Dinner with DINR: Preservation at Antheia
In my mother's basement, jars of peaches wait out the winter, fruit suspended in syrup, gold against the light. Antheia, hidden behind an unmarked entrance in Ottawa's Chinatown, runs on the same faith: a dark, 14-seat room where years-old fermentations and kitchen trimmings become a menu called Preservation.
By late August the days were still warm but the nights had begun to cool. My mom was already making calls. Her supplier at the Millwoods farmers market would know what BC peaches were doing that year, whether the heat had been right, whether there was enough. She needed crates, plural.
When the peaches arrived, the kitchen reorganized itself around the work. Jars came back from friends and family who'd received them throughout the year, making their pilgrimage home to be refilled. New lids were bought. Everything went into the oven to sanitize. The black enamelware pot, deceptively light, went onto the largest burner.
The peaches went into boiling water briefly, then straight into an ice bath. The skins loosened and slipped off clean. My mom sliced them directly into the jars as she went, filling each one with fruit before topping it with simple syrup. The kitchen was filled with the smell of ripe peaches and heat. On the counter and across the kitchen table, dozens of jars formed their rows, the fruit suspended in syrup, gold against the light.
When it was done, we waited. The sealed jars cooled and one by one they popped, each lid pulling tight with a sound like a soft knock. As though the work was signing off. My mom labeled each jar — the ingredient, the date — and we carried them down to the storage room in the basement. In the months that followed they'd come back up one by one, served with ice cream, given away, or enjoyed on their own.
Antheia is tucked into the rear of a building in Ottawa's Chinatown, the street-facing facade is occupied by a nondescript travel agency and neighboured by not one, not two, but three pho restaurants. The only indication that something more lies beyond is a covered driveway leading to an entrance invisible from the street. A doorbell glows with a single word: press. A floral arrangement reminiscent of a forest floor with moss, branch, and bloom, wraps around the door.
Sabrina meets me at the door and leads me up the stairs. The kitchen appears first — white tile and stainless steel, more laboratory than restaurant. Beside it, the fermentation cellar. Then the corner turns and the dining room opens into something else entirely: dark and close, an open concept bar wrapping around the kitchen, two small tables opposite, fourteen seats in total. The bar sits slightly raised. Its underlit frame casts the room in a low, considered light.
Seated at the bar, I notice the only speakers in the room are anchored behind me. The bass finds me before the music does. I lean in.
The menu is called Preservation. It reflects the reality of putting local ingredients away across a long winter, but it carries another meaning too. Several of the fermentations in the cellar began months, if not years, before Antheia opened its doors — work started in anticipation of a room that didn't yet exist, a kitchen still being imagined. The menu is an acknowledgement of that preparation, that at long last, is now being shared.
A trio of snacks gives way to preserved strawberries, sour cherries, and wild blueberries sitting in a blackened apple broth, folded with a frozen pine nut mousse — summer fruit held in suspension, pulled into something darker and more complex than any of its parts. Then the bread arrives, fermented yeast butter alongside in a perfectly formed puck. The couple seated beside me leaned over with barely contained excitement. They were a course or two ahead and already knew what was coming. What did I think of the bread?
Elsewhere, preservation announces itself more quietly. A honey nut squash, dry-aged and smoked is grated over a dish as if it were a truffle. The gesture is precise and slightly playful, a vegetable treated with the ceremony usually reserved for something that costs considerably more.
The most intriguing course of the evening is the allium — poached onion, charred leek, a schnitzel made from tofu skin, sitting in a sauce that tastes unmistakably like a Mexican mole. It is built entirely from kitchen trimmings including rye bread, black garlic skin, chocolate — ingredients that would otherwise be discarded, transformed into something rich and complex. You work through the dish in layers, flavours shifting as you move through it and into the sauce beneath. It has no clear reference point, but it is the kind of thing that could only exist after countless hours of testing. This is a kitchen that knows exactly what it is doing and has chosen to show you only the outcome. On how she found inspiration for the dish, Briana replies. "Lots of hard work."
The fermented beverage pairing elevates the meal through contrast and harmony in equal measure. Where the kitchen asks for balance — a squash, curry, and yogurt course paired with a tomato and lovage kefir — the pairing pushes back gently, acidity meeting the food's richness. Where it asks for accord, it obliges. A black tea and caramelized milk sorbet with fig leaf arrives alongside an oak and marigold honey liqueur, both sweet, both signaling the transition from savoury courses.
The most intriguing course of the evening: the allium.
Contrast is a defining quality of the evening. The kitchen looks like a laboratory but the food is comforting. The service is warm but never familiar, attentive without intrusion. Textured clay dishes share the spotlight with glass plates and bowls, each beverage arriving in its own distinct carafe. The menu is creative but nothing is superfluous. The fact that Antheia is vegetarian hardly registers.
As the evening draws to a close, Sabrina invites me into the fermentation cellar. It sits behind glass, visible from the dining room, present throughout the meal without announcing itself. Inside, the mood shifts. Where the restaurant is dark and close, the cellar is bright, its shelves organized and colorful. Lettuce stems, green pine cones, kumquats. Each container is marked with a handwritten label and a date.
The oldest label belongs to a mother, a live culture, dated 2019. Years before Antheia opened. Years before the dining room existed, before the bar was built, before anyone sat down to eat. It has been here, quietly doing its work.
Standing in that bright little room I thought of my mother's basement. Not the design, not the ingredients. Just the familiar feeling of work done carefully, in quiet optimism for a future that hadn't yet arrived.
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Antheia | Ottawa | 861 Somerset St W