Updated: July 13th 2026
Published: April 27th, 2025
How architecture, hospitality and an extraordinary beverage program transformed a former bank into Ottawa's benchmark restaurant bar
Riviera
62 Sparks Street, Ottawa
Sunday – Wednesday 5 PM – 10 PM
Thursday – Saturday 5 PM – 11 PM
When Matthew Carmichael and Jordan Holley opened on Sparks Street in 2016, they weren’t trying to launch another ambitious Ottawa restaurant. They wanted to build a room with stunning architecture, and where the bar and the kitchen mattered equally. Almost ten years on, the place has become one of the most decorated restaurants in the country. In 2025, Canada’s 100 Best named it Canada’s Best Restaurant Bar. It’s also the yardstick every other Ottawa restaurant bar gets measured against. What keeps Riviera at the top isn’t one thing. It’s the way the building, the food, the drinks, and the front-of-house all happen to line up.
The space at Riviera, an 1869 former bank and jewellery store on Sparks Street, still shows its age in all the right places. Twenty-five-foot ceilings, marble, travertine, Corinthian pilasters, the kind of room proportions you just don’t build anymore. The Ottawa firm Linebox, who handled the renovation, made the sensible call to leave most of it alone.
The gesture that defines the room is an 80-foot brass bar that runs along the line where the bank tellers used to stand. Banker’s lamps nod to the building’s old life. Custom leather banquettes soften the marble and brass. Even the bar stools carry nostalgia: they’re modelled on the cushioned seats of the 1963-1969 Buick Riviera.
On the main floor, in what used to be the bank manager’s office, there’s a semi-private dining room for twelve. Down in the old vault, there’s another private room, also for twelve. Both still feel like they’re part of a bank, which somehow makes them better.
Master Bartender Stephen Flood has been behind that bar long enough that he’s become part of the architecture. Before Riviera, he built his name in Ottawa through The Black Tomato and El Camino. His approach hasn’t changed much: he talks about bartending as a way to make someone’s evening a little better. That sounds like a line, but it shows up in the work. You notice it within a minute of sitting down at his bar. The greeting is warm. The recommendations sound personalized, not scripted.
I’ve been coming here on and off since 2018, and the service has held up remarkably well over that stretch. Coats get checked. Water glasses fill themselves. Plates vanish at the right moment. The team moves with the kind of calm you’d expect in a serious dining room.
Flood’s favourite drink is the Negroni, which makes sense if you’ve spent any time at the bar. He likes it because it’s a sophisticated, mature balance of bold flavors and it allows him to passionately guide new guests into a world of refined taste.
Riviera’s menu splits into five sections. House originals sit under a section called The Great Flood, an obvious Stephen Flood reference. Seasonal drinks rotate through the year. Classics and Neo-Classics get proper space. There’s also a Free-Spirited section with well-crafted alcohol-free options.
The Heat Is On: smoky and spicy, well-balanced, slightly sweet and tart, with refreshing cucumber notes.
The Classics & Neo-Classics section lists the usual suspects: Paper Plane, Naked & Famous, Penicillin, Champs-Élysées, Last Word, Hemingway Daiquiri, Toronto, Boulevardier, Pisco Sour, Canadian Old Fashioned.
Most meaningful is the Negroni section. Rather than one house Negroni with a twist, there’s an entire menu of them. The Summer Wind, Sea of Love, Electric Avenue, Red Right Hand, a White Negroni called The Unicorn. Each one pushes a different angle on bitterness, citrus, herbal notes, or aromatized wine. It’s not a gimmick. It’s a long, serious conversation about one of the most influential cocktails ever built.
The Summer Wind: One of the ten Negroni variations from the menu. This one is for the uninitiated or for those who don’t fare well with the intense bitterness of Campari. This cocktail is bitter, sweet, spirit-forward, and smooth, with Aperol softening Campari’s intensity. It is served in a heavy tumbler over clear ice and garnished with a grapefruit wedge.
Look beyond the brass bar, and you’ll find over 350 spirits and liqueurs, which puts Riviera in a league of its own within this city. The depth is in the categories that actually build a great stirred cocktail or aperitif. Gin, vermouth, amari and herbal liqueurs make up two-thirds of the backbar. That volume reflects a Negroni bar that happens to have more depth than most dedicated cocktail bars. The whisky selection is also dream menu for an Islay enthusiast.
Cocktails tend to grab the headlines here, but Advanced Sommelier Connor Gallagher‘s wine list deserves equal respect. It leans Old World (France, Italy, Spain) with sensible representation from Canada and a few other regions worth watching. The by-the-glass list is unusually generous: Champagne, sparkling, orange wine, and a thoughtful spread of reds and whites chosen to work with whatever Jordan Holley’s kitchen is doing. There are large formats for the groups who show up to celebrate, do business, or just stay late.
Jordan Holley is still running the kitchen, and the menu has evolved without losing its original argument. It reads as refined New Canadian cooking with European bones. Seasonal vegetables, careful seafood, fresh pasta, well-executed steaks. Nothing trying too hard. The raw bar gets serious attention. The pastas are handmade. Mains tend to be composed.
What the kitchen doesn’t do is compete with the bar for attention. The two sides of the house actually talk to each other. A Negroni leads naturally into oysters. A bitter amaro cleans up after a rich pasta. A Burgundy with a piece of dry-aged beef pairs well.
Oysters With Mignonette, Horseradish & Lemon: Oysters are sourced from two different locations. They each have different tastes. They are fresh, zesty, and light.
Tuna Crudo: This dish offered a delicate tuna flavour with a pleasant heat from the chilli, good crunch, and slight acidity. The argan oil leaves a lingering finish.
Awards don’t usually hold for a decade. This one has. What’s kept Riviera at the top is that the original idea, what they were trying to build in 2016, still drives every decision. The architecture keeps the bar at the centre. The kitchen treats the drinks as a partner. The beverage program respects both invention and tradition. And the hospitality, after all these years, is still as good as anything in the city.
When Canada’s 100 Best handed them Canada’s Best Restaurant Bar in 2025, the team quoted Flood as “the optimistic, timeless soul of our bar program.” Hard to argue with that.
Riviera is an excellent restaurant with a serious cocktail program. It’s also one of those rare rooms where the bar could stand on its own, the kitchen could stand on its own, and yet you’d miss something if you tried to experience either without the other.
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