The Room
Riviera opened in 2015 in a converted bank building on Sparks Street. The dining room is enormous — 240 seats across the main floor, the bar and a private dining room — with original marble columns, vaulted ceiling and a long open kitchen that runs the length of the back wall. Matt Carmichael runs the kitchen as a modern brasserie with French-Canadian sensibility.
Service is brigade-Canadian, well-paced and fluent in the corporate-dinner rhythm.
The Food
The kitchen runs a serious modern-brasserie programme — Quebec foie gras, prairie pulses, Ontario pork, BC seafood — through a French-classical lens. The cocktail programme is one of Ottawa's most-photographed.
Best Occasion Fit
Close a Deal: Riviera is the Ottawa deal dinner for the agreement that wants the corporate-Sparks-Street register. The architecture communicates seriously.
Birthday: Birthdays at Riviera are warm-and-grand — the architecture is the photograph; the cocktail programme is the conversation.
Impress Clients: International visitors recognise the converted-bank architecture without translation. The brasserie format translates Ottawa correctly.