Plank Restobar Augusta

The dish names at Plank Restobar read like a comedy set — Drunk Nonna, The Big Macka, Take a Bao, Ribbed For Your Pleasure — and the joke is that the cooking underneath them is not kidding. Behind the punchlines is a kitchen plating crisp Brussels sprouts under green goddess dressing, ahi tuna on chilled spoons, and Korean fried chicken folded into steamed bao. This is the Augusta Street location of Plank, in the middle of Hamilton's Hess Village, and everything about it is sized for sharing — small plates that arrive in rounds and let a table build a meal by committee.

The menu crosses borders without much ceremony. Goddess Brusselle, the plate the kitchen leans on hardest, crisps Brussels sprouts and layers them with pomegranate, pickled cabbage, toasted pumpkin seeds and a green goddess dressing that lands sweet and tangy at once. Take a Bao tucks Korean fried chicken into steamed buns with sesame aioli and pickled slaw, with fried tofu offered as the plant-based swap. Poke Spoons set raw ahi tuna against chili, nori, crispy wasabi and pickled ginger, the cold and sharp counterweight to everything fried around them. From there the range only widens: a Drunk Nonna Pizza under vodka sauce, sweet Italian sausage and fior di latte; a Margaritaville Pizza kept simple with basil and tomato; The Big Macka, risotto balls stuffed with seasoned beef and American cheese; a Reuben Egg Roll packed with corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss; Cauliflower Fritters in beer batter with roasted garlic aioli. Duck Poutine and House Sliders sit among the plates a table reaches for first.

What ties the list together is not a cuisine but a sensibility. A kitchen that will run an Italian pizza, a diner Reuben, Hawaiian-style poke and a Korean bao off the same pass cares more about the rhythm of a shared table than about staying inside one tradition. The names carry that attitude out to the guest — Cluck Norris, Miso Into You, The Loaf That Banh Mi Built — a place that refuses to take itself too seriously. But the ingredient lists underneath, the pomegranate and fior di latte and green goddess, belong to a kitchen that takes the food seriously enough. The contrast is the whole design: every round can hold something rich, something fresh and something fried, so no single plate is asked to carry the meal.

The setting matches the format. Plank opened the Augusta Street location in 2023 with a rooftop patio that runs weather permitting, Tuesday through Sunday, and a bar that treats craft cocktails as part of the meal rather than a preamble to it. The easiest way in is the weekday Appy Hour, two to five Monday through Friday: ten-dollar appetizers, twenty-ounce pints for seven-fifty and ten-dollar classic cocktails, dine-in only. Wednesday adds Winesday, two-for-one on six-ounce pours. On Friday and Saturday the kitchen keeps going until one in the morning, which puts Plank as much inside Hess Village's late rhythm as its dinner one.

That late reach says something about who the restaurant is for. It works as a first look, an Appy Hour catch-up at a rooftop table before the night gets going, and it works just as well at eleven when the rest of the block is winding down and a group still wants a spread of plates and another round. The names get the first laugh; the green goddess dressing, the beer-battered cauliflower and the ahi spoons are what bring a table back. Plank is less a place you go for one dish than one you learn to order across, a plate at a time, until the table in front of you looks nothing like your neighbour's.