Studabakers

Studabakers reads like the order downtown Orillia reaches for when the visit has to do several things at once. Wings for a softball team that finished a Tuesday game, nachos for a Sunday table that can't agree on what comes next, a margarita and a half-price appetizer once the clock hits three on a Monday. Studabakers Beachside opened on Mississaga Street East in October 2007, set down next to Lake Couchiching with a large summer patio and a cabana bar on it. The menu has been doing the same job since: casual bar-and-grill food, with the week laid out so a table can pick its night.

Wings are the engine. Signature Wings come plain or Southern breaded, dragged through a long sauce-and-rub list, and the weekly calendar gives them two of its prime slots — Two Dollar Tuesdays at forty cents apiece with special shooters, Thursday Pub Night at the same price with four-dollar bar rails. Around them the starter and shareable lanes do the rest of the work the menu is built for: Chicago Nachos as the table-opening move, Southern Fried Pickles when the starter list needs a sharper move than fries and dips, Tuscan Spinach Dip for a slower graze, Goat Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms and Sticky Calamari for diners who want the appetizer to do more, Rock'n Lava Shrimp when somebody wants it to land hot. The Charbroiled House Burger, the Alabama Club, and a Fish 'n' Chips that doubles as a Friday feature paired with wine or draft cover the lunch and supper plates; a longer reach into salads, flatbreads, and a Surf and Turf rounds the menu past the bar-snack frame.

The waterfront patio is Studabakers' identity card, and the cabana bar opens with it. Tropical fresh cocktails, sunset hours on Lake Couchiching, a sports-friendly register that runs through the menu and the staff both, live music nights when the calendar calls for them — the warm-weather version of the restaurant is the one the brand was built around. The indoor dining room is the off-season counterpart: booths, big plates, televisions over the bar, the same wings-and-shareables menu doing the same work without the lake view. Either way the kitchen runs the same week.

The feature calendar is the part of the menu that actually tells you what Studabakers is. Margarita Mondays put four-dollar margaritas and half-price appetizers in front of an afternoon. Two Dollar Tuesdays do dine-in wings at forty cents apiece with special shooters. Wild Wednesdays repeat the half-price appetizers with cheap draft. Thursday Pub Night brings the wings back at the same price with four-dollar bar rails. Girls Wanna Have Fun Fridays add three-dollar cosmos and a Fish 'n' Chips pairing with wine or draft. Martini Madness on Saturday runs a burger feature and four-dollar flavoured martinis. Sunday closes the week with four-dollar Caesars, a tall-boy feature, and half-price nachos. Each day stands on something specific, and the week reads less like a list of promotions than the working schedule of a kitchen that has figured out how its guests use it.

Joe Winacott has owned Studabakers from the start, and his voice carries the public side of it. Local reporting at the time covered a 2020 insurance scare that nearly shut the restaurant — twenty-five employees on the line, a community of regulars carrying it through — and later coverage returned to the parking pressure downtown businesses on the waterfront live with. Studabakers sponsors local softball, flag football, and volleyball teams, with a standing offer for two or more teammates who walk in before or after a game: a free pound of wings. Relaxed casual dining, large portions, fair prices, a wide appetizer list — the shorthand Studabakers chose for itself in 2007 still works on a Tuesday wing night in 2026.