Cafe My House

Amazing food, very creative with local ingredients. Great place for a date. Lots of variety and always changing menu. Offers brunch :)

The food here is good, but the portions are tiny and you are often expected to share them ("sharing plates"). The dessert portion is about 2 bites worth. Most mains are vegetables with no protein or starches to fill you up. It's a shame as Ottawa definitely needs all the vegan restaurants it can get, but I don't think we'll be back as we always leave still hungry.

Very creative and delicious vegan plant based food. Their brunch is the only reason I get out of bed some weekends. I highly recommend to any vegan, veg or omni foodies!

Was at the old location on Bank st. where this place was owned by an Asian family.. but it has since moved and might be under new ownership. It's now in the trendy, overpriced Hintonburg area and has changed completely. Our Valentine's day dinner there was a complete disaster. We had not been notified upon making reservations a month prior that it would not be the regular menu, but a special 4 course menu for around $45 per person. Yet we both had to share one tiny plate of food for each course, not one plate each for each course. They served everyone in the restaurant at the same time (again, without telling us this plan) so we missed our reservations at the theatre and ended up still a bit hungry with a huge bill. I don't like restaurants being so sly.
The food tastes really good, but really, only go if you are well off ($$$) and can afford tiny portions of pretentious food and are there for the taste factor alone - not if you're hungry. It's a darling little place, but not that comfortable and not good for kids.

Haven't been to their new location yet, but visited their old location on Bank Street many times for dinner and brunch. The vegan tempeh cheeseburger with miso gravy is to die for! The only draw back of the old location was that you could not get a glass of wine with dinner, but they appear to have fixed that limitation in the new location :-)

We have had some great pizza (now available on Sundays only) from this restaurant, but our last experience was a complete disaster. It was a special occasion (birthday), which just landed the day before a major endurance event we were competing in. We had made reservations and they had asked about food allergies, etc on the phone, then asked again when we were ordering. A little frustrating waste of time, but that was just the beginning.
Beware: the tacos are not tacos, they are leaf wraps!

If you are doing an endurance event, you need to carb load. Beware: There is nothing on this menu that satisfied either of us. We paid for our two appetizer-sized meals and went to another restaurant to meet our needs (at half the price).
I'd been there before for brunch, and a light breakfast is fine, but if you are serving bird-sized portions for dinner, don't expect people - even die-hard vegans - to come back. Much less omnivores.
Sorry, but this restaurant has to do a lot more to meet an acceptable standard. I can't believe they are still in business. The only thing I'll ever get from these guys is pizza (and they are small, compared to Vegan Rapide in Montreal).
Not to mention, the bill was done wrong, and when I asked for it to be corrected, I got a more expensive bill (from a different table!!). It did get sorted in the end, but it took a long time to get the bill corrected due to understaffing on that Friday night.

For our 29th wedding anniversary my husband and I went to Cafe My House in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. We had the shared wine pairing dinner. 5 amazing courses paired with 5 different wines served by a knowledgable sever who described each dish and gave the background of each wine. This was the best meal I have ever had.. my favourite course was the raw zucchini lasange. It is small in classic cafe style, but it was always full during our Thursday night meal. This is obviously a cafe that is well known and well liked. Everything on the menu is vegan offering both cooked and raw options. Looking forward to our next visit!
Updated from previous review on Saturday August 29, 2015

Updated from previous review on Saturday August 29, 2015

Updated from previous review on Saturday August 29, 2015

I particularly love Tofurky and the toast was exciting.

I love Café My House. Great cocktails and shakes. Amazing & creative food. The garden in the summer is also really great for an afternoon lazy brunch. Perhaps my favourite veg resto in Ottawa at the present time.

I used to go to Cafe My House a lot before they moved across town; I haven't been to the new location yet. With that caveat, I've almost always enjoyed the food there. Walnut "cheese" burger with kale was probably my fav. Staff have always been friendly and helpful. Delicious desserts.

I loved visiting Café My House. I am a vegan, and it is hard to find fully vegan restaurants to dine at, especially in Ottawa. I had the tempeh cheeseburger on a waffle (they were out of sourdough buns when I went) and it was delicious! Their tropical smoothie was very good too. My grandma had their omega 3 flax waffles and she loved it as well. Our server was very friendly and welcoming. I just wish this restaurant wasn't so hard to get to. There isn't many food choices to choose from on the lunch menu, though. It is a bit more expensive than other places. The restaurant is very cozy and quaint.

Food is okay, but scarce. Not good value.
Condescending service, it is her house and for
sure your questions aren't welcome.
Okay if you don't mind leaving hungry, and with
socially invoked stomach pain.

I once was a regular at this establishment, but after a few incidents of rude service, not producing real bills, and at one of their special events we were not even served the food until over an hour of waiting, and in one case one member of our group did not receive any food so we had to share ours, We decided to never go back.

Well we decided to try the Valentines dinner at $50 a person, expecting a special Valentine meal sure to delight. We were WRONG again.

There was absolutely nothing special about the meal, kale salad, vegetable salad, eggplant stack, and some other little side along with the smallest dessert cheesecake we have ever seen. I do not consider that a 4 course dinner as promised.

So what was supposed to be a wondrous meal, turned out to be absolutely nothing special at all at a very high price!

We should have stuck with our 'gut" and went to Zen Kitchen, instead of giving Cafe My House one more chance of redemption.

Lesson learned, we will never go there again nor recommend to anyone.

Beautiful restaurant, gourmet all-vegan food. Great experience everytime I go.

I can usually be quite harsh, but this resto was great. I had the beach bowl which I really liked. Each component was nice individually and worked really well altogether: Although it had brown rice instead of the advertised quinoa. it had (not spicy) kimchi, coconut bacon, avocado, carrot noodles, lemony kale and a ?almond dressing.... SO GOOD!!!

My omni friends liked their meals, including their first intro to tempeh.

PS: This resto was nearly entirely vegan. I just spotted eggs on their brunch menu. Did not see any meat.

My wife and friends have been to this Vegan Restaurant about ten times in the last year, the food has always been excellent, from the starters to mains to the delicious desserts. Had a chance to eat in some Vegan restaurants in New York City, and this restaurant compares very favourably to them as well. We will be back again very soon.

I really want to love and support this restaurant but I'm luke-warm.
I've been there for brunch and lunch.
I find it quite expensive for what you get. It's alright but not fabulous.
I did not like that Tofurkey sausages are used. I can cook those at home and honestly, I can cook them better than they were cooked.
I think there are better options in Ottawa.

One of the only places in town where tempeh is actually on the menu. Their tempeh burrito, tempeh cheeseburger (daiya cheese!) and tempeh benedict are all amazing.

I've been coming here for over a year an a half with friends and family as groups from 2 to 12. The staff is helpful and smiling. Weekends can be busy so reservations are smart.

Overall, the menu is diverse and although it also has some meat and egg options, most of my carnivorous friends who have been there usually go for the spaghetti or the curry and always leave satisfied.

I thought My House was a nice addition to the Ottawa scene. This is one of the places that makes life difficult for Happy Cow, as it is defined as a "meat serving" place, but unlike 90% of the places that normally fall into that category, the meat dishes are the rarity here. I am vegan, and had the pick of the menu, with only a few dishes including fish or meat of some sort. We ordered a few things, and all were very good. I enjoyed the French Toast, and the mini burgers were both cute and yummy. Good shakes as well. I think this place was very good, and I'd come again. It is deserving of four stars, though I continue to hate the Happy Cow policy that limits meat serving restos to four cows. In my view, the quality of the place and the food served should be the priority here. That said, in this case, four is fair.

Cafe My House is a reflection of the people who run it (one is a vegan), and its location (just on the fringe of central Ottawa, not in an overly vegan area). It is mostly vegan, and totally delicious. It's a nice sit down place; unpretentious, comfortable, and with a hugely varying menu. They specialize in vegan brunch, but also have some amazing entrees.

Listing it as veg-friendly, while true, since it does serve some meat, almost does it a disservice. I have been to "vegetarian" restaurants so heavy on the eggs and cheese that a vegan has few options. A vegetarian restaurant that relies on dairy and eggs is no better to a vegan than a completely omnivorous restaurant.

At Cafe My House, vegan is the norm, and the majority. See for yourself: http://www.veganlifeatmyhouse.com/p/menu.html

I have given it four stars only because that's the maximum allowed for non-veg restaurants. I have never tried anything I didn't like. Personal favorites include the Healthy Me Breakfast, Macrobiotic Mini Burgers, and Creamy Soba Noodles. My partner's favorite is the Veg Bi-Bim-Bop.

National Capital Vegetarian Association (www.ncva.ca) members get a 10 per cent discount here.

When I go to restaurants I usually judge by whether I could make this same meal, and better at home.
Unfortunately, I would've been much better off cooking at home rather than here.
I ordered the vegan breakfast (grilled veggies, one piece of rye toast and sausages) and potatoes on the side.
The potatoes were well cooked, but they had absolutely no seasoning.
The grilled veggies on the plate were also cooked well, although the beans tasted funny, almost like lighter fluid, which was strange and I'm probably totally off here.
The toast was, well, a piece of toast. Nothing exciting there.
The sausages are what truly disappointed me. My breakfast came with two big Tofurky sausages. I recognized them, but having only tried the Italian flavour previously, I can't say for certain whether these were the beer brat or kielbasa flavour, but they tasted kinda like weird hot dogs.
They were very unevenly cooked, barely grilled except for one side. The sauce served underneath the sausages was delicious (especially to dip my unseasoned potatoes in) but didn't complement the sausage one bit.
And two sausages is a giant waste of food (and almost 600 calories!) I can't imagine anybody eating this entire meal.
Do the owners of this restaurant know that Tofurky also makes a breakfast style sausage? That would be a huge improvement.
Serving packaged food that I can buy at any grocery store really bugs me.
I was with my mother, who ordered the vegetable-leek soup that they had that day, which tasted quite salty and seemed to have at least part of a mix in it (contained those small dehydrated red pepper flakes, for example)

The cafe itself is lovely, staff was polite, and the presentation of the meals was gorgeous without being pretentious. But the food itself was truly disappointing, and completely overpriced. I won't be returning, at least not unless there's a menu change.

What's better than to be able to eat with all your friends at the same table and not have to worry about who can eat what? Cafe My House has mastered the concept by having options that are vegan, raw, vegetarian, and even omnivorous! They're food is delicious and very decently priced, it's also organic and local (whenever possible) which is a huge bonus!
I would have given it five stars but it's not an option for non-100% veggie restaurants.

Ever have to find a place for that you can go with the die-hard "if it ain't got meat, it ain't dinner" person, but want to hold to your veg ethics? You know you have.

This is the place. I've taken everyone here from the 'I only eat steak' to the 'high raw' diners and they've all found something they've loved. Staff is attentive, fast and, here's a special treat, playfully intelligent.