Kettles Back Home Cookin'

Breakfast at Kettles Back Home Cookin' does not stop when the morning does. Eggs Benny, the Hearty Back Home Breakfast, and the homefries-and-cheese Kettle Melt come off the grill from the moment the doors open until the moment they close, which is the first thing to know about a kitchen that calls itself the home of the all-day breakfast. It sits on Highway 6&10 between Owen Sound and Chatsworth, the kind of roadside stop a Grey-Bruce traveller pulls into at any hour and a local keeps as a standing answer to the question of where to eat. What lands on the table is cooked from scratch and priced to bring a whole family without a second thought.

The menu's signature is a study in portion. The Big Papa Burger stacks four six-ounce patties into a twenty-four-ounce build, the Ma Kettles comes piled with mushrooms, ham, bacon and double cheese, and the smaller Pa Kettles still runs a twelve-ounce single. Around the burgers sits a deep bench of comfort dinners — open-face hot turkey, slow-cooked and Canadian-raised, under cranberry sauce; Salisbury steak smothered in mushrooms, onions and homemade gravy; lasagna with Caesar salad and garlic bread; lightly battered haddock for the fish and chips. The starters and sandwiches carry the same house hand: a four-cheese spinach and artichoke dip with crispy pita, corned beef and homemade sauerkraut on freshly baked rye for the Reuben, fresh-cut fries under curds and homemade gravy for the poutine. Even the soup is built from family recipes, cream or broth, made in the back kitchen rather than opened from a can.