Avo and Co.

At Avo & Co., the avocado is not a topping; it is the premise. The name promises one ingredient, and the kitchen makes good on it — avocado anchors all six toasties, rides in every poke bowl, and turns up through the salads and the green smoothie bowl, less a garnish than the through-line the short menu is built around. On Queen Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake's Old Town, the focus does plain work: it hands a town built on wine, pub plates, and pastry a genuinely lighter lunch, a few minutes from most of it.

The toasties are where the focus gets specific. Past the plain Avo Toasty — avocado, micro greens, salt and pepper, nine dollars — the format picks up smoked salmon with capers, pickled onion and dill; prosciutto with fresh mozzarella and arugula; sautéed mushroom with hummus; and brie with roasted peppers, honey and chili flakes. The poke bowls run on the same logic, each a fixed build of rice, mango, edamame, cucumber, seaweed salad and avocado under a chosen protein — soy ahi tuna, sriracha-mayo salmon or shrimp, teriyaki chicken, or teriyaki tofu for the table that wants the bowl without the fish. The salads lean on quinoa, kale, or cabbage rather than lettuce, the smoothie bowls arrive colour-coded green, pink, purple and yellow, and the drinks are anchored by a matcha latte and orange juice squeezed to order. Light, but not a single leaf of it generic.