By Michelle Ramsay
Let’s start wth something sweet. Lindt Canada has opened a Chocolate Shop and Café at The Bay, just inside the George Street entrance. The café is full-service, offering beverages, pastries, sandwiches and desserts.
The addition of Lindt to the ByWard Market may earn us the title of Sweetest Spot n Ottawa—if not Canada. Our four-bocks-square heritage district s home to four other chocolate shops,includng: Cylie Artisans Chocolatiers (204 Dalhousie Street), Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut (256 Dalhousie), Stubbe Chocolates (375 Dalhousie), and the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (55 ByWard Market Square).
We also host a chocolate-inspired restaurant, Cacao 70 (51-53 William Street), a candy shop called Sugar Mountain (71 William), dessert destinations Oh So Good (25 York) and Memories (136 St. Patrick) and Beaver Tails (69 George Street).
The northeast corner of the Market has a new local with Irish flavour. The new bar, Brigid’s Well, is located n the basement of St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts at 179 Murray Street. If you want to check it out, use the Cumberland Street entrance.
Both Stella Osteria (81 Clarence Street) and Lapointe Fish Restaurant (55 York Street) were closed for a couple of weeks this past month, undergoing renovations. We are lookng forward to seeing their transformed spaces.
Bang-On custom t-shirt shop moved from 31 York Street to 11 William, the former premises of Frou Frou boutique. Next door, where the Sassy Bead Company used to live, the bubble tea shop that has been moving in for months has put up a sign. Now we know it will be called My Sweet Tea. Still don’t know when it will open.
On Clarence Street, at number 120 we lost Bertholiny clothing boutique, replaced by VaperTown, and at number 47, the Empire restaurant. Its rumoured that the Empire will be replaced by a pub.
Number 10 ByWard Market Square is not a lucky locaton for contemporary furniture stores. Exactly one year after Phillip Van Leeuwen went bankrupt, its successor More than Design followed it down the wormhole.
Another business has disappeared from Sussex Drive, vacating ts premises the same week as three neighbouring merchants who were forced out on orders from the National Capital Commission (NCC). Renée Lévesque Bijoux Mode – concdentay, also an NCC tenant but not one who was ordered out – is relocating to 265 Dalhousie, beside Ma Cuisine.
Ony one of the three NCC tenants who were looking for new quarters was successful. Silkfashon merchant ça va de soi will reopen this spring at 519 Sussex Drive, the former home of WOLF & Zed footwear boutique. The upscale shoe business has been amalgamated into the next-door clothing store, Schad Boutique (521 Sussex).
Sadly, MaiYa Pearls and Julie Thibault could not find alternatve storefronts and had to close. However, the former continues at ts second locaton in Summersde, PEI, and the latter is selling her orignal childrens wear online (juliethibaultottawa.ca).
Although we had lots of notice, Mellos lights-out on December 21 saddened people both in our neighbourhood and across Ottawa. The venerable 73-year-old diner did not go out with a whimper! From its scrappy (failed) Kickstarter bid to raise $60,000 to fund a restart, to jam-packed boisterous dinner services throughout its final days, to the disappearance of its iconic sign in the dead of night—Mellos went out with a scream. Here’s hoping it will rise again to delight us anew.