Rapscallion and Co.

Order the Chicken Liver Brûlée and the kitchen has told you what it believes before a second plate lands. Rich liver pâté takes a torched sugar crust — the move a pastry cook would pull on a custard — and arrives with cornichon, housemade mustard, and warm bread, savoury dressed up as dessert and built to be passed around. That sleight of hand sets the posture at Rapscallion and Co., a contemporary Canadian dining room on Hamilton's James Street North where nose-to-tail cooking is played for pleasure rather than penance. The signature is less a stunt than a thesis: take a familiar shape, bend it a few degrees, and let the table argue about whether it works.

The menu rewards a share-first table. Whipped feta comes slicked with bomba honey, persillade, and chives for grilled baguette; spicy crispy calamari lands with pickled onion, lemon mayo, and chili oil; deboned chicken wings are stuffed with breakfast sausage and finished with spiced hollandaise. From there the cooking leans into heat and richness. Braised beef cheek sits on pommes purée with horseradish cream and cipollini onions, pork schnitzel arrives with spätzle, pepper gravy, and house-fermented sauerkraut, and the pasta runs from truffle mushroom cavatelli in taleggio cream to a spicy amatriciana tagliatelle sharpened with Calabrian chili and crispy garlic. Even the fries are house-cut and finished with pecorino and truffle oil.