top of page
Search

Best Bites in Ottawa: Casa México, Clarendon Tavern, Exit Lounge

By Kiersten Vuorimaki on June 25, 2025


In this feature, Apt613 asks blog contributors and local food lovers about their recent Ottawa area restaurant highlights to help you find new tasty treats to discover or revisit when someone inevitably asks, “Where do you want to eat?” We want to hear about something that you ate and loved! Leave comments below, and if you’d like to contribute to a future edition of Best Bites, email <editors@apt613.ca>.


Best Bites this week:

ree

The Clarendon Tavern is definitely one of the city’s loveliest patios, so it was the perfect place for a recent relaxed celebration. Tucked into a shared courtyard behind Sussex and George, the patio is the summertime star, while the indoor space is split between the upscale Clarendon and separate funky bar The Hyde. The menu features a selection of upscale pub food like a delicious Korean fried chicken wings, a mezze platter, steak frites, and artisan pizzas. There was a surprising selection of vegan and vegetarian dishes, and delicious craft mocktails on the drinks menu, so the whole gang can participate. We ordered some dishes to share, and the standout dishes for me were the Scotch Egg — with its perfectly jammy yolk and flavourful mustard on the side — and the warm squash salad. For $20 it was a good meal size, and complimented our family style shared dinner perfectly.


Nothing beats a really, really good taco. This is Best Bites gospel. For a while now, I keep getting told to check out Casa México so recently we headed over to the bright, lively patio at their Preston location to check it out. To be totally transparent, I read that they had elote on the menu, and that sealed the deal (Mexican street corn). There is nothing quite like elote and tacos on a patio. The elote was incredibly juicy, creamy and tangy, exactly how it should be, as the perfect starter to a meal for $8.50.


Looking for some variety, my best friend and I settled on the Fiesta platter, which is four quesabirria tacos, and four regular tacos of your own choosing for $59, perfect to share. We opted for the carnitas, pastor, papa con chorizo, and chicken mole. The quesabirria were so beefy and juicy, with a very healthy amount of cheese keeping them together. The consommé was savoury and rich, and we soaked up every last bit. The mole tacos were a fun surprise, since it isn’t all that common to find a saucy mole taco on a menu here, and the mole was nutty and complex, with a hint of spice topped with tangy pickled onions. The papa con chorizo was another standout, with flavourful beans as a soft base for the spicy chorizo and hearty chunks of potatoes. The house made horchata was also perfection, rounding out an excellent hot patio evening.


ree

Casa México has three locations across town, and the menu differs a little bit in each place, but I’ve heard rave reviews from friends about the Merivale and Kanata locations, so I’m pretty confident you’ll be well taken care of at all of them.


When a new eatery pops up outside of the city centre, our readers in the suburbs are always quick to let us know. Exit Lounge has opened up in the former Ottawa Citizen building on Baxter Road, and is attached to Skate & Play, the cool new roller rink in town. The reviews have been positive, and we were looking for somewhere spacious and convenient to have a group dinner before some silly fun a few weeks ago, and I’m here to tell you that we were not expecting to have such an amazing meal.


We were there on Father’s Day weekend, so they had a special meat-forward menu that isn’t normally available, but everything that our large table ordered was fantastic. The inside of the restaurant is bright, clean and modern, and we opted for the sunny patio overlooking a lovely green lawn with a relaxed vibe. The cocktails were excellent, and the presentation on the food was dynamite. I ordered the Crispy Crab Arancini as a starter, and I got four generous sized crispy arancini served with a lovely light tomato aioli, plated with a garden of micro greens and edible flowers for $19. It was definitely the right size to share with a friend or two, because the entrées were also generous.


ree


The short rib pasta and beef burger were also hugely popular at the table, plus a lovely lamb chop dinner which is rare on menus around here, and was delicious. Overhearing that we were celebrating a birthday, our server brought out an order of the Berry Crumble Cheesecake on the house, and it was everything that you might hope a berry crumble / cheesecake mashup would be. The piles of fruit and flowers also make it easy to photograph and share.


Special shout out to Nate who did a great job managing a chaotic dinner group on the patio, without any idea that one of us would blog about it.


 
 
 

Commentaires

bottom of page