken brined for twenty-four hours before it meets the fryer, served plainly with chicken gravy.