Edgewater Manor Restaurant

Edgewater Manor is the table Stoney Creek books when the meal is the point of the evening — an anniversary, a closing dinner, the birthday that earns more than the usual reservation. It occupies a stone, castle-style house at the end of Fruitland Road, raised above the Lake Ontario shore, and the water does as much to set the tone as anything that reaches the plate. Inside are formal dining rooms and private rooms for a party that wants its own walls; outside, a seasonal patio opens straight onto the lake.

The menu is built on steak and seafood, and it stints on neither. The steakhouse side runs from a Black Angus filet mignon and a bone-in rib eye to a Tomahawk for two that lands at forty-four to forty-six ounces, with a braised short rib and a mustard-herb rack of lamb filling in for the diner who wants the grill's results without the grill itself. The Surf and Turf — grilled filet, a roasted lobster tail, drawn butter — is the clearest land-and-sea centrepiece. The seafood carries its own weight: a half-dozen oysters with red wine mignonette, a Seacuterie board of calamari, spicy shrimp, smoked salmon, seared tuna, and oysters, and a Lobster Linguine finished with double-smoked bacon and Chardonnay cream. Salmon arrives roasted over polenta; tuna comes sesame-crusted with mango-habanero.