Sideways Classic Grill

Sideways Classic Grill runs on a single idea: that pub food travels better than its reputation suggests. The standard bar-and-grill board is all here — burgers, wings, poutine, fish and chips — but the kitchen keeps sending it abroad, picking up Thai, Caribbean, Moroccan, and Indian notes along the way. Even the nachos make the case, stacked on crisp seasoned wontons with sweet sesame chicken and sriracha cream instead of the usual chips. The bones are pub; the seasoning has a passport.

The plates back the idea up. Phad Thai turns rice noodles, shrimp, chicken, peanuts, egg, and bean sprouts in a Thai peanut sauce into a full main rather than a novelty, while the Sideways Classic Burger keeps the kitchen grounded — house-made, with bacon, double-smoked white cheddar, and an original house sauce on a toasted bun. Around those anchors sit coconut-battered black tiger shrimp with sweet chili, a warm wheel of grilled brie with fig jam, and flatbreads that swing from buffalo-chicken-and-blue-cheese to a Thai version under peanut satay. Poutine comes three ways, from a traditional plate of Quebec curds and gravy to a Crispy Louisiana Chicken build finished with the house red hot cream. The wings, sold by the pound, run well past mild-medium-hot into dill pickle, lemon pepper parmesan, garam masala maple, chipotle mango, Carolina gold barbecue, and Caribbean jerk.

What looks like a grab-bag is really discipline. The kitchen builds composed sauces and layered plates where a sports bar could get away with a basket and a dip — a Caribbean-spiced cream over jerk-chicken penne, a Moroccan nine-vegetable soup thick with chickpeas and lentils, a sweet potato and black bean quesadilla finished with citrus cream, a Pear & Cashew salad of gorgonzola and candied cashews under a hazelnut-balsamic. None of it abandons the pub spine; it just refuses to coast on it. The same instinct widens the menu for mixed groups, with vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free routes that run past a token side salad — the Thai Crunch with crispy tofu, the Sideways veggie burger, and the marked salads.

The setting matches that ambition. Sideways opened downtown in 2011 as a sibling to the nearby Limbo Lounge, settling into a restored older building on Front Street North where tin ceilings, original millwork, wood floors, and exposed brick survived the renovation; the screens for the game were added without papering over the bones. The original plan was to bend pub standards toward new flavours, and early on that meant dishes like curried chicken poutine and dill pickle wings — the kind of experiment that reads as gimmick until the kitchen makes it work.

The bar holds up its end. The cocktail list runs from an Aperol Spritz or a Negroni to an Old Fashioned, a Coconut Margarita, and a house Caesar, with a Sideways Long Island and a Sideways Sangria for the drinker who wants a project, plus wine and beer alongside. The restaurant calls itself a place for food, drinks, music, and the game, and the big screens make good on the last of those. It takes reservations and runs takeout for the nights nobody wants to leave the house, and a kids menu of popcorn chicken, cheese pita pizza, and wings makes a family table easy.

All of it lands on Front Street North, in the older downtown blocks near the water, and the breadth is the practical draw — a single group can run wings and a game on one side and a proper dinner, a Phad Thai or a vindaloo, on the other, with the kids and the vegetarians sorted at the same table. But the throughline is conviction more than menu length: a downtown bar-and-grill that decided pub food was a starting point, not a ceiling, and has cooked like it ever since.