Shakespeare's Steak and Seafood

When a Hamilton table cannot agree between a serious steak and a proper seafood dinner, Shakespeare's Steak and Seafood is where the argument ends. The downtown supper club has built its name on refusing to choose: the steakhouse and the seafood are both treated as the main event, which is why this is the name families reach for when a night needs to feel like an occasion. The menu runs wide enough that a mixed table sorts itself out — one diner after a celebration cut of beef, another after lobster, a third happy with something simpler — and everyone orders from the same kitchen. Anniversaries, milestone birthdays, and client dinners are the natural use, and the kitchen has cooked for exactly those evenings from the same downtown stretch of Main Street East.

The menu earns the dual billing. On the steakhouse side, the bacon-wrapped Filet Mignon comes in nine-ounce and six-ounce cuts, the New York Striploin and the New York Peppercorn Steak are both centre cuts — the latter finished with a red wine and cognac sauce — and the Ribeye runs from a twelve-ounce to a twenty-six-ounce bone-in for a serious appetite, with a Rack of Lamb and a loaded Gourmet Burger for the table that wants range rather than another cut of beef. The seafood is not a courtesy. Maritime Pleasure stacks lobster tail, scallops, shrimp, and calamari on one plate; the Lobster Tail, Grilled Scallops, Fresh Oysters, Grilled Branzino, and a Jumbo Tiger Shrimp Cocktail cover the raw and grilled ends of the menu with genuine breadth. And then there is Hamlet's Joy, the house-named entree that puts a six-ounce bacon-wrapped filet next to grilled shrimp — the steak-and-seafood idea condensed onto a single plate and signed with the restaurant's own literary name.