Golf's Steak House & Seafood

At Golf's, the prime rib is well-aged Canadian beef, slow-roasted in limited quantities and carved to order, sent out au jus with a side of horseradish and offered in eight-ounce and twelve-ounce cuts. It is the dish the kitchen built its name on, and the one a first visit should be planned around, because the day's roast is finite — when it is gone, it is gone, which is reason enough to book the earlier seating. Everything else radiates from that centre. This is a formal steak and seafood house on the bank of the Grand River, a Kitchener dining room of white tablecloths and wood trim with a four-seasons atrium that looks out over the water.

The steaks carry the old-school weight. The T-Bone Porterhouse is the largest cut on the menu, twenty-two ounces of bone-in beef for the diner who wants the full steakhouse commitment rather than a lighter order; the eight-ounce filet mignon is the most tender of them, and a bone-in rib steak, a New York striploin in eight- and twelve-ounce cuts, and a rack of New Zealand lamb finished in four-peppercorn madeira round out the list. There are narrow back ribs, too — a full pound, char-broiled in the house barbecue sauce — and a chicken-and-ribs plate for the table that wants something to pull apart between the carving knives.