Hum: Grey's Social Eatery serves familiar, well-made fare in attractive surroundings (2025)

Opened in April, the new restaurant replaces Blue Cactus Bar and Grill on a prime ByWard Market corner.

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By Peter Hum

Published May 21, 2025

Last updated 1day ago

4 minute read

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Hum: Grey's Social Eatery serves familiar, well-made fare in attractive surroundings (1)

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Grey’s Social Eatery
2 ByWard Market Sq., 613-416-2212, greyssocialeatery.com
Open: Weekdays 4 p.m. to late, Weekends 11 a.m. to late
Prices: appetizers $12 to $33, mains $25 to $85
Access: no steps to front door or washrooms

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Abbis Mahmoud knows how to build attractive restaurants.

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Exhibit A was Med Supper Club, the lavish, high-volume eatery that Mahmoud, the founder and operator of the Dreammind Group of Ottawa restaurants and bars, opened in Lansdowne Park in late 2023. Med is filled with marble-topped tables, plush seating, a central, eye-catching bar, extravagant wall units and even a 16-foot-tall artificial olive tree. It’s as if a Vegas-resort-style restaurant made for seeing and being seen had been transported to Ottawa.

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The ambience arguably trumps the food at Med, given that in my summer 2024 review, I wrote that its expensive fare was also uneven.

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Exhibit B for Mahmoud’s way with decor is Grey’s Social Eatery. It opened on one of the ByWard Market’s prime corners on April 11, enlarging Dreammind’s footprint downtown. A little more than three months earlier, its predecessor, the veteran Tex-Mex-inspired eatery Blue Cactus Bar and Grill, was having its last hurrah, serving its final fajitas and Margaritas on New Year’s Eve.

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Like Med, Grey’s is an eye-catching, massive restaurant. Seating 170 downstairs, 70 more upstairs in a space meant for private events, and 90 on its patio, it holds even more people than Med does. And Mahmoud has done his best to make it beautiful with custom-made furniture and fittings, lighting it with wagon-wheel chandeliers and filling it with brass-ringed tables, deep-red banquettes and cow-hide barstools.

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Like Med, Grey’s boasts a bar that is large and inviting. Its woodiness, wallpaper and framed art allude to yesteryear in general and sometimes — John A. Macdonald’s portrait, a vintage Ottawa Citizen page — to old-time Ottawa in particular.

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“I tried to make it feel like it’s new, but it’s also been here for a long time,” Mahmoud told me.

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At a minimum, he’s banished any ghosts that the Blue Cactus might have left behind. One of the few intersection points between Grey’s and Blue Cactus is that fish tacos are also on the Grey’s menu.

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On the whole, the menu pitches Grey’s somewhere between the casual affordability of Blue Cactus and the caviar-enhanced extravagance of Med. It’s probably closer to the former, with a wide range of familiar dishes, appetizers mostly in the $12 to $25 range and larger plates including sushi, burgers and mains by and large between $20 and $30, unless you want a steak. Items including spaghetti, a smash burger, halibut and chips, chicken tenders and a bavette steak come in kid-sized and kid-priced ($14) portions.

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Hum: Grey's Social Eatery serves familiar, well-made fare in attractive surroundings (9)

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Before Mahmoud opened Grey’s, he told me that he hoped to serve its guests “amazing food, cooked fresh and made with love, that’s very accessible.”

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After dining there late last month, I’d say “amazing” is definitely not warranted. But the description of Grey’s offerings on its website — “our thoughtfully curated, value-priced menu will celebrate international and Canadian classic feel-good dishes” — is accurate.

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Cynics might want to snub Grey’s as a tourist trap. But I and my out-of-town friends found its food to be better than that.

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We enjoyed dishes from a something-for-everyone menu that has since been revised.

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Fish- and seafood-based items that did not disappoint. Tuna maki, fish tacos and halibut fish and chips were all well-crafted and tasty, if not exceptional. A single-serving red Thai curry starring shrimp was another flavourful dish. Crispy calamari, which around Ottawa can range anywhere from foul-tasting disasters to simple triumphs, was happily closer to the latter.

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Hum: Grey's Social Eatery serves familiar, well-made fare in attractive surroundings (12)

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Venturing up the food chain, we split among us the 12-ounce striploin steak frites, which was better than I expected in terms of all of its components.

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I should note that I was definitely recognized as a likely on-duty restaurant critic, and you can assume from that the kitchen and our friendly server were on their best behaviour.

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We tried all the desserts, including a lemon meringue pie served in an oversized martini glass (too kitschy, if you ask me), fine strawberry sorbet and a rustic but satisfying pudding chomeur.

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The menu’s 10 cocktails dispensed from Grey’s long, classy bar are familiar crowd-pleasers with a small tweak here and there, and they range in price from $14 to $18. Seven beers, from Budweiser to Mill St. Organic to Guinness, are on tap and three mocktails are available.

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On the Grey’s website, Mahmoud says his vision is “to create something truly special for the city… (and) reignite excitement in the Market with a world-class restaurant.”

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As laudable as this goal is, it doesn’t get more hyperbolic than calling Grey’s “world-class.” But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve to be popular, especially among people, be they local or out-of-towners, seeking reasonably priced, well-made, familiar food in attractive surroundings.

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phum@postmedia.com

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