For Aiāna’s chef and co-owner, Canadian ingredients, global influences and the voices of his team are all part of defining the restaurant’s identity
Stepping inside Aiāna restaurant, a short walk south from Parliament Hill, your attention is drawn to curved banquettes that sit centrally beneath striking light fixtures. Adjacent is a large glass enclosure of wine bottles on one wall and windows onto busy O’Connor Street on the other. Bookending the dining room, an inviting bar near the entrance and chef and co-owner Raghav Chaudhary’s open kitchen toward the back are focal points.
Recipient of a 2026 VineRoutes Vine Award – for Best in Distinction, Aiāna’s design and décor motifs serve to highlight the plates that are presented to diners at their tables, according to Chaudhary.
“We wanted to open up the space here with simplicity and elegance. Guests are immersed in and fully exposed to the food, the service, the experience,” he says.
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The restaurant’s name draws on an assortment of multicultural roots as a manner of matronymic but primarily focusses on the sense of “eternal bloom” embedded in its meaning; Aiāna is a family business in a couple of ways: it has grown from its Chaudhary-family origin in terms of ownership over the course of roughly five years having evolved into a broader, more inclusive kind of extended family that includes the community of its staff, its patron and other Ottawa restaurants.
An ecosystem of dining
Chaudhary’s culinary education began at Ottawa’s Cordon Bleu, following which he headed west for further training at the CIA Napa Valley. It was in that unique and specialized food and wine milieu that dedication to his craft was deepened and solidified, he says. “Ideas and possibilities kind of blew up in my mind – exposure to such a variety of ingredients and the wide range of wines, and just the whole ecosystem of dining. It inspired me to keep pursuing those ideas.”
Aiāna’s design and décor motifs serve to highlight the plates that are presented to diners at their tables.
He embraced a series of stagiaires, including in Sweden and under chef Matthew Kirkley at San Francisco’s Coi as the restaurant achieved three Michelin stars. Over and above the technical training, the connections drove home to him the importance of building a cohesive team and what he describes as “the basis of a philosophy” that is about more than food but the way a kitchen runs, its organization and with everything “having a purpose.”
While 13 apps and mains comprise the à la carte menu, Aiāna continues to develop robust tasting menus: the seven- or eight-course dinners use local ingredients – occasionally hyper-local and foraged from a cook’s backyard – and might feature ultra-premium products like those from the remarkable Acadian Sturgeon and Caviar in St. John.
“We boast of our Canadian terroir and multicultural soul,” Chaudhary says, “and pride ourselves on discipline and organization and fundamentals. Our food is modern, but we start from a traditional base.”
Community connection and “family meals”
Since it began in, and came through, the Covid-19 era, Aiāna has built connections both internally and by reaching out to the surrounding restaurant community. Cooks share their backgrounds in exploring possible dishes, many of which have been captured in the Aiāna cookbook: Gather, Savor, Share: Beloved Staff Meals from the Aiāna Kitchen – a sort of restaurant “biography” – is a collection of staff meals created by the cooks and drawing on their backgrounds, rather than a head chef’s recipes scaled down from the dining room menu.
Chef Raghav Chaudhary of the Ottawa located, Vine Award winning Aiāna.
“It’s the idea of family, community,” says Chaudhary. “This is a family business, and we wanted to translate that with our team as well.” He’ll note that spices are like “the fingerprints” of a culture that shine through in the book’s pages; for instance, chef de cuisine Alan Fang’s staff-meal recipe for braised spicy pork hocks feature bird’s eye chilies, Shaoxing wine and Pi Xian broad-bean paste, among others.
The connection is literally a physical one too: guests enjoying a tasting menu receive a copy printed on heavy-bond paper signed by the staff. The dishes served might include scallops with saffron followed by corn and harissa and “Boeuf and Vadouvan.” Beverages might be a Precious Little Nero d’Avola, a syrah blend by Hecht & Bannier from Languedoc-Roussillon, a Bachelder “Bai Xu” Gamay, or a peach and elderflower shrub to accompany a dish on a smoke-tinged nine-course vegetarian tasting menu.
“The details of Aiāna’s menus, and the food on the plate, are an homage to my mentors and culinary practices and their teachings. We make sure that we are carrying that forward,” according to Chaudhary. But he adds that the focus is also on kitchen staff’s contributions. “We encourage that, and it allows them to put their mark on their cooking. We strive for that inclusiveness.”
Looking toward both a community of robust and energized Ottawa-Gatineau dining venues and those beyond, Aiāna has collaborated with a number of colleagues: Perch chef-owner Justin Champagne-Lagarde, a team from the Montreal Ritz-Carlton, and the 2024 captain of “Culinary Team Canada” Rahil Rathod; there has been a key partnership for Reconciliation events with Chef Anna Cote from Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, an Algonquin First Nation in Quebec. (Scheduled for late November, Aiāna and Toronto-based chef Ron McKinlay will showcase for two consecutive nights what Chaudhary describes as “seasonal local ingredients and classic culinary techniques with modern twists” over a seven-course tasting menu.)
Complete sensory satisfaction
Downtown Ottawa restaurants, perhaps uniquely, were impacted by the work-from-home phenomenon of the civil service spawned by Covid-19; the eventual “RTO” mandate has, arguably, contributed to at least a partial rebound of the industry.
“This has been much better now than before,” says wine director and lead sommelier Robert Lemieux, pointing out that Aiāna opened pretty much at the onset of the pandemic.
Wine Director and Sommelier Robert Lemieux.
“It’s not as if we had a 10-year record of 100 guests every day and then we went to zero. We’ve seen gradual growth and learned to understand the market. It’s kind of symbiotic. People coming downtown definitely helps the traffic. But it is also a case of us changing our philosophy a little bit.”
The restaurant’s presence on the wine scene in Ottawa is marked by its roughly 400 selections in a cellar of 2,100 or so bottles which include both accessible price points and those residing at the $1,000 per-bottle range. Like the kitchen’s impetus to evolving menus thoughtfully, Aiāna’s wine list has expanded steadily from two or three regions and approximately 150 different wines. “It was a significant commitment to sink into inventory and expand a wine list to something now approaching 430,” Lemieux is quick to point out. “We went that route and filled several more regions in order to expand flavours, different styles and different wines of interest.”
That range is anchored by the approach that the customer’s preference is paramount, as varied as those preferences will be, he adds. “If they prefer something very botanic with their meal, they can find that on our list. Some of the wines are enjoyable by themselves because they’re simply just enjoyable by themselves. But the skill is to find a wine that works with the food because the kitchen is creating a dish that is a complete sensory satisfaction in itself. If you add another ingredient, which is wine or a cocktail, that needs to be worthy of what’s on the plate.”
For his part, Chaudhary adds that the wines or cocktails (the latter the purview of mixologist Alexis Landry), should be an extension of the plate and the palate. “We don’t want to just treat it as secondary,” he says.
(Courtesy of Aiāna)
In building and modifying their cellar, Lemieux eschews what he calls “following the trends;” rather, he draws on an exploration of the many wines from across the globe that he says merit a place on a wine list, regardless of style. “Whether it’s orange, it’s organic or whatever the method winemakers want to boast using because it makes their wine more interesting, that’s not the reason. The wine has a flavour, it has a texture, and it brings something to the palate whenever you match it to a food.”
As for Canadian wines, Lemieux wishes there were more access to B.C. and Quebec wines, but Ontario, he says, has good variety that fill gaps when he’s searching for the flavours of France, Italy or Spain. “We can find similar flavours from the same grape varietals grown in Ontario. It doesn’t work for every single one, but a lot of varietals are doing very well in Ontario. And they can challenge, I’m sure, just about any of the same varietals grown elsewhere in the world. Of course, Australian cabernet sauvignon will never be as light as Canadian cabernet sauvignon. But if you compare a good gamay done in Ontario to one that’s from Burgundy, you’re doing really well. If the wine is balanced by itself, it will be enjoyable. There won’t be a clash with the food.”
Historical continuity
Chaudhary summarizes Aiāna’s current status as having now “nailed down our system” and how they want to operate – a step that has allowed the restaurant in all its elements to set themselves up for a more “creative future,” as he describes it. “We want to lean more heavily into our identity. Canadian terroir with a multicultural soul. Focussing on the seasonality, working with ingredients that resonate and make sense to our clientele. And then using nuances from our different cultures.”
Lemieux captures at least some of the essence of the immersion into a complete dining experience that Aiāna strives for by invoking early 20th century French gastronome “Curnonsky,” the nom de plume of Maurice Edmond Sailland whose name is closely associated with the origins of the “motor-tourism” that gave birth to Michelin and the founding of “Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs,” the latter of which Aiāna is a member.
“Whenever you picture a dining room, especially one that’s been appointed like Aiāna, with everything as fine as you can find anywhere, you expect the menu to be outstanding,” says Lemieux citing a sense of continuity with dining history. “There’s a plate, there’s food, and there’s a bottle of wine or Champagne in an ice bucket. As it was a hundred years ago in a fine-dining establishment.”
– Andrew Coppolino is a restaurant reviewer, book author and food columnist advocating for local chefs, restaurants and food businesses
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