Nine unique culinary experiences in Ontario worth the road trip

You can whisper almost any culinary craving into the wind in Toronto, and it will echo back in edible form. Beef momos with butter tea? Parkdale. Soy-marinated raw crab? Willowdale. Soul-satisfying jerk chicken? Oakwood Village. Whatever your stomach desires, this city delivers. But some meals make sense only when they’re eaten beside the garden that grew them, under trees where they were foraged or after locking eyes with a nearby ostrich (just trust us).

Related: The best diners and dairy bars within road-tripping distance of the GTA

Here are nine restaurants worth the drive this summer—places serving food (and vibes) you just can’t find in Toronto.

Littlejohn Farm

908 County Rd. 10, Picton, 647-716-7737, littlejohnfarm.com

Drive time: 2.5 hours | Cost: $225

At Littlejohn Farm, dinner begins with a stroll through the fields and ends under the stars. This three-and-a-half-acre agritourism escape is run by Zach and Luhana Littlejohn—he’s a chef, sommelier and farmer raised on an Ontario homestead; she’s a Brazilian-born economist turned experience curator. Saturdays here are a hands-on experience: guests wander the garden, help roll out pasta, fire flatbreads and pluck garnishes straight from the earth. The farm grows 95 per cent of the produce served, including red fife, polenta corn, beets, berries, eggplants, tomatoes and a rainbow of lettuces. The menu is rooted in Prince Edward County terroir but isn’t dogmatic about it. Alongside the home-grown bounty, guests can expect a few globetrotting ingredients: briny olives, freshly flown-in seafood and wheels of well-travelled cheese. The payoff: a 10-to-12-course feast that reflects the land, with just enough luxury to keep things interesting. Bring your own wine or cider (glassware provided) and prepare to linger.

Down Home

135299 Ninth Line, Markdale, 705-446-4233, downhomerestaurant.com

Drive time: 2 hours | Cost: $175

Dinner here is dictated by the land—wild-foraged botanicals, just-unearthed garden veggies and ethically raised cuts of meat from nearby pastures. This Grey Highlands farmhouse restaurant offers a 10-course tasting menu that changes weekly, shaped by Hannah Harradine and chef Joel Gray’s regenerative garden and wood-fire kitchen. One night might bring dry-aged Arctic char from Spring Hill Fish, stuffed with spruce tips and green alder, then cooked over wood coals; another, braised pork belly with chanterelles and sweet corn. In summer, guests dine alfresco, surrounded by scenery so entrancing it’s easy to overlook the table—but don’t. Each setting is thoughtfully dressed with hand-blown glassware, BC-made linens and a rotating cast of locally crafted ceramics. And if the weather doesn’t cooperate, not to worry—the indoor dining room, set inside a lovingly restored early-1900s farmhouse, is every bit as enchanting.

Sundays

58 Brock St. W., Uxbridge, 289-671-5054, sundaysrestaurant.ca

Drive time: 1 hour | Cost: à la carte

In 2020, Ben Denham and Ashley Lloyd bought a 10-acre organic farm in Uxbridge, planting the seeds of a slower life. For years, they split their time between the fields and the fryer at their beloved White Lily Diner in Riverdale, where brunch has a fan club and the doughnuts a cult following. But, in late 2024, they sold the diner and committed fully to rural living. Their latest project, Sundays—a farm-to-fork bistro with city polish and country soul—opened this spring. The menu shifts with the harvest, often weekly, with dishes like Willowtree Farm chicken with hakurei turnips and garlic velouté, steelhead trout with sorrel and green garlic, and omelettes stuffed with heirloom spinach and Upper Canada’s Comfort Cream. It’s refined rural dining served with just-picked greens and small-town charm on Uxbridge’s historic main street.

Rosewood Estates Winery

4352 Mountainview Rd., Lincoln, 905-563-4383, rosewoodwine.com

Drive time: 80 minutes | Cost: $70

It’s a winery, an apiary and a three-generation dream realized in the Niagara Benchlands. William Roman’s grandfather arrived from Ukraine with the hope of opening a meadery, but he couldn’t get a bank to back him. His son Eugene made it happen, planting vines and laying the groundwork for what Rosewood is today: a honey-fuelled, wine-soaked love letter to the land. Last year, they quietly launched an ambitious food program with chef Peter Pietruniak at the helm. His menu (which is 75 per cent Golden Horseshoe–sourced) is dripping with the hard work of honeybees: mead-cured trout with garden chermoula, duck lacquered in spiced honey, sourdough with whipped honey butter, and walnut cake soaked in coriander-cardamom honey syrup and crowned with labneh and Ontario figs. It all pairs beautifully with Rosewood’s sustainable, crushable wines. Want to meet the workers behind the menu? Suit up for the Bee Experience and say hello to the queens.

Bar Les Incompetents

386 St. Paul St., St. Catharines, @barlesincompetents

Drive time: 90 minutes | Cost: à la carte

Most tourists don’t head to the Niagara region to hit up downtown St. Catharines—they’re out among Niagara’s vines, sipping pinot, posting sun-dappled selfies or sorting through overpriced lavender soaps. But trust us: it’s worth veering off course. Fat Rabbit is one of the best restaurants in the region, serving bold and meaty dishes that every plugged-in foodie has been obsessing over (us included). And this summer, chef Zach Smith and his team are upping the ante with Bar Les Incompetents, opening just across the street in an old movie theatre. It’s going to be a modern brasserie with a seafood-heavy menu, a raw bar and French-ish snacks you eat with your hands. The name? It’s a Home Alone reference. The vibe is fun, not fussy. No white tablecloths, no wine-country preciousness—just sharp cooking and a lot of personality. It’s slated to open at the end of August.

Naagan

279 10th St. E., Owen Sound, 226-668-6947, naagan.ca

Drive time: 2.5 hours | Cost: $155

Twelve courses, zero lemons. At this tiny 17-seat spot in Owen Sound, chef Zach Keeshig crafts tasting menus without imported crutches—no vanilla, no citrus, no olive oil. Instead, he uses Canadian ingredients like spruce tips, sea buckthorn, wild mushrooms and sweetgrass. Naagan (Ojibwa for “dish”) is more than a restaurant—it’s a living lesson in what grows here, what’s been eaten here for generations and what happens when you take terroir-driven food very literally. Dishes shift with the seasons and the spoils of foraging, hunting and local farms.

Ostrich Land Ontario

8299 Concession Rd. 2, Caistor Centre, 647-988-0841, ostrichlandontario.com

Drive time: 90 minutes | Cost: $40 and up

A whole day trip for brunch? This isn’t your regular eggs Benny. At this family-run ostrich farm, you can eat an omelette made from a single ostrich egg and then go pet the bird who laid it. (You might even catch some serious side eye from one—especially if you’re walking around with a Crimean Tatar chebureki stuffed with ostrich meat.) Chef Pavlina Anikeyeva hand-crafts everything, right down to meringues whipped from ostrich egg whites. Ostrich Land is part petting zoo, part restaurant, part eastern European fever dream and entirely worth the detour.

The Pine

7535 County Rd. 9, Creemore, 705-466-2888, thepinecreemore.ca

Drive time: 2 hours | Cost: $195 and up

Dinner at the Pine begins with a menu that looks more like a tattoo flash sheet than a tasting list—no words, just tiny line drawings representing the 16-plus courses to come. (What’s that one? A dumpling? A mushroom? A swan? Only time will tell.) Over three hours, those sketches land as precise, personal dishes shaped by chef Jeremy Austin’s time spent working and travelling in Shanghai, Wuxi, Hong Kong and Italy. Set in a former Creemore Village gas station, the Scandi space is minimalist, the plating meticulous and the ingredients hyper-local—many of them actually come from the family farm of co-owner Cassie Austin, Jeremy’s wife. Service is paced like a performance: quiet, choreographed and fully immersive.

New Moon Farm

Address available upon request, 613-967-1172, chefchrisbyrne.com

Drive Time: 2.5 hours | Cost: $85 and up

Just a seven-minute drive from Picton, chef Chris Byrne and his wife, herbalist Tamara Segal, have spent the past 15 years transforming their 23-acre property into New Moon Farm. Since purchasing the land in 2009, they’ve planted over 5,600 native trees (oak, spruce, pine, maple), turning a once-shorn farm field into a thriving patchwork of meadows, ponds, forest and wetland that backs onto one of PEC’s largest swamps. Here, they host private, customizable forest-to-table experiences for groups of six to 10 guests. Each one begins with a guided foraging walk and ends with a multi-course plant-based meal served in a candlelit century-old outbuilding. The menu blends wild and cultivated ingredients, with influences from both Asian and European kitchens. Foraged goods like garlic mustard roots, wild parsnip, black locust blossoms and seeds, cattail kraut, day lilies, prickly ash leaf, and black nightshade often take centre stage, though Byrne also draws on locally grown produce and globally sourced staples (tamarind, soy, miso) that reflect his love of Japanese, Chinese and Thai flavours. Lunch starts at $85 and dinner at $125, but everything is customizable—menus, course count and complexity vary by season, head count and how adventurous everyone is—so prices may shift.