ottawa foodies

My first visit to a sugar bush in years, unfortunately I was quite disappointed. On offer was pea soup, maple carrots, scrambled eggs, baked beans, home fries, pancakes, sausage, ham, pork jowls, curly bacon, bread and butter. An assortment of coffee, tea and juice. The food really was underwhelming, nothing stood out, and some items were just not very good, like the beans which were under cooked and very bland. The only truly delicious part was the maple syrup, which I proceeded to pour over everything, and the taffy on ice. The maple cotton candy ($3.50 extra) had a burnt flavour, but it looked like they were using real maple sugar. For $23+tax per adult ($10,40 for a 3 year old boy), I haven't felt this ripped off in a long time.

The process was also very frustrating. First, we had had to line up outside the eating area waiting to be seated. At some point, the hostess comes out to yell at us stay behind an imaginary line. We finally we get seated, we are given a minute-long set of instructions, the only part that I understood was that we had to line up again to pay for our meal and get our plates. It was very hot and loud inside which wasn't very pleasant.

We payed an extra $5 per person to enjoy a horse wagon ride and access to the playground and petting zoo. The horse ride was OK, complete with halloween decorations. Petting zoo was pretty sad, but my boy did have fun playing in the park, but I thought it was generally dilapidated.

All in all, I left feeling sad... and I don't like feeling sad so I probably won't return. At least I won't be doing the buffet thing again.

We were here with the kids a few weeks ago, but didn't go for the buffet pancake breakfast. (Sorry, no food reviews from me.)

The wagon rides were great, with one guy driving the two horses and another telling silly jokes and leading us in song. There's a little petting barn and various playgrounds. At the sugar shack they sell the usual maple taffy but also maple cotton candy (!). It's neat to be able to watch the maple sap dripping into buckets.

This farm is officially in Cumberland, but it's really close to the new developments in Orleans.