Ancaster Mill

A waterfall runs past the windows and the walls are the stone of a nineteenth-century grist mill — the kind of setting a kitchen could hide behind. Ancaster Mill doesn't. The dinner menu is ambitious in a way the postcard exterior doesn't promise, and the sourcing is named farm by farm rather than left to a buzzword. People come the first time for the address on Old Dundas Road and the falls; they rebook for what comes off the line.

Start with the steaks, dry-aged and built to be the reason for the table: a thirty-two-ounce porterhouse for two with wild mushrooms, bone-marrow jus and truffle aïoli; a fourteen-ounce striploin; Japanese A5 Wagyu from Miyazaki Prefecture, finished plainly with Maldon salt and St. Remy brandy jus. The plates around them are no filler — a seven-ounce braised short rib in black-garlic jus, whole grilled seabream over hazelnut romesco, a white ragù of braised Ontario pork shoulder on pappardelle, ricotta gnudi with pickled ramps. Smaller plates hold the same line: beef tartare with cured egg yolk and parmesan espuma, Ontario burrata with roasted grapes, a baked crab dip on nigella-seed fry bread. Past the steaks there's still range — an elk burger under white-wine truffle fondue, a vodka-battered cod sandwich, a gemelli for the vegetarian at the table.