Ted's Range Road Diner

Few roadside diners keep alligator on the appetizer list and caribou among the mains. Ted's Range Road Diner keeps both, alongside elk, bison, and venison — a wild-game spread parked, improbably, on Grey Road 112 a few minutes south of Meaford. It is the kind of roster most steakhouses would not attempt, and the kitchen treats it as ordinary. The exotic meats are the reason people make the drive, and the diner has built its identity around them for decades. What keeps the place from tipping into novelty is that none of it crowds out the prime rib.

The dinner list runs along two tracks. On the game side sit Bison Steak, an Elk Special that also turns up in an Arctic stir-fry, Caribou Medallion, and Venison Steak, with quail and ostrich rounding out the rotation — the wild-game lane the diner built its name on. On the steakhouse side are Prime Rib with Yorkshire, a Cajun prime rib listed on its own, and the BBQ beef ribs the menu tells diners to phone ahead for rather than expect on demand. The seafood half is no afterthought: Seafood Bake, Blackened Trout, lobster tail, and Mushroom Caps with Seafood for a table that wants to start light. Between the three tracks, a single party can run from alligator to lobster tail to a Yorkshire-topped prime rib without anyone settling.