The Grand Cantina

The taco named ODB arrives with barbacoa, queso, roasted corn, and lime crema. The one called Los Pollos Hermanos is citrus-brined grilled chicken; Ugly Delicious is crispy gochujang chicken; Veganville is tempura-fried smoked tofu. The names at The Grand Cantina are an inside joke the whole table can read — a Wu-Tang verse, a Breaking Bad front, a Jack Black movie — and the cooking underneath them is in earnest. It's a Walkerville cantina built around inventive tacos, loaded fries, and a bar that runs late, broad enough that a mixed group rarely leaves without each person finding their plate.

The taco list is where the kitchen spends its imagination. Barbacoa beef on the ODB, hoisin-glazed duck and pickled jalapeno on the Sticky Duck, blackened mahi mahi with mango on the fish taco, tempura cod under pineapple salsa, coconut shrimp with chipotle aioli. A full vegan column runs alongside it — chorizo-spiced TVP, tempura smoked tofu, a sweet-potato taco that comes gluten-free on a corn tortilla — so the table orders from one menu instead of negotiating around it. The sides hold their own: esquites under queso crumble and chipotle crema, street corn fritters, pineapple-marinated al pastor skewers, a roasted-cauliflower Cauli-Asada. Then the duck-fat fries, the other signature — cut thick, tossed in parmesan and truffle salt, finished with banana ketchup, and available loaded with melted cheese, pickled onion, jalapeno, and chipotle aioli. Dessert is four churros and a house salted caramel. The Cantina Burger, local Ontario beef on a potato bun, anchors a standing Burger Thursday.