Ottawa is not your typical national capital. It straddles two provinces, bridges three founding cultures, and may be better known for its Hill and canal than for its cooking. Ottawa Cooks changes that.

Award-winning food writer Anne DesBrisay brings together recipes from forty-one of the Capital Region’s most inspiring cooks. From fine restaurants, food trucks and farmhouse kitchens, here are signature dishes, favourite staff meals and traditional family recipes that assert what people in Ottawa already know: for more than twenty years, this capital has been quietly and steadily growing one of the most interesting and diverse food cultures in the country.

Beautifully photographed by Christian Lalonde, Ottawa Cooks showcases more than eighty recipes featuring the best of the region’s local products with globally inspired flavours—and the gifted chefs who create them.

Anne DesBrisay's profile page

Anne DesBrisay is an award-winning food writer and the author of Capital Dining, the most trusted guidebook to the best places to eat in Ottawa. The region’s leading culinary voice for more than twenty years, she is the restaurant critic for Ottawa Magazine, a senior editor for Taste & Travel and a judge for Ottawa Gold Medal Plates and the Canadian Culinary Championships. She lives in Ottawa.

"For locals or visitors, it's an invaluable guide to where to eat in the under-appreciated capital, from Canadian Culinary Champion Marc Lepine's molecular cuisine to the homey muffins at Bridgehead coffeeshops. Because DesBrisay steered chefs away from their show-off dishes to ones most can make at home, it's a wonderful cookbook too" - Laura Robin, Ottawa Citizen
"A gorgeous, hunger-inducing collection of recipes from 41 top area chefs and a guide to the city's best restaurants." - B>The Ottawa Citizen