A refined dining experience that transforms into an upscale nightclub as the night progresses.
Med Supper Club
225 Marché Way
Open Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday from 5 PM to 11 PM; Friday & Saturday from 5 PM to 2 AM
Closed Monday
At five o’clock on a Saturday, Med Supper Club is the kind of room Ottawa loves: lights low, music down, staff topping up water without being asked. The twenty stools at the central bar sit empty during dinner. The dining room is in charge.
By eleven, that bar is full. The DJ is up. The bouncers have appeared outside. The dress code tightened at some point, and nobody is ordering an espresso anymore. The transformation is real, and the first time I saw it I stood near the door for a second trying to figure out whether I’d walked back into the same place.
Med opened at the end of 2023. Abbis Mahmoud, of the Dreammind Group, told the Ottawa Citizen’s restaurant critic Peter Hum that he was trying to build the kind of room his customers usually have to fly to Miami, New York, or London to find. Thinking about that ahead of my first visit made me wary. Audacity in this price category is easy to fake. The room itself doesn’t feel faked.
The styling leans on marble, brass, plush seating, and a huge artificial olive tree. Tables wear marble tops. Each one has a lamp that carves out a private radius of warm light. The bar sits at the centre of the room, and the bottles displayed above do double-duty as scenery.
Med’s menu is Mediterranean with a strong lean toward seafood. Our server marked this out early. The seafood was their strongest suit, she said. I took the advice, venturing only slightly beyond that category.
The Colossal Shrimp Cocktail, $28, offered five shrimp, properly cooked, with cocktail sauce and a charred half-lemon, the shrimp themselves shrimp-y flavoured, tender and not rubbery.
The Chargrilled Octopus, $27, was great as well. It was well-seasoned, and the exterior was partially blackened from the grill, adding a pleasant bitterness to some bites. The texture had been handled with some care, not chewy at all. Personally, I believe that it could have done with a lemon wedge for acidity.
The Canadian Salmon, $32, served with gnocchi and broccolini, was excellent. Crisp skin, tender but cooked flesh, and properly seasoned.
The eight-ounce striploin, $44, arrived medium rare. No regrets.
The cocktail menu consists of five signatures, four classics, and a small selection of zero-proof drinks. The list isn’t changing fast enough for Med to play in the same league as Bar Ocelli, Jackalope, or Stolen Goods. That isn’t a criticism. Those bars are cocktail bars; Med isn’t, and pretending otherwise would be a mistake.
The Med’s Martini, $20, is the signature, served in a ribbed Nick & Nora glass. Made with Hendrick’s, an olive oil and oyster-infused dry vermouth, and a generous amount of olive juice. The menu describes an oyster garnished with caviar; mine arrived ungarnished. It was, in plain terms, a high-end filthy martini. The drink is good in a narrow way: very smooth, very briny, fun to try once. Our server warned me, before I ordered, that it was “extremely dirty” and might not be to my taste. She was right. If you already like a filthy martini, you’ll like this; if you don’t, heed that advice.
The Kiwi Smash, $17, was lower-key and I preferred it. No. 3 gin, Chartreuse, kiwi syrup, lime, basil. A balanced sour, soft finish, properly diluted. Not memorable. Not bad, either. Think of a gin sour served on the rocks.
Med’s bar program is competent enough but it isn’t the reason to come. What I found most surprising was that at dinner, the bar area is inactive, guest-wise. Twenty beautiful stools in the centre of the room and not a soul on them. I initially read that as a design failure. It’s actually the design doing what it was supposed to do.
Before eleven, the bar is a production area. After eleven, the seats fill, the room’s centre of gravity shifts and the same room you’ve just finished dinner in becomes a different place to be. The DJ starts. The bouncers are at the doors. By midnight you’d swear you’d crossed a velvet rope into another venue, except you haven’t moved. That duality is what a “supper club” is supposed to be.
The timing of the handoff is well thought out. Dinner has its own self-contained arc. Guests who want a quiet meal have time to finish and leave before the room changes.
Med serves a specific Ottawa audience that few other venues are competing for: people in their thirties to early fifties who have aged out of the 19-plus club night but still want to go out. Similar loca venues include perhaps Alora, Rabbit Hole, Copper Spirits & Sights.
A bachelor’s party can start with a seafood tower and Champagne at 8 PM and finish at the bar or in a booth at one in the morning. There aren’t many options for that in Ottawa. The next-door affiliate, Delysée Luxury Dessert Bar, is a great after-dinner option: elaborate mousse cakes, trompe-l’oeil pieces, macarons, Biscoff & Nutella lattes. You can do dinner at Med, dessert at Delysée, then go back to Med for to party, all without putting on a coat.
So where does Med fit in Ottawa’s hospitality scene?
If you’re looking for Ottawa’s best cocktail bar, this isn’t the place for you. The cocktail program is conservative. The drinks are designed to be accessible. Ottawa has many places that excel at innovative and seasonal cocktails.
Med’s proposition is bigger than the bar. It’s the kind of place to take a group of friends whose idea of a good Saturday is a fancy meal and bottle service. The kind of place you go so you don’t have to choose between a nice dinner and going out to party. Milestone birthdays with champagne. Bachelor Parties with tequila shots. Group dinners. Wedding receptions. Evenings where nobody has to call a cab at eleven. It’s one of the best options I’ve found in Ottawa for these scenarios.
The most likely reason I’d go back is for a celebration. Not a typical Friday night, but instead for the next big moment.