Baja Craft Kitchen

Baja Craft Kitchen is built to be grazed. The coastal-Mexican kitchen on Ontario Street in downtown Kingston doesn't course a meal — plates leave as they are ready and land in no particular order, which is the right way to eat a menu this wide. A table fills with a Baja fish taco next to a tuna tostada, masa chips pulled between them, and an agave flight arriving whenever the bar gets to it.

The tacos carry the menu. The Baja fish taco is the clearest statement of intent — cerveza-battered cod, house slaw, cilantro, and sambal aioli folded into a flour tortilla — and the tuna tostada sharpens the seafood side with yellowfin, ponzu, avocado, sesame, salsa macha, and crispy wonton. Quesabirria brings the braised-brisket depth, served on corn with a cup of birria broth; the Castacan taco layers crispy pork belly over corn-and-bean pico; Ceviche de Pescado runs cod through citrus, jalapeño, cucumber, and avocado. The house-made blue corn masa chips are pressed daily and fried to order, which is more work than a chip basket usually gets and the reason they hold their own between the fish and the pork.

The menu keeps going past the greatest hits, which is what makes Baja work for a table that can't agree. Vegetarians aren't stuck with a token side — there's a portobello taco with avocado salsa, a roasted-cauliflower taco with achiote and salsa macha, panko-breaded avocado fries with sambal aioli. The Baja Bowl builds on rice, slaw, and pico and lets each person choose a protein, from birria brisket to chile verde to portobello. Shareables fill the gaps: grilled shrimp in roasted-garlic and chilli butter, a Cholula chicken dip, chilaquiles for the table that starts early. Churros with chocolate or caramel close it out. Few tables leave having ordered the same way.

The bar is not an afterthought bolted onto a taco menu. Agave runs the list — flights that move through mezcal and tequila under names like Zapotec and Tijuana Special, a Picante Margarita built on reposado, mango, fresh chili, and Tajín salt, a Coastal Margarita washed with coconut, an Oaxacan Old Fashioned leaning on mezcal, a Baja Sour that folds bourbon and Aperol around jalapeño and egg white. Friday and Saturday nights, half-price margaritas run from ten until close, which quietly marks what Baja becomes late: less a dinner stop than a place to keep a table going over handhelds and agave. The coastal sourcing shows up in the fine print, too, with local names on the menu — Patchwork Gardens, Seed to Sausage, Enright Cattle Co., and The Fungi Connection.

Baja grew out of travel. Owners Dave McNamara and his wife and business partner Becky spent years eating through coastal Mexico and the small, family-run places they found along the way, and the idea sat with them for more than a decade before it opened in Kingston. That backstory explains the menu's instincts — the reach past taco-bar defaults toward tostadas, ceviche, and an agave bar with real range. What lands on the plate traces back to specific places two people wanted to bring home.

The address does its part. Ontario Street puts Baja in the Old Sydenham blocks a short walk from the water, with a patio suited to the lingering, shared way the menu wants to be eaten and Libro handling reservations for the nights a table would rather not gamble on a walk-in. The kitchen opens for lunch and runs through dinner, later on Fridays and Saturdays when the late margaritas and the grazing menu line up best. Kingston is not short on tacos; Baja's case is the depth behind them — a coastal-Mexican menu with enough in the seafood and the agave to be worth planning around.