The Soca Kitchen

Order paella at The Soca Kitchen and the kitchen starts a clock: roughly thirty-five minutes for saffron redondo rice to come together under traditional aioli, smoked paprika and olive oil, built to serve two. That patience is the tell. Chef Daniela Manrique Lucca runs a Spanish-Latino menu on Beechwood Avenue that treats rice, seafood and sharing plates as one continuous idea — Spanish structure carrying Latin warmth, with Venezuelan roots underneath. The paella section runs six ways on its own, from a shrimp Camarón to a fire-roasted eggplant Berenjena to the Mar y Tierra of cod, shrimp and steak. It is the order to build a table around.

Around the paella, the menu reads as a seafood kitchen with range. Patatas bravas come early, Soca's version layered with romesco, garlic aioli, fresh herbs and smoked salmon, setting the Spanish register before the bigger plates arrive. Ahi tuna tiradito is dressed in white soy, lemon and truffle, with a lunchtime version that folds in burrata. Crispy fish tacos appear across dinner, lunch and breakfast, carrying crab, salsa and pickled onion. The whole fried fish goes Caribbean-style, finished with a corn crust, pickled slaw and fire-roasted lemon, while the raw bar keeps oysters by the half-dozen and a shrimp ceviche sharpened with lime, aji rocoto and cilantro. The beetroot salad is no afterthought either, sweet roasted beets under whipped feta and a walnut crumble.

Read the plates together and technique is the point. Saffron rice, house romesco, truffle-lifted tuna, a corn-crusted fish, hollandaise built to order — these are dishes that depend on preparation rather than assembly, and they pull in two directions at once. The Spanish side supplies the structure: the paella discipline, the tapas sequencing, the aioli that turns up everywhere. The Latin and Caribbean side supplies the heat and the brightness — aji rocoto, a pineapple-habanero salsa, the fried-fish finish. Fusion is an easy word to hang on a menu and a hard thing to actually cook, and this one holds because both halves are doing real work.

The point of view is not anonymous. Manrique Lucca cooks from Venezuelan roots, and a public profile that reaches national television and competition kitchens gives the food a named voice rather than a menu assembled by committee. Gustavo Belisario, named in local reporting as partner and front-of-house manager, runs the other half of the operation. Together they keep a polished neighbourhood dining room — modern, compact, built for sharing plates rather than turning tables. The Beechwood move, which local coverage followed when the restaurant settled into its current address, set that Spanish-Latino concept in a residential pocket of Ottawa rather than a downtown strip when it opened in 2021.

The week is built to be used, not just admired. The weekday prix-fixe runs three courses for forty-two dollars until early evening, Monday through Friday, a low-friction way into the kitchen's range. Thursdays and Fridays add individual paellas at lunch, sized for one, for tables that would rather not commit to a single shared pan. And the pickup menu is no consolation prize: oysters, shrimp ceviche, salads, paellas and the whole fried fish all travel, so takeout here is tied to the same plates that anchor the dining room.

Sunday is its own argument. The breakfast menu runs deeper than a token brunch — French toasts that range from toasted coconut to a pistachio-and-walnut crumble, a smoked-salmon Benedict, breakfast fish tacos with eggs, and a Big Daddy steak and eggs under whipped queso blanco. The seafood that defines the dinner table carries straight into the morning, fish tacos and all. The same kitchen that times a paella to serve two runs the Sunday griddle with the same hand, then goes quiet until the dinner rush starts the rice again.