My Recommendations

The Byward Market in Ottawa is the obvious tourist hot spot in the city, boasting the latest and arguably, greatest restaurants. Stella Osteria has been around for a few years, affiliated with Luxe Bistro and the Blue Cactus. Rated highly by the local paper and magazines, we had high hopes. The hostess at the front was wonderful and attentive - if she was the standard for their service, the evening would have been wonderful. Sadly, she wasn't. From Wikipedia, "Osteria" in Italian literally means a place where the owner "hosts" people. Food is generally regional and prepared with local recipes, and often served at shared tables. We've been to Mozza Osteria in Los Angeles - that felt exactly as described above. I'm not sure if the owners of Stella truly have that in mind, because the experience didn't hit that tone at all. Food First off, the portions are very large. It would be enough to only have three appetizers for a table of four. It was i...

Company: Wine Garden (West) - RECOMMENDED The Wine Garden is a wine-making company, similar yet different to make-your-own-wine businesses but with a twist. Most wine making companies offer juices or concentrates, where you have to purchase large quantities of juice and then wait (usually longer than 2 months) to receive your wine. The end result? It's up in the air. The Wine Garden is different. Yes, you still have to pre-order the wine but what is available is a wide variety of taste and price. Most of the juices offered all come from the Maipo valley in Chile, where their provider provides grapes directly from a first-press vineyard. While there are third-press juices like many companies, the treat is in the Wine Garden's first-press grapes, frozen grapes brought up right from various regions. Matt and Kevin, the owners, take special attention in the pressing and fermentation process. These first-press grapes can take upwards of six months but are stored in beautiful Hungar...

Company: Around the Home Handyman - Norm (Norman) Richter - NOT RECOMMENDED This company is NOT Recommended. Here is a link to their BBB listing. Note that the Around the Home BBB rating is not an "A" as noted on other sites. (something I don't usually do here is comment on individual businesses or go on non-technical tirades. This is an exception to the rule - so if you're looking for tech comments, please ignore). On a personal note, I can appreciate people can't work for free these days. It's tough - but any company who offers a one-year guarantee for their work should not be charging for problems with existing work (new work, yes - but work that they originally did? Absolutely not). We have used Around the Home handyman services, owned by Norm Richter (also listed as Norman Richter) for two separate pieces of work: roofing and flooring. The roofing job was done extremely well and on budget. After the flooring work, we will never use them again. T...