Freezer burn cardboard tasting pizza. Like when you are a student in the dorms & get the cheapest frozen pizza & instantly regret it. Worst pushy rude service ever so inconsiderate. Compared to this, McDonald’s is a Michelin star haute cuisine fine dining restaurant. However, great dessert, cocktails and view. Do NOT go there for dinner, just drink & dessert.The way the food tastes one assumes that they don’t have a kitchen which is bizarre for the price. Their desserts and cocktails can’t be ruined from frozen but you really have to be hyper assertive with the pushy inconsiderate money grabbing tacky waitress who doesn’t care about you at all but keeps pushing you and interrupting you and trying to manipulate you.I was out with a friend who was sad they were always feeling interrupted in their life & wanted to feel listened to. I suggested we relax, grab some cocktails and dessert by the water. Waitress had what looked like a cigarette burn on her shirt. She bullied us and was all emotionally manipulative interrupting my friend the whole time stressing her out more and making her feel worse. If you are a man, this is the last place you want to take a woman on a date with the service.Amazing view. Great desserts & cocktails. Terrible service & avoid the mains.
We just held an afternoon baby shower for about 40 people in the beautiful glassed-in dining area of the Canal Ritz. At 9am when we showed up for decorating the room, all the tables were perfectly set and the owner was on site.During the party, service was impeccable and the food (including the pizzas) was delicious and beautifully presented. This venue with a great view is the best for lunch, dinner and parties!
Sadly it was not as good as previous visits. I found it in need of an cleaning overhaul. To be fair the short staff was due to Covid but maybe they should if allowed less guests to accommodate that. Service was slow and the food was not up to there norm. We ordered a fresh shower of shrimp for an 18$ appetizer.. what we got were 4 soggy limp shrimp on a plate of rice with a couple of shirts of soya sauce..not a good start ..the salad with my meal was also limp ( 22$ for a sandwich) and my husbands seafood linguine was okay but not much in it .. 2 shrimp 6 mussels and a few baby scallops…. The location makes up for a lot but I was quite disappointed
We went with a large group (25) for a holiday celebration. Excellent food & service. The location & view are superb. Staff was friendly & they coordinated with us in advance to accommodate all our special requests including multiple dietary restrictions.Everyone loved their meal. the food was excellent, delicious, served hot and the meal was timed perfectly. Would highly recommend the Canal Ritz for a large group or a quite dinner. Amazing Food, Service & View! Perfect Night Out!
Other than the view this place has little to offer. I could have cooked a better pasta at home. Our food came out too quickly and was obviously not fresh. Under cooked penne. Our server was attentive but kept hanging out with the bartender with no mask on chatting to bar customers. We won't be back.
My wife and I, and an array of friends, are frequent customers at Canal Ritz. Yesterday I took a friend there for lunch. I ordered the French Mussels, and an extra large dish in a spicy cream sauce. It was perfect, delicious, spicy, totally delicious. I ordered garlic toast and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc to go with. My colleague ordered a bowl of house minestrone and the seafood pasta, and a beer to go with, all entirely delicious! Service was great by an architecture student from Carleton University. I have suggest to the owner that he could possibly add some beef dishes to his menu, viz. beef tartar, filet mignon, rib steak, T-bone steak, and certainly the traditionally French steak frites. We would return again.
Gave the Canal Ritz another chance again recently, but it's gotten worse. It was full of retirees and we needed reservations even, so I guess they don't notice bad taste . The salad was sorta ok but had a lot of wilted lettuce. The rest was really bad, like re-heated microwave bad. I don’t get it. Despite the menu claiming everything was 'fresh' the Sysco truck we saw backed up in the lot on the way out proved it was all frozen. As for health and safety: Ottawa Public Health makes inspections public. You may find the March 19, 2019 & November 4, 2019 inspections of interest, Disgusting!
I do not recommend at all! the only good thing was the view. I ordered a beer and it had a hair in it. To eat we had a BBQ burger and wild mushroom ravioli. The fries were not amazing and the patty seemed like the frozen ones you buy at Costco. The ravioli was not better, it also seemed like the packaged ones you buy at the grocery store with a bit of sauce and no mushrooms only red bell pepper.
Parking for the resturaunt was completely full. We had to walk 3 blocks from where we could find street parking. Service was unattentive (didn't take dishes when passing by, took more than 10 minutes after asking if we needed more time with the menus before coming back to take our orders, never came to ask how the food was, and missed order notes from 3 people). Cutlery was dirty, crumbs under the table covering. My friend spent more time trying to get a wasp off her food than she did eating it. No wasp traps or deterrents to be seen. My salad came with balsamic vinegar. Not sauce, not dressing, not vinaigrette, just straight up vinegar. One of the water pitchers looked like it had been used in a bar for 30 years. Dairy free options were almost non-existent. Only one of us got a cloth napkin despite many being seen around. You would expect for the prices that there would be table bread.The experience definitely did not live up to the name. The view is lovely, and that's pretty much it.
The view is beautiful! Our waitress was very nice. Unfortunately the Manager lacked finesse! His many motions to the poor waitress obviously his motto was to have people eat and go! The food? especially for the prices totally appalling. The jambuli sauce was watery and without taste. The fish and chips: chips clearly the frozen variety and the fish batter hard and unappetizing. Wine was overpriced at $12/glass. For a Monday with many empty tables we were placed next to the clean-up station. The waitress did move us much to the manager’s annoyance. We had looked forward to eating here but will not be back. If you just want drinks on the patio it may be nice.