Canadian food critic hails Filipino resto one of Ottawa’s best

Tamis Cafe’s tapsilog: Marinated, hand cut beef sirloin served with a choice of garlic or mexican rice and sunny side egg. (Photo: Tamis Cafe/Facebook)

MANILA—A cozy Filipino-themed café and restaurant situated in the historic and elite Glebe neighborhood of Ottawa has been selected as one of the best restaurants in Ottawa.

Tamis Café is a family business run by Lito and Liza Sare, with their daughters Jessica and Jiselle,

Noted food critic Peter Hum featured Tamis Café in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper in his year-end review of Ottawa’s dining scene.

Hum said Tamis Café is among the “more humble [sic] but worthy mom-and-pop joints,” which joins the ranks of ambitious and distinctive restaurants that set themselves apart from other dining establishments in Ottawa.

The café was featured by the Citizen in the summer of 2016 where Hum noted how “Tamis Café brings (the) sweet, savoury tastes of Manila to the Glebe.”

At the time, he noted the “simple, home-style savoury dishes that have been consistently well-made, tasty, generously portioned and bargain-priced.”

The author found the vegan chocolate pâté at Tamis Café very likeable, and confessed that it is a dish that he craves for.

Tamis Café also mixes its own unique blend of organic tea and coffee. Among their popular beverages is ube (purple yam) latte. They also bake their own pastries and cakes– including pandan (screwpine), ube desserts, leche flan (crème caramel) and the venerable pandesal bun. For the winter season, the café has recently begun to offer bulalo (beef soup) and lomi (thick noodle) soup.

Their unique take on Filipino food staples such as the classic and ube brazo de Mercedes (dessert roll), okoy (shrimp fritters), kare-kare (peanut and ox stew) and bistek (beef steak) have been featured in various diplomatic and government functions and receptions of the Philippine Embassy and the Canadian Parliament.