For a pizza-and-pasta kitchen, The Twisted Pig sources unusually close to home. The wildflower honey finishing its Gnocchi Gorgonzola is made at a winery up the Niagara escarpment; the mushrooms in the Rigatoni Funghi come from a grower a short drive away; the steelhead is pulled from local water. That habit — cooking familiar Italian comforts out of the peninsula around it — is what sets this Port Dalhousie dining room apart from most of its peers. It sits on Lock Street, in the waterfront village rather than a roadside plaza, and works for a Niagara table planning a dinner worth a reservation. The menu is broad enough that a group rarely struggles to agree on an order.
The pizzas make the clearest case for that habit. A Prosciutto + Burrata pie layers prosciutto di Parma and torn burrata over tomato and basil; the Soppressata carries asiago, pickled fennel and a thread of hot honey; the Funghi stacks truffle three ways — mushroom paste, pecorino and honey — over oyster mushroom and baby arugula. When a feature runs it tends to push the same direction, house-cured steelhead trout with crème fraîche, pickled shallot and crispy caper turning a pizza into something closer to a smoked-fish plate. The base stays familiar; the toppings rarely do.
The pasta carries the same logic into the kitchen's own hands. House-made potato gnocchi appears twice — once in a gorgonzola cream finished with that Niagara wildflower honey, once as Twisted Gnocchi 2.0 under a red-wine-braised short rib ragu and pecorino romano. The classics are cooked straight: a Carbonara on guanciale, egg yolk and pecorino, an Amatriciana sharpened with guanciale and Calabrian chili, a Shrimp Scampi of linguine, tiger shrimp and garlic panko. The Rigatoni Funghi leans on a local mushroom medley and truffle cream, and the Rapini Orecchiette works garlic, chili, artichoke and goat cheese into something more bitter and green than the rest of the card. There is range without a single jarred shortcut.
Beyond pasta and pizza, the menu refuses to stay in one lane. The Caesar is built to be noticed — romaine hearts, rosemary garlic croutons, double-smoked bacon and parmigiano — and the antipasti run from beef-and-pork ricotta meatballs under stracciatella to honey-garlic Brussels sprouts and pea-and-fior-di-latte arancini. Seafood gets real attention: organic PEI mussels in white wine and cherry tomato, a Frutti di Mare over spaghetti with nduja, a grilled filet of local steelhead trout with romesco. The mains reach past Italian entirely, to an eight-ounce flat iron Steak Frites, a bone-in Veal Parmigiano and a double-patty smash burger on a potato bun, before a house Tiramisu of Marsala zabaglione and espresso-soaked lady fingers pulls it back. Breadth here reads as confidence, not hedging.
The setting does work the food doesn't have to. Port Dalhousie's harbour-side village hands the restaurant an address most Niagara Italian kitchens can't claim, and it has leaned into the wider draw since opening in 2020 — service daily from noon, takeout and delivery, walk-ins absorbed when the dinner book fills. The wine list carries the cooking the rest of the way, weighted toward Niagara bottles and Italian regions in near-equal measure, deep enough to set against a short rib gnocchi or a burrata pizza without much reaching.
Read top to bottom, the menu keeps returning to the same habit: take something familiar, then put a specific local hand on it. The honey has a named source, the mushrooms have a grower, the trout came out of nearby water. None of it is announced loudly. It is the kind of detail a kitchen accumulates when it cares more about what reaches the plate than about saying so — and a few steps up from the Port Dalhousie waterfront, the gnocchi still gets rolled by hand before the dinner rush.
House-made gnocchi, burrata pizza, veal parmigiano and seafood pastas give the menu a concrete Italian comfort core rather than a generic casual-dining spread.
The restaurant works as a relaxed lakeside-area dinner stop, with enough polish for date night and enough familiar ordering paths for groups.
The bottle list, pizza section and pasta range make it easy to build either a shared social meal or a more composed dinner around one or two standout dishes.
Gnocchi Gorgonzola gives the kitchen a clear signature pasta: house-made potato gnocchi, gorgonzola cream and Rosewood Estates wildflower honey. It reads richer and more specific than a standard red-sauce order.
The pizza set has range beyond a simple margherita, with Prosciutto + Burrata Pizza, Soppressata and a house feature built around cured steelhead. That gives pizza-first diners several credible routes into the meal.
Twisted Gnocchi 2.0, Veal Parmigiano, Meatballs and Steak Frites lean into generous Italian comfort without making the menu feel one-note. The best picks are hearty but still ingredient-specific.
The separate bottle list makes wine a real part of the plan, especially with creamy pasta, seafood pasta and burrata-topped pizza. Diners can build the meal around a bottle instead of treating drinks as an afterthought.
Port Dalhousie gives the address a lakeside dinner setting, and the menu has patio-friendly starts like Caesar Salad, PEI Mussels and pizza. It works for a relaxed outdoor meal without relying only on the view.
Share the nuances of your visit to The Twisted Pig in St. Catharines — the standout dishes, the room, the service.
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