Borealis Grille & Bar

Borealis Grille & Bar at 1388 Gordon Street in south Guelph is one of four restaurants operated by the Neighbourhood Group of Companies — alongside a sibling Borealis location in Kitchener and three Guelph spots (Miijidaa Cafe + Bistro, The Wooly Pub, Park Eatery). The Guelph room has been open since 2008 and runs a Canadian comfort-and-grill format: weekend brunch on Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 AM to 3 PM, weekday lunch and dinner, and a full bar that runs all the way from adaptogenic mushroom elixirs through cocktails-on-tap to Ontario draught and a private-label wine list. Mains land in the low twenties to high thirties; the kitchen runs gluten-friendly, vegetarian, vegan, and dairy-free substitutions across most categories with a clearly-marked menu legend. Reservations are accepted, walk-ins land on the bar, takeout runs through the curbside ordering portal, and delivery moves through one of the major aggregators. The room is wood-accented, family-comfortable, and substantial enough that the Google footprint sits at 4.4 stars across roughly 1,800 reviews — the high end of what a casual-grill format produces in the Guelph segment.

Court Desautels is the president of the Neighbourhood Group of Companies, and the group's framing of itself is consistent across every public-facing surface: doing good in the neighbourhood has been our mission since day one. The mission isn't a tagline grafted onto a casual-grill concept; it sits at the level of certification. Borealis is one of the few B Corp certified restaurants in Canada, with third-party verification routed through B Lab. The four-restaurant family operates carbon neutral as a group, with carbon offsets purchased through Anwaatin, an Indigenous-led offset organization that ties back to Indigenous land stewardship. The mission has produced concrete numbers — over half a million dollars raised cumulatively for local non-profits including Kidsability, Food4Kids, Women In Crisis, and Anishnabeg Outreach, with a quarter of that amount earmarked specifically for protecting the Speed and Grand Rivers. During the pandemic, an Employee Relief Fund raised $50,000 for staff in the form of grants and no-interest loans. The thread that runs through every one of these moves is the same: the neighbourhood goes both ways.

The kitchen has tested the limits of that thread once already, on the record. In October 2020, CBC News documented a Neighbourhood Group project called Re(PURPOSE), built with Provision Coalition's president and CEO Cher Mereweather and a seven-partner supply chain. The Wellington Brewery in Guelph supplied spent grain from its brewing operations. The spent grain went to Oreka Solutions, an insect farm in Cambridge, where it was used to feed bugs. The bugs became feed for fish raised by Izumi Aquaculture in Burlington — a facility that converts old gravel pits into closed-system aquaculture sites. Fish waste from those operations went to Smoyd Potato Farms in Wellington as natural fertilizer. The potatoes came back. So did the fish. So did the bread, made by Grain Revolution from repurposed grain with yeast cultured by Escarpment Labs. The chefs of the Neighbourhood Group then plated the loop: a trout sandwich, a sourdough-crusted fish and chips, and a trout gravalax — three dishes you could order alongside the same Wellington beer that the spent grain came from. The CBC reporter noted that humans don't eat spent grain directly; the point was never the gross factor. It was that the upstream waste stream and the downstream menu turned out to be the same conversation. Court Desautels described the project as the B Corp commitment taking it to another whole new level.

Most of that ecosystem is still on the menu today, surfaced through supplier names in dish prose. The Mushroom Brie Burger ($24.99) builds on a YU Ranch grass-fed beef and pork patty layered with Gunn's Hill brie — two of the most-named suppliers across the whole menu, here in a single sandwich. YU Ranch's Bryan and Cathy get a separate name-check on the Neighbourhood Good page for championing sustainable farming for decades. Buttermilk Fried Ontario Chicken anchors the protein side of the kitchen, appearing across dinner Mains, the brunch Local Heroes section, and a buffalo-sauced sandwich variant in Handhelds — the kitchen leads with this dish in its own content marketing. The Crispy Skin Manitoulin Trout ($29.99) brings in Sheshegwaning First Nations trout from Manitoulin Island; the Three Sisters Bowl ($24.99) takes its name from the Indigenous Three Sisters agricultural tradition — corn, beans, and squash grown together — and lands as the vegan-and-gluten-free-and-dairy-free flagship in one dish. Great Lakes Fish + Chips uses Ocean Wise pickerel rather than commodity cod, the regional move that connected directly to the Re(PURPOSE) project. The peameal in the Smoked Peameal Bacon Benedict comes from 3gen Farms; the steaks and short rib in the heaviest mains come from VG Farms; the greens come from Haven Farm; the asparagus chips that turn up in nachos and the asparagus spears that anchor the house Caesars come from Barrie's Farm.

The drinks program runs at the same register as the food. Four Daily Elixirs sit at the top of the menu — Mindful Meadow with lion's mane elixir for focus, The Soother with reishi for relaxation, Green Glow with cold-brew green tea and Ontario peach for energy, Flora Fizz with locally crafted kombucha for immunity — each priced under $9 and positioned as functional rather than indulgent. The Borealis Caesar gets the house treatment: vodka, caesar mix, Worcestershire, the in-house Neighbourhood Goods Fire Breather hot sauce, and a Barrie's Farm asparagus spear standing in for the standard celery. Dill With It runs pickle-infused vodka through the same mix. Cocktails-on-tap arrive in four flavours from Shift and Collective Arts, with Friday flights at $19.99 for a four-glass pour. Thirteen draught taps lean heavily Ontario — Wellington from down the road, Sleeman also in Guelph, Cowbell, Great Lakes, Collective Arts, and an Elora Borealis Pale Ale brewed in collaboration with Elora Brewing that carries the restaurant's own name. The wine list runs a private-label "Wines from the 'Hood" pour alongside Jackson-Triggs, Inniskillin, Sandbanks, Trius, Cave Spring, Pearl Morissette, Tawse, Southbrook, and Foreign Affair across reds and whites. The non-alcoholic program is genuinely built rather than tacked on — Bellwoods Stay Classy, Collective Arts NA IPA, Partake, Live! Kombucha, and a Leitz NA Riesling and Pinot Noir from Germany available by the glass and bottle.

Weeknights have a rhythm: Monday is Wing Night with pound-of-Ontario-chicken specials and $6 Wellington pints, Tuesday is Taco Night, Wednesday is Date Night with a three-course-for-two at $69.99 plus $10 off bottles of wine, and Friday is Cocktail Flights. Weekend Brunch is the newer addition — nine brunch classics including a Croque Monsieur built on Gunn's Hill 5 Brothers cheese and 3gen smoked peameal, a Dulce de Leche French Toast on sourdough, a VG Farms Steak + Eggs, and four eggs benedict variants. The room takes families and date nights and group dinners with equal comfort. The mission that started seventeen years ago in the original Guelph dining room has accumulated rather than evolved — local at the very core, said the same way then as now, with the supplier names on the menu and the $500K raised on the wall. The neighbourhood feeds the kitchen, and the kitchen feeds the neighbourhood back.