Panache Restaurant And Lounge

Panache keeps deliberately late hours. The doors open in the late afternoon and stay lit until two in the morning, which tells you most of what it is: a downtown Windsor dinner-and-lounge built to carry a whole evening rather than a single seating. Dinner comes first, on Pitt Street East, and then the tenor shifts — cocktails, then a lounge that turns toward DJs as the night stretches on. Mike and Jody Stojcic opened Panache in 2010 with a mature evening crowd in mind, and the present-day version still reads exactly that way.

The March menu is compact and current — ten starters, eight mains — and it argues for polished comfort over fine-dining ceremony. Beef Tips arrive blackened against house-made naan. Lamb Lollipops, New Zealand rack cut to single bones, sit under a balsamic reduction. The House Made Cheeseburger Egg Rolls fold beef, pickle and cheese into two crisp rolls with a side of secret sauce; the Truffle Fries are shoestrings finished with parmigiano reggiano and truffle oil; the Arancini is a fried rice ball with mozzarella, house marinara and fried basil. The mains hold the same register: Steak and Tagliatelle over house-made noodles in a mushroom cream sauce, blackened Salmon on creamy orzo and spinach, a panko-crusted Schnitzel with garlic mashed potatoes, Rigatoni in a house marinara blush with spinach and pancetta, and Steak and Frites built on a filet.

What holds all of it together is how much the kitchen makes itself. The naan beneath the beef tips, the tagliatelle, the blush sauce on the rigatoni, the slaw and butter pickles on the Crispy Chicken Sando, the house dressings — these are scratch details doing quiet work under dishes that could otherwise coast on their names. It is the difference between a kitchen that assembles comfort food and one that cooks it. The reach is deliberate too: shareable starters, steaks, pasta, a smash burger under roasted garlic aioli, calamari with a habanero dip, one pound of dry-rub wings. A table rarely has to negotiate to find its plates.

That breadth is also the value argument. Panache sits in a useful middle lane — dressed up enough for a birthday or an anniversary, but not built like a tasting-menu evening — and it rewards the table that treats it as a full plan rather than a quick plate. Groups are part of the design; a larger party can book ahead and let one place hold the whole night, from the first shared starter through the last round. The starters are made to share, the mains run substantial, and a single stop covers dinner, drinks and whatever the night becomes after. The kitchen has always leaned on generous portions at a fair price, and on most plates that holds up.

The instinct to be a place for occasions traces back to how Panache was drawn up. The Stojcics built it for the kind of downtown evening that doesn't end when the plates are cleared — a night that could hold a birthday, an anniversary, or a table of friends who wanted dinner and somewhere to stay afterward. Sixteen years on, the format still holds: a compact kitchen up front, and a second gear waiting for later.

That second gear is the bar. Cocktails get their own menu, named drinks alongside a mocktail section for the table that wants the ritual without the alcohol. Reservations are taken by phone, and the kitchen runs six nights a week, dark only on Mondays. Late in the evening the dining room gives way to the lounge, the DJs take over, and the same address that served dinner becomes somewhere to close out the night. Panache was built to do both jobs in one stop, and downtown Windsor has kept it doing them.