Ottawa restaurantstatistics: howmany, how rated,where

As of 2026-10-29, fromOttawa counts 2,463 restaurants with at least 10 Google reviews in Ottawa and Gatineau. Their average Google rating is 4.28. On our ranked list, Masakali Indian Cuisine in Stittsville has the most reviews. All of these counts come from our quarterly Google Maps grid pull.

The official figure is higher. Statistics Canada counted 2,641 full-service restaurants and limited-service eating places in the Ottawa-Gatineau metro area in June 2026: 2,019 in the City of Ottawa and 371 in the City of Gatineau. This count (NAICS 7225) includes fast food and coffee counters, and it covers only businesses with employees. Restaurants were 2,641 of the metro area's 42,163 employer businesses. Statistics Canada advises against comparing these counts from one period to the next, because changes in method can move the numbers.

Per person, that is 1.55 eating places per 1,000 people across the metro area, 1.70 in Ottawa and 1.21 in Gatineau. We divided the June 2026 counts by Statistics Canada's July 1, 2025 population estimates: 1,700,014 for the metro area, 1,188,114 for Ottawa and 306,105 for Gatineau.

We grouped our 2,463 places by the first three characters of the postal code. Of these, 2,026 have an Ontario address, 314 have a Quebec address and 123 list no province.

K1N, which covers the ByWard Market and Lowertown, has the most at 221. Next come K1V with 132, K1S with 126, K2P with 116 and K1R with 106. Gatineau's J8T has 103, ahead of K2G with 94. K1Y has 77, J8Y and K1K have 74 each, K2J has 72 and K1C has 61.

The largest group is places Google labels only as "Restaurant", with 546. Next are pizza with 287 (see /best/pizza/) and fast food with 191 (/best/fast-food-restaurants/).

Among cuisines, Chinese has 87, Mexican 79, Indian 73, hamburger 71, Italian 64, Thai 60, sushi 56, shawarma 51, breakfast 47 and Vietnamese 46. Each has its own ranked list: /best/chinese-restaurants/, /best/mexican-restaurants/, /best/indian-restaurants/, /best/burgers/, /best/italian-restaurants/, /best/thai-restaurants/, /best/sushi/, /best/shawarma/, /best/breakfast/ and /best/vietnamese-restaurants/.

Further down, chicken has 44, and vegetarian, Greek and Japanese have 32 each. Lebanese has 31. Greek, Japanese and Lebanese places are ranked at /best/greek-restaurants/, /best/japanese-restaurants/ and /best/lebanese-restaurants/.

Across the 2,463 places, the mean Google rating is 4.28 and the median is 4.4. Of these, 1,034 are rated 4.5 or higher, 30 have a perfect 5.0 and 53 are below 3.0. The median place has 409 reviews. Together they have 1,813,592.

Our ranked list at /best/restaurants/ is stricter. After exclusions it ranks 1,171 places, with a mean rating of 4.38, a median of 4.4 and 579 at 4.5 or higher. Everest Cuisine Ottawa on Carling Ave tops the list, with a 4.9 rating from 3,087 reviews, a score of 4.87 and a confidence of 0.94. The next four are Kanzan Japanese Grill in Kanata, Tava Turkish Cuisine in Kanata (more on /best/turkish-restaurants/), Tayanti Peruvian Restaurant on Clarence St and Yummy Touch Kitchen on Lancaster Rd. All four are also rated 4.9, on fewer reviews: 1,782, 1,335, 1,041 and 886.

The most-reviewed restaurant in our data has 22,004 reviews at 4.7. It belongs to a chain with 10 or more locations, so it is not ranked. The next two are ranked: Masakali Indian Cuisine in Stittsville (14,504 at 4.8) and Agha Turkish Restaurant on Roydon Pl (14,098 at 4.8). The three places after them, with 11,287 to 13,119 reviews, are chain locations and are not ranked. On the ranked list, Zak's Diner in the ByWard Market has the third-most reviews (7,097 at 4.2).

The largest chain footprint in our pull is a burger chain with 53 locations. After it come Pizza Pizza with 31, A&W with 28, Thai Express with 26, Barburrito with 18, Gabriel Pizza with 15, KFC with 14, and Popeyes and Dairy Queen with 12 each. This is a sample from our pull, not a full census. We also saw 134 Tim Hortons and 56 Starbucks rows, but 127 and 55 of those are listed as coffee shops, which fall outside our restaurant filter. Only 5 Tim Hortons rows, listed as fast food, are part of the 2,463.

No. Ottawa and Gatineau have no Michelin-starred restaurant, because the Michelin Guide does not cover either city. Its Canadian guides cover Toronto and Region, Vancouver, and Québec. We found no announcement of an Ottawa guide.

The Toronto and Region 2026 selection, announced 2026-09-25, lists 111 restaurants. Fifteen have stars (one two-star and 14 one-star), all in Toronto, Lincoln and Creemore, so none are in Ottawa. The Québec 2026 selection, unveiled 2026-05-06, has 13 starred restaurants, and Tanière³ is the only two-star. None are in Gatineau or the Outaouais. The Vancouver 2026 selection, announced 2026-10-12, has 11 starred restaurants, and AnnaLena is the two-star. That makes 39 starred restaurants in Canada: three with two stars and none with three. Michelin does not publish a national total, so this is our own sum.

Our 2,463 count includes places whose Google category contains the word restaurant or is bistro, diner, steak house or pizzeria, with at least 10 reviews and a valid identity. It includes fast food and chain locations. Our grid pull runs on search queries, so it misses some places. The Statistics Canada count of 2,641 is the official figure, but it counts only businesses with employees and includes limited-service places such as coffee counters.

The ranked list started from 13,132 records, which came down to 2,971 unique places. We removed 1,800 of them, leaving 1,171. A place can be removed for more than one reason. The most common were: outside our area (1,029), part of a chain with 10 or more locations (827), named venue (280), alcohol-led (168), extra branch of a place already listed (138) and fewer than 10 reviews (135).

Each remaining place gets a score: Score = (v/(v+m))*R + (m/(v+m))*C. Here v is the place's review count, R its Google rating, m is a weight of 200 reviews and C is 4.356, the Ottawa-area average. Confidence is v/(v+m), so a place with 200 reviews sits at 0.50 and one with 3,087 sits at 0.94. The full method is on /methodology/, and the /data/ hub collects our other data pages.

We cannot report openings and closings yet. All our data comes from one pull on 2026-10-29, so there is nothing to compare it with. In that pull, 1 of 2,724 restaurant-category rows was flagged closed and 1 was flagged temporarily closed. The first change data will arrive with the next refresh, due 2027-01-27. We refresh every 90 days.

• Statistics Canada, Canadian Business Counts, with employees, CMAs and CSDs, June 2026 (table 33-10-1176). Checked 2026-10-29.
• Statistics Canada, Population estimates, July 1, by census metropolitan area (table 17-10-0148). Checked 2026-10-29.
• Statistics Canada, Population estimates, July 1, by census subdivision (table 17-10-0155). Checked 2026-10-29.
• Michelin, The MICHELIN Guide Toronto and Region 2026. Checked 2026-10-29.
• Guide MICHELIN, Tous les restaurants étoilés MICHELIN au Québec pour 2026. Checked 2026-10-29.
• Michelin, The MICHELIN Guide Vancouver 2026 selection. Checked 2026-10-29.
• fromOttawa place data, Google Maps pull (ottawa-area scope). Checked 2026-10-29.