Ziraldo’s Italian Steakhouse

At Ziraldo's, the centre of the order is contested. One diner reaches for a grilled beef tenderloin; the person across the table wants long pasta tangled with tiger shrimp, squid, and mussels. Both are house cooking, and the kitchen treats neither as an afterthought — this is a Northern Italian steakhouse in downtown Fenelon Falls where the pasta side and the steak side pull equal weight. A table that cannot settle on Italian or steakhouse does not have to choose; it orders across both and lets the wine list handle the rest.

The steakhouse lane is literal. Filetto di Manzo grills a seven-ounce AAA tenderloin and plates it with mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables, no sauce doing the heavy lifting; a twelve-ounce CAB ribeye and a ten-ounce CAB striploin round out the grill. The seafood runs just as serious. Linguini alla Frutta di Mare gathers tiger shrimp, squid, and mussels in pomodoro over long pasta, while Polenta e Frutti di Mare sets shrimp and mussels on crispy fried polenta with cherry tomatoes, capers, arugula, and a white wine tomato sauce — the most composed plate on the coastal side. Filetto di Salmone pairs wild Coho with a lobster cream sauce and risotto, and Due Code di Aragosta lays down two lobster tails and drawn butter for a night that wants the occasion spelled out.

Around those headline plates sits a fuller Italian table. The antipasti move from Arancini — arborio rice balls stuffed with cheese in pomodoro — to a Charcuterie di Carne e Formaggio of local and imported meats, cheeses, crackers, and house chutneys, with grilled Calamari Griglia and a Bruschetta Fresco on grilled ciabatta alongside. Ziraldo's Salad works beets, goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and dried cranberries under a raspberry vinaigrette. The pasta bench has its own depth: Gnocchi della Casa in a choice of alfredo, pomodoro, rose, or arrabbiata; Penne alla Vodka; and a Burrata Caprese Fusilli strewn with cherry tomatoes, basil, black olives, and a balsamic drizzle. This is a menu that lets a party of four find four different dinners without leaving the kitchen's lane.

The breadth points at a kitchen built for a slower, bottle-led dinner rather than a quick plate of pasta. A wine list runs against food with enough weight to earn it — seafood pasta, burrata, gnocchi, grilled salmon, tenderloin, ribeye — and reservations run through both an online book and a phone line. The pricing sits at the top of the local scale, and gluten-free options thread through the steaks and several antipasti for tables that need them. Ziraldo's is a dinner to plan around, not one to drift into on a weeknight whim.

The name carries a family before it carries a menu. Ziraldo's traces itself to Eddy and Mary Ziraldo, and the restaurant's own account leans on the ordinary machinery of an Italian household — gatherings around a table, pasta, red wine, the meals that get remembered. The current owner and chef stay unnamed in public copy, but that inherited frame gives the cooking a thread the category label alone would miss. The Fenelon Falls dining room opened under the Ziraldo name in 2018, and the Italian-steakhouse split has sat at its centre from the start.

The Summer 2026 list keeps that split current rather than inherited — the strongest orders come from the menu diners see now, not an older profile. Doors open at noon seven days a week, so a midday plate of pasta is as available as the weekend dinner; the kitchen holds until eight most nights and stretches to nine on Friday and Saturday, which makes the weekend the window worth booking. The catering line carries the same cooking past the dining room when a gathering needs feeding. Bring a table that wants both a lobster tail and a plate of gnocchi, and neither order has to give way.