The Blog
Every article recovered from roneade.com, newest first. Each carries the date it was originally filed and sits at the address it was published under.
Archive note. This page preserves work first published on roneade.com between 2014 and 2016. Ron Eade died in August 2015; nothing on this site is new writing in his voice, and the reporting below is presented as a dated record rather than as current coverage. Restaurants, prices and staffing described here reflect the moment the piece was filed.
2015
Restaurant 18 celebrates its second 4-diamond award in characteristic style
30 March 2015 — On a culinary seascape awash with awards and best-whatever lists, a few originals rise above the flotsam. A ByWard Market dining room takes a second consecutive four-diamond rating, and marks it with a charity brunch.
Visions of dolphin fins, whale caviar and lion kebabs on the menu gets tongues wagging
11 March 2015 — A soon-to-open Somerset Street restaurant papers its windows with a deliberately absurd fake menu, and a good part of the internet falls for it.
2014
Chef Bites earns $10,000 to help displaced victims in restaurant industry
18 December 2014 — Nine chefs cook a sold-out benefit dinner to seed a new fund for hospitality workers left stranded when a restaurant fails.
Pat Garland of Absinthe Cafe wins 10th Gold Medal Plates chef competition in Ottawa
18 November 2014 — Ten chefs, one plate each, and a trip to the national final in Kelowna for the winner. The full results, dishes and wine pairings from the tenth Ottawa regional.
Gongfu Bao street food cart defends title as king of Asian steamed buns
29 September 2014 — Seventeen trucks and carts, two thousand visitors and a $4 price ceiling. A steamed bun takes the title for the second year running.
Mind of a chef: Insights into challenges of today's restaurant business
27 June 2014 — The longest interview in the archive. A Westboro chef-owner explains, line by line, why he tore up his menu — and what happened to sales when he did.
Artisan Seed to Sausage shop opens Tuesday in Ottawa
13 June 2014 — Eighty-day dry-aged beef, thirty hard-to-find cheeses and a charcuterie business that began, illegally, in a garage.
High school students take over Town resto in "pop-up" fundraiser
5 June 2014 — Six graduating Grade 12 students cook a four-course dinner for paying guests and raise about $3,000 for a skateboard park.
Q & A with chef/owner John Taylor, on closing Domus Cafe after 18 years
27 May 2014 — Filed the day after the announcement, with the chairs already upside down on the tables. A pioneer of local, seasonal cooking on why he walked away.
ZenKitchen closes suddenly due to tax arrears
25 May 2014 — A celebrated vegan restaurant is shuttered two days after the tax authority seizes its bank account. The owner and his executive chef talk it through in a pub on race weekend.
Of course, it's not really a party until the pig comes out ...
22 May 2014 — A 170-pound hog, cured three days and roasted overnight, and a barbecue sauce contest with nineteen entries.
The Albion Rooms chef Stephen La Salle steps up to Gold Medal Plates in November
8 May 2014 — A late substitution fills the tenth slot in the autumn competition after another chef leaves for Toronto. The full invited roster.
Travel Show ups the ante with savoury memories from home and afar (recipes)
7 April 2014 — Nine cooking demonstrations over two days at the twentieth travel and vacation show, and the recipes worth carrying home.
Bringing home the bacon with chef Michael Olson (recipes)
2 April 2014 — Part two from Niagara. How to get crackling on a pork belly, why hops belong in honey, and a fried cinnamon pastry recipe from an Ottawa kitchen.
Our chefs present Ottawa cuisine — in Niagara
31 March 2014 — Part one. Four Ottawa chefs cook a valley-themed menu for ninety guests at a college teaching restaurant, and a question that had bothered the writer for fifteen years finally gets an answer.
Holy mole! In praise of authentic Mexican (recipe and video)
23 March 2014 — Four kinds of dried chilli, toasted seeds, Mexican chocolate and a great deal of patience, taught by an Orléans cooking instructor.
Articles that could not be restored
Not everything survived. A number of addresses that once carried articles — a report on a Bank Street restaurant changing hands, a bistro reopening after renovations, an oyster festival, and a turkey pot pie recipe that appears to have been published only as an empty draft — have no recoverable text in any public web archive. Those addresses now point back to this index rather than to a page invented to fill the gap.
For background on the blog and its author, see about roneade.com. Readers researching the wider Canadian hospitality picture of these years may find the Canadian Culinary Federation a useful reference point.