Ottawa Serial Dinners
 

These are the official rules of the Ottawa Serial Diners, a group formed in 2005,
modeled after the Toronto Serial Diners group established in 1989. We are
dedicated to dining at every restaurant listed in the Ottawa (Central) Yellow Pages™
directory (in alphabetical order), at the rate of one per week. All are welcome!

The current dining schedule is posted here

We meet every Friday at the designated restaurant at 6:30 p.m. (see agenda). Latecomers are, of course, welcome, and often numerous. If you're particularly late, you may want to telephone the restaurant and ask
about the large, out-of-place, possibly rowdy, and probably peculiar group, and are they still there?
(And what's the afterplan?)

If the restaurant is too expensive, we may fill up at Harvey's, or then again, we may eat there anyway.

If the restaurant is closed for the day, is out of business, is playing music at volume level 11, was never there in the first place, has inadequate seating, declares itself unable to prepare a dinner-like meal, has nothing on the menu other than Stew of Cods' Heads), then we wait until 6:45 p.m. or so to accumulate bodies. If the restaurant is open, we may politely consume Cokes and coffees before escaping. At any rate, after waiting, we post a note to announce the Alternate Destination. (Look carefully for the note!) Then the group fills up at Harvey 's.

If there is a restaurant of a different name on the appointed location, we eat there anyway, subject to Rules 2) and 3a) above. Technically, we are, in fact, filling up at Harvey 's.

If, however, there is such a restaurant (different name, right location), then and only then do we have the option of filling up at Harvey 's elsewhere.

"Filling up at Harvey 's" is a generic term for going to any (usually nearby) restaurant other than the Official Destination. We have yet to "fill up at Harvey 's" at Harvey 's.

If, for whatever reason, we miss a restaurant, we do NOT return to it the next (or any other) week. That place has simply missed out on us. (But the restaurant is, of course, still eligible for us to fill up at Harvey 's there.)

We skip no listings.

If one restaurant listing is followed by multiple addresses, we go only to the first address given, thereby sparing us 15 extra weeks at Druxy's.

Note that if one restaurant name is listed more than once in the same edition, we must include each separate listing. For example, if the restaurant EDO is listed twice at the same address (once as EDO and once as EDO Restaurants Inc.), then we have to go there twice.

We switch to the new Yellow Pages (by which we mean the Ottawa Central edition) on July 1 of every year. We carry on in the new book from the point where we left off, alphabetically speaking, in the old book. Any new restaurants preceding that point have also missed out on us.


 

You are invited to join the Serial Diners, by coming on Friday at 6:30 p.m. to the designated restaurant (see agenda).

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at ottawaserialdiners@hotmail.com

One other thing: now that you've been invited, you are not only free, but also encouraged, to invite others.
The more the merrier, or at least the louder, which is something. We trust your judgment. Any friend of yours is well, a friend of yours, but we're sure they're fine.