The Ottawa Citizen recently joined the discussion about the local bar scene and how the region has consistently been underrepresented by Canada's 100 Best.
When Canada’s 100 Best released their 2024 list of best bars, Ottawa was nowhere to be found. With another brush stroke painting us as a lame city, we realized it was time to take the uplifting of this city’s cocktail bar scene into our own hands. No exterior force is going to uplift Ottawa’s reputation. Thus was published Ottawa’s official 10 Best Bars list of 2024 to highlight some of our city’s best watering holes.
About a month after the release of Canada’s Best Bars list of 2024, the Ottawa Citizen weighted in on the situation with an article titled “Not one Ottawa bar made the 2024 list of best bars in Canada. This bartender wants to fix that“. We’re overjoyed to see Lynn Saxberg from the Ottawa Citizen addressing the issue of the lack of recognition that Ottawa’s bar scene receives.
Having important local media platforms such as the Ottawa Citizen discussing local restaurants and bars is a key component for our bar scene to gain attention locally and beyond.
It pinches our hearts when we see that Ottawa doesn’t fare well in terms of reputation and recognition for its growing bar scene. In 2024, none of Ottawa’s bars were recognized on Canada’s list of 50 best bars. Hopefully, the reach of articles by the Ottawa Citizen will help to change that.
The article concludes by saying that Peter Hum will also produce a list of Ottawa’s Best Bars. Perhaps a “Peter Hum’s Best Sips” . We predict that this list will be quite similar to ours, although not identical. Either way, this will help to further push a new narrative about Ottawa’s bar scene, one of a city that’s not just pubs and nightclubs.
We must remember that even if Ottawa gets more recognition on the national scene, we’ll probably never see 10 bars on any national list.
Platforms such as 10 Best Bars are unique in that way: we are exclusively dedicated to the Ottawa area. We can go more in-depth in our research. We can thus produce a quality list of 10 best bars. Also, we use different criteria for who can make our list. For example: a great restaurant with a great bar staff and cocktail program can be featured on our list, even though it would never be featured a national bar list.
In the coming months, we will continue to release the results of our bar-hunting with a list of 20 “on the radar” bars and 5 “across the bridge” bars.
We look forward to reading more of the Ottawa Citizen’s take on this subject.