Is the Citizen restaurant critic out of touch with diners' palates? Peter Hum wonders if restaurants are going overboard in taming their flavours to appease tender taste buds.
It has happened to me three times this spring. At Lotus of Siam in the Glebe in April, the restaurant's owner, Katriya Thanthadawanit, told me that my hunch was correct, that customer feedback had prompted her kitchen to make otherwise spicy dishes milder. "They say 'Lower the heat a little bit,'" Thanthadawanit said. Some of her customers come from nearby retirement homes, she added. As I wrote in my review: "I prefer my Thai food more spicy and more pungent than do Lotus of Siam's patrons."
A few weeks later, at Dinette Atomique in Sandy Hill, when I told chef-owner Vu Duong that some of his items seemed a little subdued to me, he replied that toning them down was more to the neighbourhood's taste. "The clientele is more conservative," he said to me during our conversation that informed my review. That is why, for example, Duong serves a sweet chili dipping sauce with his excellent Vietnamese spring rolls, rather than the fish sauce-based condiment that his parents, and other purists, would be craving.
Fish sauce also entered into my conversation a few days ago with Johnny Tran, owner of La Nhau Viet Kitchen & Bar. This four-month-old Vietnamese restaurant on Murray Street serves Canh Ga Chien Mam, or fish sauce-glazed chicken wings. I thought everything was spot-on about these wings except for the amount of fish sauce that figured in the preparation. There just was not enough of it. I put that to Tran, and he said that yes, his kitchen toned down the fish sauce-funk of that dish in response to feedback from non-Vietnamese customers. If you want the funk dialed up, just ask your server, he said. However, you cannot make that request until you have tried the wings once and determined that, as far as you are concerned, they are short on funk.
Three times is a trend, as we say in journalism. But does that mean that my palate is that far out of touch with the levels of spiciness and pungency that Ottawans want to eat when they go out to restaurants? I understand that some truly incendiary fare, such as the notorious Atomic jerk chicken that the now-defunct Flavours of the Caribbean in the Lowertown used to serve, is too much for most mortals and needs to have its brusque flavours softened.
But it is 2026, and Ottawa is only becoming more diverse. Chilis, fish sauce and other Asian condiments are not the rarities that they were decades ago. Cutting back on the fish sauce in a Vietnamese dish is an affront to authenticity, as tricky as that topic might be. If you watch culinary-competition programs on TV, you will see judges repeatedly intone to contestants: "Your dish needs to be packed with flavour!" Amen to that.
Speaking of competitions, about a decade ago, I began judging barbecue competitions on the side. It is no secret that the ribs, chicken thighs and brisket that barbecue competitors serve can be practically overloaded with seasoning, since the point is to win over judges who are taking just a bite or two of each sample. Has too much barbecue judging done a number on my taste buds? A former colleague once asked me if I could recommend some restaurants that were more on the bland side, which suited her palate. A current colleague shuns condiments of all kinds. The Ottawa Citizen's Natasha Baldin, bless her, eats hot dogs "perfectly plain… just the meat and bun, exactly as God intended." The last time we had lunch at IKEA, as per the newsroom's tradition, I joined her in eating a hot dog, completely undressed rather than all-dressed, without the pickled veg and zingy mustard that I would usually have added.
