Ottawa Foodies

Does anyone know the scoop on the Eclectic Noodle? Did they close to renovate and then open under a new name or is it a completely different restaurant now?

Walked past here this afternoon. It appears to be gone. The sign in its place said 'Casa Mia' or something like that.

Had dinner here last night and was impressed. Although we arrived somewhat late for a Wednesday evening, we were still warmly greeted and seated.

After speaking with our waitress, my understanding is that this restaurant is run by a husband and wife team, who have owned the place for about 7 years.

As for our food, both plates were delicious. We had the Portobello pasta, with red onion, portobello mushroom and grilled chicken in a garlic cream sauce. The pasta was rich and creamy with a tasty mixture of flavours.

My companion had the Eclectic Chicken, which was served with roasted potatoes and steamed veggies. The chicken was tender and came with a mushroom cream sauce.

We complimented our meal with a bottle of Rosemount Estates Semillon Chardonnay, which was well balanced to the meal, however, not served in an ice bucket, which was somewhat disappointing.

Overall, an excellent meal, however I would have liked the pasta to be slightly more al dente. I will definitely be back!

Our Dinner Club met last Thursday (Nov 1st) for our 8th gathering, this time at Eclectic Noodle.

The restaurant was full and there was only one server and one person in the kitchen (that I could see). Had we been just two, the service would have been very slow. Because we were 6, we were too busy chatting to really care. Our server was really nice and did not seem to be too flustered by the pace.

I started with the Caesar salad (there is a photo of it below taken by FF). I would agree with his assessment that there is a nice tang to the dressing and the bacon is real which is a nice touch. I however, found it to be extremely salty. Still managed to clean the plate but was really thirsty the rest of the night. My portion was a small and looked like it was the same as FF's large in the photo?
For my main I ordered a large portion of the Carbonara pasta, Mr. KSW had the large Portobello mushroom pasta. My Carbonara was really rich (which is good) and it tasted great, but once I stopped eating it, I realised that there were about 14 cloves of garlic mixed in. It was repeating on me for the rest of the night and into the next day. Yikes!
Mr. Ksw was unimpressed with his pasta, stating that it was bland.

Others in the group had: Portobello mushroom pasta, mango chicken (which looked really good) (x2) and the cashew cream chicken (also looked really good).

This is my third time ordering pasta here and I have yet to be wowed. I think I will try out the chicken dishes next time.

Too full for dessert.

Bill for one salad, two pastas (large), and one glass of wine, including tax and minus the Entertainment coupon was $36 (plus tip).

Will not return at my choosing but may at someone else's.

I agree that this place doesn't have the best service but it has charm. We ate here a few weeks ago and although the food is bistro style and the mixes are different, we enjoyed our meals and for the price, were really satisfied.

Unfortunately further visits to all the higher end restaurants will have to be put on hold for now until after our trip to France in September.

As Fresh Foodie says, the Eclectic Noodle can be compared to StoneFace Dolly's (we were sad to see Bronson close) as a cozy little hole in the wall if you want to fill your gullet with some decent food and get good value.

PS - I like the calamari...nice change from the regular breading.

I enjoyed the place very much, though more because of the company than the venue. If you are bored with perfection, then you'll find this place really interesting.

Overall this place had cozy charm but the food was a little bit disappointing given the good things we'd heard. It reminded us very much of Stoneface Dolly's -- trying hard to be unique but the food just didn't do much for us. Lots of people love Stoneface Dolly's and that seems also to be the case with the Eclectic Noodle given its longevity. Service was comfortable but more in the style of a diner than a date-night restaurant.

Lowlights were dried chewing gum on a bread plate, a server handing a dessert fork across the table with the prongs pointed towards the diner, not bringing sugar with the espresso until asked, and unexceptional desserts. Also, why does every single savoury plate need to be garnished with a dusting of black pepper? ;-) Highlights were free "tapenada" with croûtes, rolls with more than enough little butter tubs, water for everyone by default, a tasy cosmopolitan, and the espresso was good. All in all a mixed experience -- we can see why some might be regulars there but it didn't impress us the way we wanted to be impressed.

I had the Smirnoff dish, too. It was very good: robust without being too rich, as The Fresh Foodie says. I particularly liked the way I could eat the whole thing using a fork. (No need to switch to spoon, knife, back to fork, etc.)

This is the "Pescatore" pasta -- wifey says it was tasty, although it seemed to have extra mussels to make up for the missing clams that were promised on the menu. The scallops are the small kind, and the portion size is quite ridiculously tiny considering the Small is just a few bucks cheaper than the Large. (this photo is a different scale than the one below -- the plate is smaller!)

This is the "Smirnoff" pasta -- a generous amount of smoked salmon in a rosé sauce with linguine. Even though it looks kind of like a big pile of slop it was very tasty and I can highly recommend it. Very filling but not so rich that you regret ordering it. This was a Large of course.

Very tasty with a nice tang to the dressing, although the parmesan cheese looked very much like the dried shaker-style stuff. The bacon was top notch. Portion size was kind of meager considering this was a Large.

Yah, it was tender, but the batter had an experimental flavour. Mix it with the dipping sauces, and you end up really confused.

Not as chewy as some but we all agreed that they were not great. This is a fusion restaurant, meaning that everything has to be a little different. The calamari batter had a certain spice to it that nobody could identify. The dipping sauces (one asian peanut/hoisin style and the other a creamy curry flavour) were all right and made the calamari easier to eat. Portion size was excellent (this was a Large).