Kitchen76 at Two Sisters Vineyards

Kitchen76 cooks in service to the wine grown on the land around it. The restaurant sits on the Two Sisters estate in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and that arrangement sets the terms of a meal here: the cellar is the house list, the pours come from the same property as the patio view, and the food is built to sit beside them. The cooking is Italian and pasta-forward — antipasti, fresh pasta, a handful of pizzas, polished mains — tuned to a vineyard dining room rather than a trattoria. It is the kind of place a table chooses when the wine is the reason for the afternoon and the meal is meant to keep pace with it.

The menu moves the way an Italian meal is supposed to. It opens with house-made focaccia baked to order in the estate's own olive oil, arancini alla Milanese bound with saffron and smoked mozzarella, and veal polpette in tomato sauce. A house insalata of fennel and parsley arrives under crispy prosciutto and a red-wine anchovy vinaigrette. The pasta is made in house and carries the kitchen: a rigatoni Bolognese of veal, pork and beef under Parmigiano-Reggiano; lemon-and-ricotta ravioli finished with brown butter and fried basil; a spaghetti tangled with Nova Scotia lobster in a smoked lobster brodo and lemon pangrattato. The pizza turns sweet-savoury with the Dolce — shaved pears, toasted walnuts, prosciutto, gorgonzola and a thread of estate honey. The larger plates hold their own: a pan-roasted lamb rack over mascarpone polenta, a Quebec half chicken with toasted farro, pan-seared rainbow trout with panzanella.