Gitanes : Honest Fine Dining in Ottawa

Some restaurants earn the words “fine dining” with white tablecloths and hushed voices. Gitanes earned them by feeding people well and treating hospitality as an instinct rather than a script. Nader Salib and Jesse Alberto opened it in October 2019, with chef Mitch Lacombe at the pass from day one, and most of that small founding team is still there. “It just kind of speaks to the passion behind this restaurant,” Salib says.

Montreal More Than Paris

Salib was born in Egypt, grew up in a household where most conversations were about the next meal, and fell for restaurants during his university years in Montreal. Back in Ottawa, he went to culinary school to learn the language of the kitchen, then opened a cocktail bar before Gitanes. Alberto, a hairdresser by trade with a serious eye for design, built the room with his brother inside a building more than a century old. It feels lived in, yet polished. “I do think Montreal and French Canadian more than I do think a Parisian bistro,” Salib says of the cooking, with classical French technique underneath, courtesy of Lacombe.

Built Around the Whole Animal

While it remains a French restaurant at its core, whole animal butchery steers a part of the inspiration at Gitanes now. The team bought whole pigs and lambs quietly in the early days and came back to it with intent after the pandemic pause. The rest of the menu follows the season and comes from as close by as possible. Even the staple burger owes its place to process: a friend of theirs who runs a butcher shop dry-ages the chosen cuts, and the kitchen grinds them in house.

A tasting menu has run since opening because it lets guests experience the restaurant the way the team intends. You can even have your meal at a table right at the pass in the kitchen, where the chef’s tasting is served family style, several dishes a course, nearly the whole menu plus a few specials. “I’d be mortified if somebody left my restaurant hungry,” Salib says.

In the early years Salib kept his own story off the plate to keep the concept clear. Confidence has made room for it. “There is a little bit of Egyptian influence that’s making its way onto the menu,” he says, quick to add that Gitanes is not becoming an Egyptian restaurant. Whole animal, offal, preservation, pickling: the overlap is natural. Even the name, an old French cigarette brand every uncle in Egypt seemed to smoke, sits on that same crossover.

Wine Throughout the Journey

Bernard Lemoyne, who joined from Atelier a year and a half ago, runs a wine list leaning old world and off the beaten path: ethical, natural and organic producers, Canadian ones included, with the natural focus of Amanda Klein Gunnewiek, who opened the restaurant with them and has since moved on, still in its DNA. Bar manager Cory Contini, another day-one fixture, keeps cocktails in aperitif territory, classic and seasonal, so wine can carry the meal.

Seven years on, Gitanes is a fixture of Ottawa fine dining without a hint of stiffness. Thoughtful, intentional, honest cooking, as Salib puts it, and never theatrical. Come in, relax, and let them serve you.

Written by Marie-Ève Godin
Photography by Kyra Meisenheimer

Updated on September 02, 2026

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