10 Best Bars

The List
Articles

OTTAWA'S 10 BEST BARS

Menu

Ottawa Cocktail Trends to Watch in 2026

ottawa 10 best bars of 2025
As Ottawa’s hospitality industry recovers from the pandemic, cocktail programs continue to gain importance. Beyond serving as a creative outlet, they have become a strategic advantage, helping establishments stand out, increase profits, and shape guest choices. Looking ahead to 2026, several patterns are beginning to take shape. None are entirely new, but together they suggest a cocktail culture that is becoming more pragmatic, more integrated into restaurants, and more closely aligned with changing guest habits.

Better Cocktails, Citywide

With food margins under pressure, innovative beverages are expected to play a larger role in restaurants. Research by Technomics on the Canadian F&B industry highlights beverages as a key area of opportunity. They believe that the beverage program will become a driver for visitations rather than its current supporting role. In Ottawa, this is likely to translate into better cocktail (and mocktail) offerings across the restaurant spectrum.

Casual Fine Dining & Strong Cocktail Programs

Many of Ottawa’s most compelling cocktail programs are found within casual fine-dining restaurants rather than standalone bars. Places such as Riviera, Gitanes, Le Poisson Bleu, Sussex & Co., Ember, and Mati are good examples of a model that pairs refined dishes with well-executed cocktails.

This approach broadens the appeal of such restaurants with their ability to attract both diners and drinkers, all the while providing strong beverage margins to restaurateurs. Given its success, I believe this model will inspire future new restaurants.

Café-Bar Hybrids

The café-by-day, cocktail-bar-by-night model is becoming more prominent internationally as coffee shops look to maximize space and extend business hours in a profitable way. In Ottawa, venues such as Cosenza, Drip House Cocktail Bar, Night Oats, and newly-opened Robo Lounge are doing this.

By starting the day with coffee-drinking clientele and transitioning seamlessly into the evening with alcoholic beverages, these spaces cater to a broader group. I believe more cafés will adopt this model in the coming years.

Reduced Business Hours

Across the industry, the late-night bar crawl is losing ground. Guests are going out less frequently and, when they do, they are arriving earlier and leaving sooner. Ottawa bars are beginning to respond by rethinking service hours, prioritizing shorter, more profitable evenings over extended late-night service with diminishing returns. Every month, I see a different bar reducing its business hours by closing earlier on certain days of the week. I expect this trend to continue as bars adapt to the new reality.

Local, sustainable and seasonal ingredients

With the success of restaurants like Perch in Little Italy and La Petite Primerose in Hull, where local, seasonal, and sustainable are core values, we’re seeing more cocktails made with this in mind. Whether that means building cocktails around local ingredients and liquors, or making oleo-sacrums to maximize a fruit’s use before it hits the compost bin, local establishments are increasingly partaking in this shift towards such values.

Japanese Influence

Japanese cuisine in general continues to gain momentum worldwide, and Ottawa is no exception. Sushi is in every grocery store, matcha in every coffee shop. Omakase and hojicha became more available in the nation’s capital in 2025. The success of venues that are expanding Japan’s vast culinary culture locally, like Tomo in the Market and Underground on Gladstone, confirms the city’s interest in more.

In 2026, cocktail ingredients will expand beyond matcha. Sake, umeshu, yuzu, sesame, Japanese whisky, and new flavours like ube and hojicha are likely to appear on menus more frequently. This trend is supported by soon-to-open Japanese establishments such as Koi (replacing Sidecar on Preston) and Akira Back (opening in Château Laurier’s former Wilfrid’s space).

Elsewhere, existing establishments are refining their approach. Datsun on Elgin Street is well-positioned to further refine its Japan-leaning beverage program following recent travels by bartender Zach, while sushi restaurants such as Shinka, Kato, and JFuse have noticeably elevated their cocktail offerings. Taken together, I believe that Japanese restaurants in Ottawa are beginning to view cocktails as a core component.