Hi, I’m Nico.

I love to eat. I love excellent wine. And I will never say no to a dry gin martini with a twist, because they are awesome and that’s the end of the discussion. This is where I write about all of it: the food I eat, the wine I drink and the restaurants I find on my travels, the good and the bad. Every review starts as a post on @nicosfaw. This is the long version.

Where I come from

I grew up in the business, working alongside my father at Le Moulin de Provence, the French bakery that has anchored Ottawa’s ByWard Market since 1998. (In February 2009 Barack Obama walked in asking for Canadian cookies and left with maple-leaf shortbreads for his daughters. We’ve been selling the “Obama cookie” ever since.)

In our house there was never just “a meal”. Food mattered, and dinners were an occasion. From a young age I was hooked on the whole thing, from the suppliers at the back door to the guests who bless the dining room with their presence every night.

Montreal

When I moved to Montreal, I got my first job there by accident. My sister and I went for dinner at Les Enfants Terribles, the brasserie on the 44th floor of Place Ville Marie and the highest dining room in the city. They got our order wrong, and the maître d’ came out to apologise and admitted they were short-staffed and undertrained. I mentioned my background, he offered me a job as a busboy, and having just moved to the city, I took it and ran. A few months later I was one of the group’s youngest waiters, and about a year after that its youngest supervisor, a run that lasted nearly four years.

At the same time I spent three and a half years as a food runner at Monarque in Old Montreal, the brasserie and dining room Jérémie Bastien opened with his father Richard in 2018, listed in the Michelin Guide and ranked among Canada’s 100 Best. I got to work with some of the legends of the city’s industry: Olivier Visentin running the front of house as restaurant director, Jérémie as chef and owner, Remi Durand as executive chef, and a lunch crew led by Chefs Remi Brunelle and Jonathan Cudorge, among others, who made every service a blast even on the nights we were getting rocked with tickets and heat.

Then a short stint at Dorsia, the grand Old Montreal dining room that opened in 2024, also in the Michelin Guide, with Donald Feugang and Laurent Blanchette as my directors, while the young but extremely talented Miles Pundsack-Poe, who came up through Meadowood in Napa and Ensue in Shenzhen, put on a show of flavour and excellence in the kitchen every night.

All of that while I was still in school.

Now

These days I’m back in the nest in Ottawa, running operations and brand development at Le Moulin de Provence. Needless to say, this industry runs in my blood, and I love it. If I can take you along on my journey through food, share the good and the bad, and help you find a few spots that’ll rock your world, then I’ve done my job.