Sur Lie French Restaurant Ottawa

Very disappointing. Started out Ok with nice welcoming and seat on the patio. However chairs are too low for the tables. Not very comfortable. Waiter was pleasant but later had to apologize for shoddy service. 30 minutes between courses. Excuse was "kitchen is busy". Not my problem,fix it!Crab starter was good and beef filet was perfectly cooked. Halibut was average and dessert was good but ice cream should be served with a spoon and not a fork.Wine by the glass pricey.Will try other places in the Market before returning.

A wonderful addition to the Market continues to delight. We had a variety of dishes and were extremely please with the imaginative presentations, quality and quantity. Will return

We thoroughly enjoyed our dinner at Sur Lie. We came for an anniversary dinner, and it was the right atmosphere - intimate but warm. We had the tasting menu (without wine pairings). The highlight was the beef tenderloin, which was outstanding. Desert was different - carrot cake with ice cream and peanut brittle. Quite good! We found the scallops had a bit of a burnt taste, but weren't bad. Overall, a very very good meal.Service was a highlight. The waiter was helpful, professional, but not pretentious. The patio was quite nice, although a bit noisy (from street noise) at times. The restaurant is definitely expensive, but I think it was worthwhile.

The Bad : Lamb loin and seared scallops were from the beginning luke warm and became quickly cold .We do not enjoy cold food. We had 2 espresso at $3.00 each.Absolutely horrible,its a good thing that your restaurant is not located in France or Italy .Your restaurant would be totally vacant because of your cold food and very bad coffee.The Good : nice bottle of white Italian wine for $42.To conclude there are too many restaurants closing in Ottawa, avoid this and do something about serving cold food and horrible coffee.Good luck

My wife and I were looking for a nice Saturday evening restaurant and were happy to get a same day reservation for the Sur Lie on Murray Street. The restaurant is in one of the old houses there with a back yard patio, which we didn't see, and has a long bar within a nicely decorated main room. There were only two other diners there and so we received prompt, very welcoming service from our young waitress. We decided on only one appetizer, which was a favourite of ours, a fois gras terrine which proved to be well presented, well prepared and very nicely flavoured. It was this which set our expectations for the two mains we selected: local gunea fowl and Ontario lamb tenderloin. Our first reaction when these arrived was to smile, in my wife's case muffled laughter: on our somewhat oversized plates there was what looked like a sampling of the main dishes. The lamb tenderloin proved to be a few fingerlike pieces surrounded by small daubs of accompaniment and a few small broccoli florets. The guinea fowl, described in the menu as roasted breast with fondant potato, seared fois gras and spinach, similarly comprised some cubes of meat, perhaps half an average sized potato, and a few small broccoli florets along with some teaspoon sized accompaniments and daubs of colour. The carrot cake desert was presented in similar fashion: a few pieces along with a teaspoon of fondant and some flavourings. To be fair all dishes were very well cooked, flavour balanced, attractively presented and delivered by a very nice, helpful server. Our point of dissatisfaction is obvious and raises the question as to why the owners present such inadequate portions as if they somehow equate to fine dining. There is a world of difference between adventurous, exotic sounding menus and small town pretentiousness.....geared to the bottom line rather than reasonable customer expectations and satisfaction. We are familiar with all dishes we had here and also with other fine dining restaurants in Ottawa as well as most of the major cities in North America. The notion of portion size here is, let us say, unusual amongst them.As ever, I didn't read the reviews until we returned home and amongst the majority salutary ones were several negatives that high lighted these very issues.Although we were somewhat amused when our dishes arrived we were not so much when looking at the bill: one appetizer, one desert, two mains and a cocktail came to $124.00 On leaving we noticed that all other restaurants on Murray were full, one with a line up, whereas we left our two solitary diners in what now looked like a cavernous and empty main room. Enough said.