Ottawa Naan

This small Beechwood Avenue bakery is easy to miss, tucked in near the corner of Loyer Street— but once you step through the door, you’ll wonder how so much fits. Besides the bread they bake in-store, they have a wide variety of imported foods for customers that miss the tastes of home.

“My favourite part about my job is that I need to speak in Farsi a lot,” co-owner Parsa Rahmati says. “It’s important for me not to forget it.” Many of the business’s clients are from Ottawa’s Iranian and Persian communities, and the bakery has collaborated with a number of restaurants and organizations for special events for the culture – as well as the 2026 Partage Beechwood dinner, for which they supplied their signature sangak.

The general word for bread in Farsi is “naan” (hence the name of the store), but “sangak” translates to “little stone” – a reference to how the flatbread was originally baked on a bed of small river stones. Ottawa Naan’s oven has a bed of hot stones to give the sangak its unique texture, and they pride themselves on baking it with traditional ingredients – non-GMO and preservative-free whole grain wheat flour, sourdough-based yeast, and a garnish of sesame seeds.

“My dad loves to bake bread,” Rahmati says. “It’s something from our culture that we are bringing into our community here, and I think that’s a beautiful thing.”

They opened the store early in 2025, and have fit right into Vanier. “All of our neighbours around here, they become regular customers as well.” Rahmati says. “It’s nice to see them, and it’s nice to pick back up on conversations I’ve had with people a couple days ago. And it has a sense of warmth to it that I really appreciate.”

Try a little sangak for yourself at 64 Beechwood Avenue!