The Forty Public House

The Forty Public House looks, at a glance, like the Canadian pub it is named for — chicken wings, a classic burger, hand-cut poutine, a long bar, a back area set aside for live music. Read past the first page of the menu, though, and the kitchen keeps reaching higher. A lobster mac and cheese baked under a buttery panko crust, a New Zealand lamb shank braised in red wine and mirepoix, an open-faced garlic steak ciabatta finished with horseradish aioli — these sit a few lines below the wings and the burger, and they tell you the kitchen treats the pub format as a starting point rather than a ceiling.

The pub-comfort core is all there, and built with some care. The BBQ Burger stacks cheddar, jalapeño, double-smoked bacon and pulled chicken under a 40 Creek whisky barbecue sauce — a small, place-specific nod to the Ontario distillery that turns a familiar burger into something local. The same whisky barbecue threads through the menu, saucing the pulled chicken on the whisky nachos and standing in as one of four fillings on the Taco Trio, next to Cajun steak, breaded shrimp and garlic lobster. Even the starters get attention: ballpark soft pretzels brushed with butter and served with beer cheese, a lobster dip cut with beer-braised onions, and cauliflower wings tossed in a hot-and-honey glaze.

Past the handhelds, the mains are where the upscale reach shows plainly. The lobster mac and cheese folds lobster and crab into a creamy sauce under a panko crust; the braised lamb shank comes off New Zealand shanks cooked down in red wine and mirepoix until they give, plated over garlic mash. A pan-seared lemon-dill salmon, a chimichurri chicken brightened with fire-roasted peppers and goat cheese, a chicken parm over linguine, and a lasagna layered five high round out a mains list far longer than the wings-and-beer shorthand suggests. The salads carry real weight too — roasted beet and goat cheese over spring mix, a Cajun steak salad with raspberry vinaigrette — and dessert can be a gluten-free turtle cheesecake.

What ties it together is local. The bar pours local craft beer, 40 Creek whisky from just up the road, and Niagara VQA wines — a deliberate tilt toward the surrounding wine country instead of the national taps a generic pub would reach for first. A back area given over to live music turns a midweek dinner into a night out without the kitchen having to change a thing. The uses stack up from there: family tables early in the evening, wings and a game midweek, larger group outings and a band as the week turns, with the kitchen running past midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.

The Forty opened in 2016, taking over a downtown Grimsby storefront that had previously been Joe Dog's, and local reporting at the time framed the concept as a trendier twist on the old Canadian public house rather than another bar-and-grill. The owners named in that coverage — Mark Wood, Chris Biggs, Brett Poole and Matt Russo — built it around that idea. A decade later, it still holds the same corner of Grimsby's Main Street.

Across a normal week the pub takes on all of it — a family splitting wings and a burger before the plates are cleared, a couple working through the lamb shank and a bottle of Niagara red, a crowd that came for the band and stayed for the late kitchen. The breadth is what makes that range possible: one kitchen covering bar snacks, weeknight comfort food, and a few genuinely upscale plates lets a mixed table find its order without anyone settling, and a drinks list pulled from the county keeps each visit anchored to where it is. That is the version of the public house downtown Grimsby actually uses — one address that can be a weeknight dinner, a Saturday game, and a night out, without anyone having to move tables.