Baci Ristorante

A wood-burning oven anchors the open kitchen at Baci Ristorante, and it does most of the talking — pizza blistered against live flame, lasagna and ragu-heavy pastas pulled from the same heat. The oven sits in full view on the ground floor of the C Hotel on Hamilton Mountain, which gives the restaurant two lives at once: a breakfast room for guests staying upstairs and a full Italian dinner house for the neighbourhood around Concession Street. It has worked both roles since 2011.

Dinner reads as modern Italian built on a comfort-food spine. Nonna's Meatballs — hand-rolled beef, veal and pork in tomato sugo, finished with whipped ricotta and basil — make the natural opening plate, and the Baci Bruschetta carries more of that whipped ricotta onto toasted ciabatta with blistered cherry tomatoes, basil and a balsamic reduction. The pasta list then splits between richness and restraint. On the heavier side sit the Wood-Oven Baked Baci Lasagna, layered with ricotta, mozzarella and a beef-and-pork ragu, and the Tagliatelle Bolognese under a slow-simmered beef, pork and veal sauce. On the lighter, Spaghetti All'Aragosta pairs fresh lobster with chili threads, chives and lemon in a delicate lobster butter, while Burrata Ravioli arrives with garlic butter, cherry tomatoes and zucchini chips. Linguine Frutti De Mare gathers shrimp, calamari and mussels into a garlic marinara for the table that came for the sea. Beyond the headliners, the kitchen keeps the expected supporting cast — Calamari Fritti, Beef Carpaccio, a Gnocchi Toscana — so a longer table can graze across several courses.

The oven earns its keep on the pizza list too. A Diavola stacks spicy soppressata, kalamata olives, mozzarella and chili oil over San Marzano; a Funghi e Tartufo leans earthy; and a smoked-mozzarella-and-pineapple pie sits, unapologetic, on the same page. The willingness to run lobster spaghetti and a pineapple pizza off one line is a decision, not an accident — this is a kitchen aiming to satisfy a whole table rather than flatter a single palate. Because the cooking happens in open view, that range reads as confidence rather than hedging. Chicken Parmesan over spaghettini and a classic tiramisu wait for anyone who came strictly for the familiar.

Two standing deals sharpen the midweek case. Wine Down Wednesdays cuts select bottles to half price, turning the middle of the week into the practical time to open something better with dinner; a Friday-and-Saturday happy hour fills the hour before service, from four to five, with five-dollar beers and cocktails at half off. Those small structures do real work — they give a wide menu an easier shape to build an evening around, whether the evening is a quiet date, a booth-bound work dinner, or a celebration that runs from shared starters to dessert.

Being the C Hotel's dining room shapes everything downstream. Breakfast runs every morning — seven to ten on weekdays, eight to eleven on weekends — while dinner holds to Wednesday through Sunday, so the kitchen keeps hotel hours at one end of the day and restaurant hours at the other. The same adaptability reaches past the dining room: reservations through OpenTable, takeout and delivery, a wheelchair-accessible entrance, and group dining that scales from roughly fifteen to fifty. A separate family-style menu covers the table that would rather order in.

What holds it together is less a concept than a location. A hotel restaurant has to feed guests who did not choose it and neighbours who did — at breakfast and at dinner, on a weeknight and on a birthday — and Baci has spent more than a decade widening its menu to fit that spread rather than narrowing it. The lobster pasta and the pineapple pizza are not a contradiction here. A place that feeds a hotel and a neighbourhood keeps both on the menu on purpose.