It’s the latest outlet in the restaurant group headed by its titular chef, Akira Back. Back has previously won a Michelin star (for a restaurant in Seoul, Korea) and his group now has a couple of dozen dining rooms around the world, most under the same name as in Ottawa.

I was invited to a pre-opening dinner last week and our table of four enjoyed it immensely. Here are a few of the dishes we especially enjoyed, along with Japanese beer and sake (and rather a bit of wine).

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Data Bells was created by Rich Loen and his team at his eccentrically brilliant garage studio, Salon des bananes, on Carling Avenue. Data Bells uses 99 individual bells, each controlled by its own computer motherboard and custom programming. This is a lot of connections to keep operational. (I can’t resist saying it: He’s got 99 bells, but a glitch ain’t one.)

The bells are arranged on curved tables around the room. Floor-to-ceiling black gauze screens all from the busy traffic just outside. The room is in twilight. This all helps to create an intimacy with the installation.

Each bell is unique — some are antique, some decorative, some digital — and each strikes on its own schedule to signify, well, something. Each has a small screen in front of it to signify what it measures. A few examples . . .

An antique brass bell, like might be seen on a hotel front desk, is struck by a silicone hand affixed above it, and its screen says, “New star is born.” It rings 411 times per day and each ring represents 1,000,000 new stars.

A small glass bell rings 15 times per minute, each ring representing 10,000 “female orgasms.”

Other bells measure litres of “blood cleaned by kidneys” (1.2 rings per minute), or “videos viewed on TikTok (seven rings per minute, 100,000 views per ring). There are 99 such measures — newspapers circulated, escalator trips taken, Starbucks coffees sold, and many other imaginative and at times whimsical things. A large silver bell measures “Farts in this room” when filled by 100 people. Each ring is one fart. It rings 2,500 times per day. And you thought the car exhaust outside was the problem. (Another bell measures that car exhaust, see photo below.)

This may all sound cacophonous, like walking into a Pink Floyd album, but it is not. Loen programmed the system to randomly assign some rings to create a backing beat, which forms a solid base that makes the unsynchronized ringing of the other bells strangely melodic. It’s as if the vast, randomness of our planet and universe is all in harmony — which, of course, it is, in the sense that we could not otherwise survive on Earth.

What took all of this to another level was when Loen explained that every time they reset the installation the backing beat is randomly different, and the bell assignments are randomly redistributed, so that each of 99 bells measures a different one of 99 topics each time the system is reset. With infinite combinations, every reset is in effect a wholly new combination of rings and notes and, as Loen put it, “The song we’re hearing now has never been heard before and will never be heard again.”

If you see and hear Data Bells it will be different from when I experienced it, and it will be different from what every other person who sees it at another time will see and hear. What all viewers can share is the magnificence of the thing, the feeling of being surrounded and embraced by the thing. It is thoughtful, uplifting and highly entertaining. Fine art can be, and occasionally is, all of those things.

It’s perhaps too late to see Data Bells at Loen’s studio, which is usually open to the public only by appointment, but the relocated installation will be open to all on Sept. 26, when Nuit Blanche returns to take over the ByWard Market and area for one overnight festival of innovative art.

More on that to follow . . .

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The exhibition, Retro — Popular Music in Canada from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, closes Jan. 18. I visited with a friend recently and felt “the rush of nostalgia” promised by exhibition notes. I saw the identical model of a stereo that I blared in my teenage bedroom, instruments played by (and made for) some of Canada’s most internationally known musicians, and a lot of other sights, sounds, photographs, gear, merch and more.

Here are a few of my favourite things from the show . . .

The sentimental stereo: There’s plenty of cool technology here, from shoulder-straining boom boxes to the Electrohome Circa 711 “Stereo Sound System,” with its “futuristic design (that) echoed public interest in space exploration during the 1960s and ’70s.”

You’ve probably seen this model of stereo in a vintage shop, with its brushed aluminum base and graceful neck leading up to a round platform for the turntable, all of it covered by a smoked black dome of plexiglass. Two little round speakers sit next to this mother ship of sound. The system was designed by Gordon Duern and Keith McQuarrie, according to the website of the Royal Ontario Museum, which has the same system in its personal collection.

Oh, what memories I have of blaring Dance the Night Away (from Van Halen II) and Blitzkrieg Bop (from Ramones) in my bedroom at our cottage. “Pete,” my dad would suggest, “you could probably turn that down a bit.” I would just roll my eyes, because I was 15 and smarter than everyone.

The fantastic/absurd guitar: When I saw Geddy Lee’s doubleneck electric guitar/bass I couldn’t decide if it was best left in the 1970s, when this Rickenbacker 4080 was made. It does seem a bit Spinal Tap. Regardless, the young Geddy was infatuated with Rickenbackers but “could only dream of one day owning one,” he says in his own compendium, Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful Book of Bass.

Not long after Rush signed its first record deal in 1974 he custom ordered his first mammoth axe. This black model (perhaps the same black example among several doublenecks featured in his book) was played on much of Rush’s music in the late 1970s, including the fan-favourite Xanadu. Neatly, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson’s doubleneck Gibson guitar, also played on Xanadu, hangs next to Lee’s Rickenbacker. That’s a lot of necks.

Not that Habs’ jersey: Many costumes are featured in the exhibition, from Anne Murray’s hand-beaded jogging suit, to Mitsou’s black leather “Bye by mon cowboy” outfit, to Céline Dion’s Eurovision dress (with a waist thinner than your neck), to the borrowed wedding dress that k.d. lang wore to accept her first Juno award in 1985.

Speaking of the Junos, at one point while strolling through the displays I thought I saw in the distance that glittery little Montreal Canadiens’ get-up that Shania Twain wore while hosting the Juno Awards in Ottawa in 2003. (If you know the get-up I’m talking about, you know the get-up I’m talking about. Ahem.) I made a beeline to the case in which this particular Habs’ jersey was held and there I discovered, to my considerable dismay, that it was not Twain’s get-up. It was another sequinned Habs’ jersey that had been worn by singer Robert Charlebois in the 1960s.

Once I recovered from my shock, I could admire Charlebois’s jersey as another brilliant homage to his home team.

Retro closes Jan. 18 and it really is a lot of fun. Below is the cheeky warning sign displayed outside the space. See more on the museum’s page by clicking here.

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You may, for whatever reasons, have books to take back to the bookstore to exchange, and every book on this list is worth exchanging for.

The list has 11 works of fiction and four of non-fiction, a proportion that fairly mirrors what my reading was in the past year. They were not necessarily published in 2025 but were encountered by me in 2025, and I recommend all of them, even the one that you will be unlikely to find anywhere but a second-hand bookstore.

In no particular order, here are my recommendations . . .

Fiction

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Non-fiction

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Not all of the new works are necessarily included in the annual show, and as there is no theme to the exhibition beyond having been recently acquired, it is always an eclectic display, with many styles and media.

The official opening is 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 18. It’s after office hours, so enter city hall via the Laurier Avenue entrance. Speeches are at 6 p.m. This is open to the public and admission is free.

Below you can see a few of the new works …

I’m a great admirer of the work of Meryl McMaster. Her works are beautiful and evocative. (We have one on our living room wall.) The city’s latest acquisition of McMaster is a digital video, nipēhtēnān kiteh | We Can Hear Your Heartbeat, 2023, 10:31 min.

Nevisandeh, 2021, digital print on paper, 21 x 28 cm, by Shahla Bahrami.

Fatherly Love, 2024, digital print on paper, 91 x 61 cm, by the artist Oladimeg.

Ăn Nắng (Eating Sunlight), 2023, oil on canvas, 91 x 91 cm, by Martin Vuong.

Réappropriation 2, 2024, oil on canvas, 91 x 76 cm, by Heritier Bilaka. If you’ve been to the Beaverbrook Gallery in Fredericton, N.B. this may remind you of Santiago El Grande, the massive and magnificent painting there by Salvador Dali. Though the subject matter and scale are different, Bilaka’s painting is reminiscent of Dali’s verticality and blue sky background and almost overwhelming sense of dramatic power. (See the Dali painting by clicking here.)

Here’s the complete list of artists whose works were acquired by the City of Ottawa in 2025. Some of the artists will be finding their place in the city collection for the first time.

Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman
Sarah Anderson
Shahla Bahrami
Julie Beauchemin
Heritier Bilaka
Pixie Cram
Tony Fouhse
Jean Christian Furaha Ishimwe
Mark Garland
Martin Golland
James Hewitt
Greg A. Hill
Noah Greyson Holub
Jason Bruges Studio
Jennifer Anne Kelly
Peter Kohut
Don Kwan
Barb Lougheed
Natasha Mazurka
Penny McCann
Meryl McMaster
Lauren Mercer-Smail
Shawn Moreton
Judy Nakagawa
Linh VH Nguyen
Kate Oakley
Ramona Ramlochand
Michael Ricco
Erin Robertson
Sally Lee Sheeks
Jane Spencer
Ruth Steinberg
Erin Szturm
Katherine Takpannie
Amy Thompson
Cara Tierney
Sarah Tompkins
Yvon Villarceau
Martin Vuong
Jian Zhang

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I’m not writing restaurant reviews these days, but I like to give a boost to the chef et al when we have a superlative meal, and Perch inspires many superlatives.

The Missus and I recently spent an evening enjoying the menu of chef/co-owner Justin Champagne-Lagarde, all the many courses of it.

I recently wrote a piece for Edible Ottawa magazine about Champagne-Lagarde’s new cookbook, which looks into how exacting in practice he is, and how committed to using and re-using every thing possible, e.g., the soap in the washrooms is made in-house with espresso grinds (for grit) and used oil.

Click here to read the article in Edible magazine.

Here are photos of our dishes, taken by me, otherwise known as not a professional photographer.

To start we had house-made seed bread with Canadian balsamic (from B.C.) and Canadian sunflower oil. No non-Canadian ingredients to be found at Perch, so, for example, there’s no olive oil (unless there’s been a good olive crop for one producer on Salt Spring Island.

First up (post-bread) was smoked Atlantic sustainable sturgeon from the St. John River with kohlrabi, roasted sturgeon marrow, sturgeon XO, yuzu and sumac. TBH, I’ve not previously enjoyed sturgeon meat but I enjoyed this sturgeon fest, and the kohlrabi was the key for me, I believe, as it balanced the sea-ness of the fish.

Second was a pair of mustard macarons, one with Atlantic Bay scallop mousse and one with beet mousse, and both with ground cherry, borage and violas.

Next was cured and smoked Arctic char with marinated roe and a nori (seaweed) tuile on sake Kasu velouté. That tuile was a delicate and admirable thing; I asked if they had someone whose entire job was to spend the day making those tuiles.

Plate 4 was actually a small and mysterious jar, which when opened revealed snow crab with squash, dulse, mustard and poultry broth. (If you’re counting, that’s two types of seaweed so far — actually three, but more about that later.)

Five was two parts, firstly a succulent brined quail breast in a vidalia onion sauce, and two cured and confit quail leg beignets, one with quail fudge beneath and the other with a treacle BBQ sauce. Yes, I said “quail fudge.” Who knew?

Following that was unagi-sauce marinated black cod with chickpea miso, lacto-koji butter sauce, charred green beans and a little cucumber roll.

Then we moved back to the land for a pair of small crispy cones layered with koi-aged venison, Matane shrimp, garum, crême fraîche and Acadian sturgeon caviar. I’ve never had anything like this before. (I kept saying that all night long.)

Our final savoury course was shio-koji duck breast with sea lettuce, celeriac, pearl onions, maitake mushroom and black current. That ribbon you see meandering through the veg is a single slice of roasted celeriac coated with seaweed-infused sunflower oil and dusted with smoked maitake powder.

We were three hours in, and nearing the end.

And, wait, that’s a fourth showing for seaweed.

We finished with cortland apple, camelina seeds and oil, balsamic, bee pollen, buckwheat and mugolio.

Everything was world class, in my reasonably well-travelled opinion, and everything was Canadian — every drop on every plate, even the one appearance of citrus (which was the yuzu, from Quebec).

As for the third appearance of seaweed, to which I alluded earlier, it was, actually, the first appearance, and it was in a cocktail that was as Maritime-Canadian as a cocktail could be.

The evening began with a Selkie’s Breakfast, which is basically a martini with three ingredients — “oyster shell gin” (made in-house), tomato oil and seaweed vermouth. At first I felt like one of our cats when it tastes something and it’s not quite sure what to think. Now, I’m wishing I had another one on the desk in front of me right now. I am certain it would undo the seasonal angst I feel about the outrageously cold temperature outside.

Perch, btw, is on Preston Street, where Gray Jay used to be. To contact Perch, click here.

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I was pleased to be asked by The National Gallery of Canada to write a short piece about poppies as seen in a select few pieces from the permanent collection. It was published by the gallery on Remembrance Day, and it allowed me to allude to memories of a visit that Jenn and I had made to Commonwealth war cemeteries in France, as we searched for own relatives who had died during the First World War.

Here’s a link if you want to take a few moments and read the piece . . .

Poppies in art . . .

(Photo: Bruno Bobak, A Field of Poppies, c.1960. Pastel on wove paper, 48.2 x 63.6 cm. Purchased 1962. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Estate of Bruno Bobak Photo: NGC)

This influx of immigration has transformed an island food scene that had long been reliably traditional (lots of delicious seafood) but otherwise pedestrian (lots of hot-hamburger sandwiches and fast food). Now there’s a world of cuisine on PEI, and the island is the better for it.

Below are my five favourites from this summer. It pays no heed to location. For scenery you can try Finn in Tracadie, where I had excellent, crispy fried fish, though the chips with it were ordinary. Or try the Chowder House in Point Prim, where The Missus and I had a mostly lovely plate of fried fish with fresh local potatoes and beans, though the fish on both our plates was regrettably overcooked. (Several friends have told me they’ve had the same plate on other days and their fish was nicely cooked.)

There are other delicious dishes I’ve had on the island this summer — a lobster roll at Vicinato served in a soft, pita-like pizza dough comes to mind, as do a small but crispy plate of fried clams during a boozy, late-evening visit to the Claddagh Oyster House, and fresh dumplings at Jane’s Dumplings — but the five below are the ones I’ll want to have again before I leave PEI at summer’s end. I’ve included a couple of phone photos that I snapped between mouthfuls.

In no particular order.

Sumaq

220 Kent St.

Sumaq is perhaps the first Peruvian restaurant in PEI? It opened recently in downtown Charlottetown. I had their Arroz con Pollo, a classic Peruvian dish of sautéd onion, garlic and spices slowly cooked, then boosted in colour and flavour and aroma with fresh cilantro. The chicken is cooked in the stew, then mixed with the green rice and veg and served with what I believe were pickled red onions. The owner told me it’s “a whole lot of Peru in every bite.”

Gallants and Co. Island Food to Go

18 Superior Cres.

It’s a catering company with a small dining room. It’s not a fancy part of town but the food shines.

Whereas po boy sandwiches are, in my experience, too often greasy, Gallants’ fried oyster sandwich is light and fresh. The oysters are shucked to order, lightly dredged in flour and corn starch and fried, then served on a house-made sesame seed bun that — and this is a lesson that too many sandwich shops need to learn — is not so huge that everything inside is overwhelmed.

Easily one of the very best seafood sandwiches I’ve ever had.

Devlin

30 Exhibition Dr.

I’ve been going to Devlin for a couple of years. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, tucked behind a gas station by the race track, but I had a bahn mi that was delicious. (I borrowed this small photo from Devlin’s web page.)

The fresh bun is served with pate, sliced char siu pork & Vietnamese meat ball, with pickled veg and fresh cilantro.

Bahn mi is probably my favourite type of sandwich, as it’s so full of distinct flavours and textures. It’s a real treat.

Azteca

88 Kent St.

Mole is a pillar of Mexican cuisine, more than 4,000 years old. I’ve never been to Mexico but I say without reservation that the mole at Azteca is the best I’ve ever had. The chef’s family recipe is from Michoacán, and passed through generations. It has more than 20 ingredients — including walnuts, almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds and just a little bit of chocolate.

I had the enchilada mole, with chicken tucked into lightly fried tortillas and covered in this deep, dark sauce. Most mole in Canada, at least, is too sweet. Azteca mole is intensely savoury, with a great depth of flavour. I scooped in all my rice to soak up as much of that perfect sauce as possible.

Shaddy’s

144 Great George St.

Shaddys has been around for years, and I’m a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t been until this summer.

The Missus and I went for lunch recently on our 27th wedding anniversary. We had kibbie (spiced minced meat with onions and pine nuts in a shell made from bulgar wheat) tabouli (parsley salad with bulgar, mint, tomato, onion, lemon) and their Beirut hummus, which is fresh, smooth hummus with a layer of well-seasoned ground beef on top. Scoop it up with a piece of pita and marvel at the complexity of such a seemingly simple dish.

It’s also so nice to sit out back in their covered and vined seating area. It’s like a private garden right downtown.

If you want to read more about food down east, follow Edible Maritimes magazine, as I’ll be writing features on Gallants and Sumaq for upcoming issues.

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Harold Edgerton, Bullet (.30 caliber) Piercing an Apple, c. 1964, printed 1977. Dye-transfer print, 24.7 x 30.2 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Harold Edgerton/MIT, courtesy Palm Press, Inc. Photo: NGC

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Please click here to read my spotlight in the NGC magazine.

“Which beer tent do you want to work in?” they asked me.

“The beer tent closest to the main stage,” I replied, not knowing any better.

Suffice to say that when I got home after the show I stepped straight into the shower, beer-soaked clothes still on.

It was July 15, 2009.

32,000 fans

136 decibels.

By Peter Simpson

Can you smell me?

No, and a good thing too. I reek of beer. I feel like tiny cups of beer have been poured into each of my pores. I squelch, squelch, squelch when I walk. And this after one shift in the beer tent at Bluesfest – though it was during the Kiss concert on Wednesday, which may have been the biggest, booziest thing to ever roll over Bluesfest.

Spend a couple of hours in the beer tent at the main stage and you see this as a city of insatiable beer swillers. It’s like the Niagara River of beer flowing over the precipice into the gaping maw of Ottawa, which stops singing between “I wanna rock and roll all nite” and “Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud” just long enough to gulp another brewski.

Or two. Nobody battles through that crowd for one beer, at least not to “Parkway 1,” the main beer tent on the south side, closest to the main stage. With a mass of Kiss fans inexorably pushing back and to the sides of the field, there’s no room for line-ups, so even getting to the beer counter is an expedition, the kind of thing you plan and chart with maps and ropes and a sextant. Why do you go to the beer tent, they asked Sir Edmund Hillary? Because it is there, he replied.

It’s almost as crazy inside the tent. It’s loud, fast, chaotic, crowded and at times slippery. I’m astonished that in four hours of slinging hundreds of beers, I didn’t spill one. Well, not a whole one. A little always sloshes out of the cup as they’re whipped from one table to the other, just enough to get on your hands and arms and legs and hair and clothes, but not enough to yell “spillage!” while chugging the dregs.

Yelling is essential when you’re 400 feet from Kiss, or 300 feet from Gene Simmons’ tongue. Customers yell orders – “Two Canadian! Two Coors Light! Two Rickard’s Red, one Mike’s Hard Lemonade!” Cashiers yell to servers, who yell to runners, who yell to pourers, who yell to the guys in the truck behind the tent whenever a keg is empty. Which is frequently.

Bluesfest can go through 150 kegs on a good night, which I’m told is about 45,000 beers – and that’s not including the cases of cans Creemore lager and Mike’s Hard Lemonade and cups of wine. The empty kegs line up out back like the Great Wall of Beer. You can see them from the space shuttle.

(Here’s a fact: During Great Big Sea's show last year, with thousands of ex-pat Maritimers on site, the beer tents went through 180 kegs. Take that, Kiss.)

This is how it works, in brief, frantic detail: The truck behind the tent is full of kegs, which feed taps on the outside panel of the truck, where pourers fill cup after cup without turning off the taps. I take a shift and feel like I’m protecting the city from a dyke that’ll burst if I miss one drop from that tap. It’s relentless. You can’t drink any. It’s oppressive.

The instant the pourer puts down a beer it’s grabbed by a runner, who moves it to a long table in the middle of the tent that is divided into areas for the various drinks. The routine could be stultifying – grab two beers, spin around, take two steps, put beers on table, repeat ad nauseam – except that you have to stay alert and watch the other runners who constantly cross your path, taking beers to wherever they’re needed most.

On the other side of the central table are the servers, who are assigned one-on-one with the cashiers, who stand at the front table across from the customers. Customers bark their orders to cashiers who relay them to the servers, who turn around, grab the requested number and combination of cups from the central table, spin again and lean around the cashiers to put them in front of the customer. Being a server is even more chaotic than being a runner, because also in the mix at the front table are omniscient managers, burly security guys who pull various people out of the crowd for various reasons, and skimmers – who come by to remove cash from the floats and temporarily stop everything.

At times it’s so crowded that I can’t find a way through to serve customers. That’s why a server needs “the nod,” that almost imperceptible tilt of the head to whichever customer seems most likely to be the next out of the crowd. The customer, pushing and squeezing like a baby walrus struggling to be born, yells . . . something. Maybe it’s an order, but maybe not so you lean closer. “It’s like a war zone out there,” says one bedraggled guy. Another chap pops out of the writhing mass and says, “I hate crowds.” Buddy, welcome to Hell.

Or Heaven, depending on your perspective. One woman is asked for an ID. “I’m 25 years older than you,” she protests to the young cashier, though she’s thrilled at the implication. You can tell by the glow in the Ivory girl complexion she now thinks she has.

I can’t understand at all what one portly 40-ish gent is saying, but I’m thinking that the Kiss shirt he’s wearing fit better when he bought it 20 years ago. A better fit is found on a rather randy young woman in a tiny bikini top who leans over the table to search for her ID. Well, ahem, I can tell you where it isn’t. Bikini woman returns later and stumbles. A cashier asks me if she should serve her another beer. I want to say, “Darlin’, if you’re asking me I say you should give her a whole damned keg,” but it comes out as, “I think you should ask somebody who really works here.”

Another repeat customer is wearing a T-shirt that shows Curious George smoking a doobie. “You look like Harry Potter,” he says to me and my round frames, his buddy and him sharing a suspiciously hearty laugh. Yes, and we’ll see if you get anything from my magic keg. Ha. Ha.

The customers are unfailingly polite, unless they’re cut off. One young buck – the kind with trouble written on his expansive forehead – gets refused. He insists he’s not drunk, then stands back and gives the 300-pound security guy the finger. Both hands. I wait for the bouncer to fly over the table, but he shakes his head sadly and turns away.

Another guy is cut off but I don’t know it, so I hand him two Canadians. To see his look of pure joy melt into despair as the security guard steered me away was heart-breaking, like a TV ad for starving children.

It was late, by then, and as they shut it down I had serious respect for volunteers in the beer tent, who work for nothing but satisfaction and the beer they can squeeze out of their damp clothes when they get home.

Here’s the other thing I learned: don’t wear Kiss make-up in the rain. By 11 p.m., the place was looking like a sad-clown convention.

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Click here to read about Creates’ work on the National Gallery website.

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