Bar Ocelli: Refined Cocktail Bar in the ByWard Market

Markets have always moved spices, fruit and spirits across oceans, and with them, the recipes and rituals of the people who traded them. Bar Ocelli turns that history into a cocktail list, served with the polish of a London cocktail bar in the heart of Ottawa’s ByWard Market.

London-Trained, ByWard-Bound

Witek Wojaczek found his way into hospitality almost by accident in Szczecin, Poland, through a summer restaurant job. “It was supposed to be seasonal, but I fell in love with it,” he says. London, then the world’s cocktail capital, came next. He started as a barback at the Savoy’s Beaufort Bar, moved on to the Artesian at the Langham Hotel, then spent a year and a half as a brand ambassador for Stoli Group. When the pandemic hit, he relocated to Gatineau and soon ran the opening of Sidecar in Ottawa, which ranked 32nd on Canada’s 100 Best in 2023.

Bar Ocelli pays homage to its location. Sitting in the ByWard Market, the concept looks at how markets have shaped societies around the world through two lenses: access to ingredients and access to cultures. The first is about the products that trade has carried from one part of the world to another; the second, about how markets bring different cultures and their recipes into contact. “That’s how we build our menu. That’s how we plan our events and do everything that we do at Bar Ocelli,” he explains. Bar Ocelli is also the only Ottawa bar to be named a 2025 Spirited Awards honoree in the Best New International Cocktail Bars (Canada) category.

A Peacock’s Palette

“We wanted to create an elevated experience that still feels approachable, so a neighbourhood five-star hotel bar,” says the co-founder, who drew on the London bars where he learned his craft. For the design, he traced the history of trade back to India, once a hub between Southeast Asia and the world, and to its national bird. The whole interior borrows the peacock’s colours, with emerald and sapphire tones, flashes of gold and low lighting that make the room feel intimate and a little mysterious. Even the name follows the theme. Ocelli, from the Latin for “little eyes,” are the iridescent eyespots that ripple across a peacock’s tail feathers when it fans them out.

Seats at the bar put you front row for the shaking and stirring, while tables in the room suit a more intimate evening. In summer, a patio spills out onto the sidewalk.

The World in Three Chapters

The menu is split into three chapters. Ingredient cocktails showcase a single product from somewhere in the world. Recipe cocktails translate dishes from different cultures into a glass. Fusion takes a recipe from one tradition and reimagines it through the lens of another. Every signature is a team creation, and the bar can also shake nearly any classic. “As long as we have the ingredients, we’re able to execute.”

The food gets the same careful craft as the cocktails, with a new menu led by chef Clark Brewerton, formerly chef de partie at Quetzal, with stints at Bernhardt’s and Rasa in Toronto. It shares the bar’s global inspiration, with pairings that bring glass and plate closer together.

For the co-founder, the reward lies in watching ideas take shape. “I had this thought a few months back, now this thought is a reality. That’s probably the most fun and the most rewarding part of doing something on your own.” And that reality is well worth a late evening in the ByWard Market.

Written by Marie-Ève Godin
Photography by Bar Ocelli

Updated on October 02, 2026

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