For Ottawa, Bekta is sort of an Ottawa institution. Great food, and corkage friendly. Play is their wine bar.
Atelier is a tasting menu only, focussed on molecular gastronomy. Haven’t been, but supposed to be great. I believe they allow corkage.
I haven’t been to Navarra but it’s always in the list of top restaurants.
For a casual place, Murray Street Kitchen and Wine Bar is great. All the charcuterie is made in house.
Town is also excellent. Italian food with a twist. For cocktails, Union Local 613 is great, and food is excellent Southern style.
We Just returned from a weekend with friends in Montreal. We had great dim sum at Kam Fung (it helped that we were a Chinese family).
We had a very disappointing return visit to Au Pieds du Cochon. Extremely loud ‘music’, incredibly slow service, slightly ripe bluefin, and they were out of my first two wine selections (I later spied one of them through the cellar window, guess they didn’t want to dig for it).
A great find was Maison Christian Faure, a great patisserie cafe in the Old City. I would go back to Montreal just for this shop.
In Winnipeg you can get a good dessert at Baked Expectations and if you mention my name, my cousin probably won’t charge you more than a 10% extra surcharge.
In Montreal, Chez L’Epicier in the Old Port http://www.chezlepicier.com/chezlepicier.php?lang=en where we’ve had exceptional meals and lovely service. Chef Godbout will represent Canada at this year’s Bocuse D’Or.