Dining Out: Ramadan feasts abound, from Orléans to Hunt Club to Kanata to Barrhaven

Karahi Point
570 Kanata Ave. (in Kanata Centrum), 613-271-7474, karahipoint.com

Khokha Eatery
605 Longfields Dr., Unit 13, Barrhaven, 613-440-3999, khokhaeatery.com

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Royal Rooster Shawarma
3987 Riverside Dr., Unit 1 and 900 Watters Rd Unit 5, Orléans, royalroostershawarma.ca

Yemen Gate
2871 St. Joseph Boul., Orléans, 613-845-1715, yemengate.ca

The holiday that I’ll mark this weekend, as I do every Spring, is Easter. Happy Easter to all who celebrate it.

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Still, in the last week, I’ve been very curious, in a professional capacity, about Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that runs this year from March 10 to April 9.

For Ottawa’s roughly 100,000 Muslims — about 10 per cent of the city’s population, according to the 2021 census —  Ramadan entails fasting daily from sunrise to sunset to foster worship and spiritual discipline. So, Muslim-owned restaurants, from Orléans to Hunt Club to Kanata to Barrhaven, can play a larger-than-usual role as nourishers of their guests.

Some eateries extend their hours to cover not just Iftar, the post-sundown period when the day’s fast is broken, but also a smaller meal called Suhoor, which can be eaten in the wee hours before dawn breaks. Some restaurants have special Ramadan menus, dishes buffets and to-go meals.

During the last week, I sampled as much Ramadan-related fare as I could, seeking deliciousness plus a side order of increased inter-faith understanding.

My rounds, which amounted to a tour of Ottawa’s suburbs, took me to purveyors of Syrian, Yemeni and Pakistani fare.

First, four of us ordered from the Ramadan menu at the Syrian restaurant Royal Rooster Shawarma, where a sign greets customers with the assertion: “We are on a mission to correct the way people think of shawarma.”

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You might also rethink what shawarma joints can be after a visit to Royal Rooster, which opened two years ago in the Riverside Drive mall that includes T&T Supermarket.

Yes, Royal Rooster does have a shawarma eatery’s usual open kitchen featuring spit-roasting meat, and guests do order at the cash. But the eatery’s grand dining area holds 150 or so people and it was lavishly decorated because of Ramadan. By sundown on the night I visited, the restaurant was filling and its mood was celebratory, with a video of dancers and singers playing on a large screen.

We ordered a saj chicken shawarma sandwich meal, which was excellent. We could have ordered two other shawarma variations, namely “French” and “Italian,” which vary depending on the bread used. But I love fresh house-made saj bread, which puts store-bought pita bread to shame, and I can’t even imagine shunning it.

From the Ramadan menu, we had more substantial dishes too, including chunks of tender lamb on a bed of nutty, smokey freekeh, a Middle Eastern whole grain, and some moist rotisserie chicken, its skin crisped and darkened, on glossy kabsa rice flecked with toasted almond slivers.

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Cheese-filled sambosas and kibbeh were savoury deep-fried starters. Fresh fattoush salad came with a bold, citrus-y dressing. Shish barak were mild, meat-filled dumplings in a yogurt sauce. A slice of house-made baklava was heavenly.

At Yemen Gate, which opened three months ago in Orléans and which has a smaller, older sister eatery on Bank Street near Heron Road, we feasted meats layered on massive beds of yellowed, raisin-studded rice.

Here, lamb haneeth starred a slab of slow-roasted, well-seasoned meat while chicken mandi’s poultry went its own way in terms of its seasoning. A tomato-based hot sauce on the side added excitement and the ampleness of the servings guaranteed leftovers.

To start, richly flavoured and fortified lamb broth was a simple, satisfying starter. For meal-enders, we had three winners. Kunefe, a baked-to-order salty-sweet confection of shredded pastry, syrup and cheese, was warm, gooey and comforting. Yemen Gate’s “signature cocktail” was a thick concoction of mango, apple, banana, date paste and more. Harrisa was a soft, peanut-y candy with cardamom notes.

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After these two Middle Eastern meals, we spun the globe and visited two Pakistani restaurants.

At Karahi Point, a seven-month-old, 170-seat eatery in Kanata Centrum, a deluxe buffet with nearly 20 trays of food is front and centre nightly during Ramadan.

Once the sun set, we and scores of others queued up to fill our plates with highly seasoned and well-warmed items.

Standouts included: crisp, spicy Lahori fried fish that compelled me to have seconds and thirds; Tangy, sweet, spicy chaat papri, a chickpea-based indulgence; Juicy chicken tikka; Beefy yakhni pulao rice; and assertively flavoured chicken and beef karahi curries.

As good and well-stocked as this buffet was, restaurant owner Muhammad Rashed Malik said its items would be twice as enjoyable if ordered a la carte after Ramadan. I made a note to return to this Kanata foothold of a restaurant brand with 12 locations from Edmonton to Montreal, but mostly in and around Toronto.

Finally, I visited Khokha Eatery in Barrhaven, which I reviewed after it opened in 2021, to try this small but potent Pakistani restaurant’s take-home Iftar boxes.

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Owner-chef Zermina Siddiqi fills cake boxes with a range of edible treats. Each box contains dahi bhalla (lentil fritters in spiced yogurt), chaat (chickpeas in an intoxicating tangy sauce), a vegetable pakora, dates, a mango juice box, deliciously cardamom-y rice pudding and either a crustless chicken sandwich or a container of chicken biryani. Just $20, the Iftar box with biryani in particular feels like a generous gift.

Filling as the Iftar boxes were, we supplemented them with Kokha’s lamb karahi, which was exceptionally good.

Siddiqi told me she’s selling up to 35 Iftar boxes daily, and she expects business to swell as Ramadan continues. As many as a quarter of the boxes are bought by non-Muslims, she said.

After my last Ramadan-related meal, I felt that I’d just scratched the surface of things. What about Ottawa’s Afghan, Persian and Lebanese restaurants? Fortunately, I can address my culinary and cultural curiosity year-round.

phum@postmedia.com

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