Huether Hotel

Order a coffee at eight in the morning and a last pint near midnight, and you can do both at one address on King Street — though morning and night unfold in very different corners of it. The Huether Hotel runs as four places at once: the Lion Brewery, the Barley Works pub, the Jazz Room, and Café 1842, each holding its own corner of a Waterloo landmark that has stood where King meets Princess since 1855. The brewery is older still, dating to 1842, and the Adlys family now operates and preserves the whole complex, the third generation to hold it. What that history produces is not a museum but a working building — one that asks a guest to decide what kind of visit they came for before they decide what to order.

The kitchen is built for breadth rather than a single signature, though the Legendary Wings come closest to one, offered New York style or breaded, tossed or with the sauce on the side, with carrot sticks and blue cheese for dipping. The beer turns up in the food, too: the Fish Tacos batter cod in Lion lager and finish it with pico de gallo, coleslaw, sriracha mayo, and a squeeze of lemon. Around those sit the plates a group reaches for without much negotiation — a Big Plate of Nachos under cheddar and mozzarella, the eight-ounce House Burger on a Martin potato bun with smash sauce, Dad's Reuben stacked with Montreal smoked meat on toasted marble rye, the Hipster Burger finished with garlic aioli and an onion ring. The Stroganoff Schnitzel under mushroom-and-onion gravy is the German holdover on an otherwise North American list.