When Canada's 100 Best ranked Riviera among the country's 30 finest restaurants in 2024, the response from Ottawa diners was something between pride and recognition — a sense that the city's best dining room had finally received the acknowledgment it had been earning for several years. The setting is part of the story: a former Art Deco bank on Sparks Street, with a vaulted ceiling, a bar built into what was once the vault, and the kind of bones that make you understand why someone would choose to open a restaurant here rather than a more conventional space.
The kitchen draws on New Canadian ingredients — foie gras from Quebec, aged duck from Ontario, seafood from both coasts — and frames them with the precision of a brigade that has thought seriously about classical technique. The sauce work is among the finest in Ottawa. The cocktail program, built inside the vault bar, is equally considered: housemade bitters, barrel-aged spirits, and the kind of Negroni variations that reward returning visitors.
OpenTable named Riviera one of the 100 most romantic restaurants in Canada in 2024, and the room earns that without trying to. The candlelight does not feel theatrical. The service knows when to be present and when to disappear. Come for a significant occasion and arrive having already decided the evening is the plan.
