The Green Door

Following our visit to a vegetarian restaurant in Gatineau, we were tipped off about another, the Green Door, in Main Street. Main Street being a rather oddly named street running roughly north and south between the Rideau Canal and the Rideau River, but cut off by the Canal from downtown Ottawa proper, so it does not look as if it were ever the main street of the last named. Maybe it was the main street of a place called Sandy Hill before it was incorporated into Ottawa. And what about the place on Main Street called the Old Town Hall, about the history of which I can find little beyond it being a heritage building?

However, I digress. We actually started off by getting a No. 9 bus from where we are staying in Lower Town to the Hurdman bus station, from where we struck west, taking our bearings with the newly acquired Suunto compass, over the grassy hillock mentioned yesterday, through the scrubby woodland to the Ridean River Eastern Pathway, an important recreational resource for the city. On the way we heard a lot more birds than we have in weeks, some of them flocking in the tops of trees. We think that at least three sorts of bird were involved. One starlings, apparently introduced to North America amid some controversy from Europe. Two, some sort of small magpie shaped bird, possibly a bluejay. Three was a single hearing of a distinctive squawk, not a starling. Four was a single close up sighting of small magpie shaped bird doing a woodpecker on a tree trunk, possibly a downy woodpecker. Five was a couple of girls from Toronto doing the pathway on a hired, three seater tandem bicycle.

Headed south down the pathway, through the pleasant autumn woods with sightings of the Rideau River until we reached the Main Street bridge, which we crossed and then headed north up Main Street, passing a substantial electrical substation before we made it to the St. Paul University, possibly one of the many operations of the Catholic Church hereabouts. Here we found a craft fair and a farmers' market (this being a Sunday lunchtime) and the Green Door operation opposite.

Did a bit of craft, but passed on the farmers' market, it being more convenient to get vegetables from the Byward Market much nearer home, and so onto the Green Door.

A busy place, with a fairly but not exclusively young clientele. The food was presented in a buffet, with maybe fifty or more dishes to chose from and the deal was that you put what you wanted on a plate which was then weighed at checkout. You paid by weight, an arrangement which seemed admirably simple and fair, but perhaps only works when you are not offering expensive meaty or fishy items. We got a very decent lunch at around $20 for the two of us, topped up by an excellent spiced apple cake to take away.

From where we took the bus home. Luckily the rain which had come on when we were vegging it had more or less stopped by the time we got to Mackenzie King, where we got off to make our way through the Rideau Centre, a large shopping centre under reconstruction, on our way to the Byward Market. I was reminded of the Las Vegas casinos where the interiors are cunningly designed to make it very hard to find the way out.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/two-lunches.html.

Reference 2: http://www.thegreendoor.ca/.