You don’t need to be a foodie or wine connoisseur to appreciate good taste. And even if you are, St. Catharines has an endless list of places for you to sip and savour no matter what your preference is or whether you’re on your way to discovering it. Niagara is home to culinary gems with some of the freshest, creative local fare just waiting to be shared with you.
Condé Nast Traveler called St. Catharines “The surprisingly cool city hiding in the middle of Canadian wine country”. St. Catharine’s bragging rights are plentiful. Reconnect over a meal (or two) at a St. Catharines restaurant this holiday season. After all, Niagara is family.
When Andrew McLeod opened Bolete four years ago, all thoughts were on making his St. Paul Street dining room a destination. These days, the veteran chef has been thinking about how best to feed people at home. It’s been an unexpected shift, but then that’s what running a restaurant in a pandemic will do.
The dining room making a difference. It’s heartwarming, yet rueful. But mostly it’s reflective of the Niagara College alumni’s goal to run a restaurant that does things differently, from ensuring staff have a work-life balance that eludes many in hospitality to forging close relationships with the community.
Many diners have become regulars in the few short months The Twisted Pig has been open on the corner of Lock Street and Lakeport Road. But the Burgesses are also doing their part to make it easy for them. For starters, the entire business model of The Twisted Pig hangs on using seasonal and unadulterated ingredients in everything that comes out of the kitchen.
Alejandra Lopez and Antonio Bueno decided to take matters into their own hands when they couldn’t find a suitable restaurant representation of paella or tacos. Lopez, who hails from Guadalajara in western Mexico, and Bueno, who grew up in the Andalusia region of Spain, decided to open Patio Andaluz, a Mexican-Spanish dining room in Port Dalhousie, specializing in the quintessential dishes of their homeland.
When life gets busy in Korea, there’s dosirak. The Korean lunch boxes, similar to a Japanese bento with all its compartments, serve up comforting staples, including kimchi, dumplings, salad and soup, to keep people going through their full days. It turns out, though, that dosirak is also fitting when the hankering for takeout brunch hits in St. Catharines.
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