Ottawa bike trip is a food tour on wheels

1.9K

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Ottawa Tourism as part of the #Invite2 campaign. All opinions are my own.

A cycling tour of downtown Ottawa offered by Escape Tours & Rentals offers you the best of both worlds: the chance to sample lots of delicious food and a way to work off some of the associated calories! (Don’t worry; the roughly 15-kilometre ride doesn’t feature any major hills and rolls along at a gentle pace—no Tour de France-style riding required.)

My friend Amy and I joined a three-hour Bike & Bites Tour a few months ago, which Escape has been running in partnership with C’Est Bon Cooking since 2017. (Sorry, I’ve been a bit slow to post about it!)

I’d done other trips with Escape Tours & Rentals before, such as a day-long trip around Cornwall. They’ve all been well organized and entertaining, so I had high hopes for this tour. And I wasn’t disappointed. The trip offered lots of opportunities to chat with chefs and fellow food lovers, yielding insights and fun I wouldn’t have had if I’d tried to do a similar trip on my own.

Ottawa Bike Café: Refreshing iced tea

After being fitted with sturdy rental bikes at Escape’s storefront on Sparks Street, our group of five cyclists started our bike adventure with glasses of Eberry iced tea from the Ottawa Bike Café, which shares space with the bike rental company. You can also get baked goodies, sandwiches, local craft beers and more at the light-filled café—and you don’t have to be a cyclist to go there!

Although I love hot tea, I’m not generally a big iced-tea fan, but the Eberry tea changed my mind. Created with the café’s house-made lemon concentrate, it was topped with Genuine elderflower-hibiscus herbal tea. I think that was the trick for me—using herbal tea instead of black tea. Whatever the reason, it was really refreshing and the perfect way to start our bike tour.

Thus fortified, we set out with guide Nora. The tour turned out to be a pleasing mix of historical tidbits and tasty treats. We stopped first at the National War Memorial in Confederation Square for some background on Canada’s military history.

Next, a short ride to the south, we crossed the Corktown Footbridge across the Rideau Canal. There, we discussed the pros and cons of the “love locks” that adorn the bridge’s metal railings, placed there by happy couples commemorating their romance. (“What are the cons of such a sweet idea?” I hear you asking. Unfortunately, the locks are causing the bridge railings to rust.)

Sula Wok: Tacos (almost) too beautiful to eat

From that point, we travelled to our first food stop, primarily along multi-use paths, bike lanes and quiet side streets.

Run by Xin-Hui Su (Sula) and her husband Andrew Lay, tiny Sula Wok in Old Ottawa East serves up dumplings, noodle bowls, rice bowls and—the dish we tried—spectacular Asian tacos adorned with fresh, edible flowers. Truly, the tacos were tiny works of art that were almost too pretty to eat—but I’m so glad I did. Mine was a wonderful combination of textures (soft shell, crunchy cabbage) and flavours (spicy Sichuan chicken, sweetish sesame peanut sauce, tart pickled veggies). I think it was my favourite dish on the tour (and that’s saying a lot, as you will see).

Hopping back on the bikes, we pedalled beside the canal, over the Flora Footbridge and through Lansdowne Park (with another stop for some historical context) before carefully crossing Bank Street and dropping into our second food destination: Kettleman’s Bagels in the Glebe.

Kettleman’s Bagels: Chewy, carby goodness

This stop reminded me of the value of taking a guided tour. You see, I’ve been to Kettleman’s Bagel Company approximately one million times (might be a slight overestimate). I love Kettleman’s Montreal-style bagels. And yet I didn’t know some of the many cool facts our group learned as we noshed on a wide variety of warm, chewy bagels topped with a variety of Kettleman’s spreads and smoked salmon. (The bagels were cut into small pieces for ease of socially distanced sharing.)

For instance, novice bakers at Kettleman’s need weeks of training before they can confidently slide 18 bagels at a time into the wood-burning oven on a large wooden board, then rotate and flip them during baking to make space for rawer bagels—all while also not accidentally flinging any of the in-progress bagels into the fire.

While we were there, two strong-armed cooks hauled out an enormous blob of dough, ready to be expertly twisted into bagel shapes before being boiled in honey water and baked in the oven (where the fire never, ever goes out—that’s why the store is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year). Check out the video below to see a baker kneading the dough.

Moo Shu Ice Cream: Not your usual 31 flavours

OK, so by this point I’ll admit I was waddling a bit. But there’s no rest for the foodie! We still had two more stops to go.

As Nora led us north and into Centretown, I began to hope that maybe, just maybe, we were going to Moo Shu Ice Cream & Kitchen in Centretown. (Guests aren’t told at the beginning of the trip where they’ll be going, and stops may vary from tour to tour, so the experience is designed to be a bit of a surprise. Sorry for letting some cats out of the bag here!)

And, indeed, Moo Shu is exactly where we went next.

All the flavours were neatly chalked on a sandwich board outside the café. Some of the choices drew puzzled frowns from our group. What was White Rabbit, exactly? Or Hong Kong Milk Tea?

Fortunately, Moo Shu owner Liz Mok was on hand to walk us through the choices, which included several vegan flavours. (White Rabbit, it turned out, is a combination of condensed milk, butter and vanilla meant to evoke a popular Chinese candy, while Hong Kong Milk Tea—the shop’s bestseller—blends milk and several types of black tea.)

Mok grew up in both Hong Kong and Vancouver, and she draws on both Asian and Canadian influences to create her innovative flavours. “It’s a really eclectic mix of flavours,” she explained. “A lot of customers will ask, ‘What kind of ice cream do you make?’ And the answer is, “Kind of whatever I want!”

“We make all of our ice cream from scratch. We use as local as possible ingredients,” she added.

A double-scoop cone was included with our trip and, despite my earlier reference to waddling, I happily ordered one with a scoop of White Rabbit and another of lime leaf and mint ice cream. Was I concerned I wouldn’t be able to finish it? A bit. Did I eat it all? Yep. Every last yummy bite.

3 Tarts: Baked treats to go

On the day we visited, 3 Tarts Bakery—just across Bank Street from Moo Shu—was only open for pre-orders. But that was OK, because our tour organizers had planned ahead. Waiting for each of us was a little box with a personal peach pie tucked inside—the perfect way to keep the tour fun going after the trip ended. Nora suggested that we could share the pie with our families at home.

Yes, I guess I could have, if I were a more generous sort. Fortunately for me, my husband isn’t a big fan of pie. I dug into it the next day and ate every last crumb. But I’d gone for a 15K bike ride the day before, so no worries about my waistline—right?

If you go

To book a Bike & Bites Tour, or one of the company’s many other group and individual bike trips, go to the Escape Tours & Rentals website. There’s definitely still time to squeeze in a bike trip before the snow flies!

And why not invite some friends or family members from out of town to join you? That’s the whole premise of Ottawa Tourism’s #Invite2 campaign. If every household in Ottawa invited two out-of-towners to visit for three nights, we would pump $500 million into the city’s restaurant and hospitality sectors! That would go a long way toward helping those businesses recover from the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic. Plus, you’ll get to see your family and friends, and perhaps explore some cool new-to-you parts of the city! Everyone wins.

Looking for more ideas for things to see and do in Ottawa, Eastern Ontario, the Outaouais and beyond? Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter or pick up a copy of my guidebook, Ottawa Road Trips: Your 100-km Getaway Guide.

As the owner of Ottawa Road Trips, I acknowledge that I live on, work in and travel through the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg Nation. I am grateful to have the opportunity to be present on this land.