Alternate Grounds Dockside

At Alternate Grounds Dockside, the water gets a vote before the menu does. The restaurant sits on the Sarnia Bay marina, a Canadian restaurant and bar set up so the patio and the boat basin are part of the meal instead of a view glanced at between courses — the kind of place a table picks for the setting first and sorts out the order second. When the order comes, it is built wide to match the draw: weekend brunch, tacos, seafood, pasta, wings and comfort-food mains, all kept at the easy register of a Bay-side afternoon, where lunch and dinner blur into one unhurried sitting.

Seafood is the menu's strongest thread, and the Lobster Roll is its clearest expression — creamy lobster heaped on a garlic-butter grilled hoagie with a little greenery and a spoon of pico, the dish that bridges the marina and the kitchen in one handheld. It runs deeper than the roll. Lobster Mac and Cheese, Fish Tacos, Crab Cakes and a straight-ahead Fish and Fries give the dockside theme real weight. Around it sits a taco section that does most of the menu's wandering — Hot Honey Shrimp, Carne Asada, Jerk Chicken — next to handhelds like the Crispy Gochujang Chicken, fried chicken lacquered in honey gochujang with house-made kimchi, cucumber and sriracha mayo. The casual side fills out fast from there: the Buffalo, a Reuben, Jumbo Wings, a Caribbean Cobb and a Picking Platter built for sharing. And the kitchen still lists the wanderers — Pad Thai, Florentine Mac and Cheese, Falafel and General Tsao Cauliflower — so a table of mixed appetites rarely runs short on routes.