PICNIC Tapas & Wine

The sign still reads Tapas & Wine, but the kitchen behind it now cooks like a Mexican cantina — tacos, tostadas, and a raw bar of oysters where a tapas-and-wine menu used to be. PICNIC sits on Mississaga Street East in downtown Orillia, and it has spent its second act reorganizing around salsa roja, mezcal, and a seafood counter without giving up what made the original work: a compact, social dining room built for a table ordering several plates at once. The legacy name stayed. The menu moved.

The cantina turn shows up first in the handhelds. The Fish Taco is built with guajillo chilli and herbs, then finished with salsa roja; the Pork Asada Taco carries slow-cooked pork shoulder under salsa roja and pico; the Cauliflower Taco leans on chipotle aioli, lime, fresh cheese, and Tajín. Tostadas do the same work on a flat shell — a Shortrib Beef Tostada with chimichurri and chipotle aioli, and a Burrata Tostada with wild greens and pumpkin seed. Around them sit the snacks a cantina runs on: Chicharrón, roasted pork belly bites with salsa verde, and Street Corn rebuilt with maitake mushroom, jalapeño, chipotle, pecans, and mint. The plates stay small enough to keep ordering.

Not everything got rewritten. A short list of PICNIC Classics holds the line between the two versions of the kitchen — Duck Confit with pickled berries, Octopus with salsa verde, Baked Cheese with honey and sourdough, and the original PICNIC Sandwich of smoked ham, Monterey Jack, relish, and apple. The result is a menu that reads as a cantina without being boxed in by one: a table can stay in taco-and-tostada territory or wander into duck and cheese, then close on a burnt cheesecake finished with maple syrup and smoked salt. It is a hybrid the kitchen seems to run on purpose.

What sets PICNIC apart from a standard taco-and-margarita stop is how far it leans into seafood. The oysters arrive by the half-dozen — East Coast and crisp, or West Coast and creamy — served with hot sauce, lime, and mezcal. They share the seafood lane with a scallop ceviche of lime, melon, and cucumber and a Tuna Tostada layered with avocado, orange, chilli, shallot, and radish. The bar is built to match: more than forty tequilas and mezcals, plus sangria, wine, and house cocktails like an Oaxaca Old Fashioned and a Mezpresso Martini. The drinks read as part of the meal, not a rail behind it.

PICNIC opened in 2021 as a tapas-and-wine bar and now runs inside the Common Hospitality group, alongside sister restaurants The Common Stove, The Hog & Penny, and LUCA. The relaunch gave the kitchen a named lead: local reporting credits chef Joel Bennett with the current menu and names Darcy MacDonell as a co-owner. The clearest link back to the first version of PICNIC is the Mushroom + Manchego — truffled brioche with honey and Manchego, a holdover that, by local accounts, has been the kitchen's steadiest seller since the early days. It is the one dish a regular from the old tapas bar would still recognize on sight.

The reinvention did not cost PICNIC its rhythm. The menu still works as a shared spread, and the week is built around it: buy-one-get-one Tuesdays, half-price oysters on Wednesdays, wine on Thursdays, an early fish window on Fridays, sangria on Saturdays, and a summer mezcal window on Sundays. Groups can take the dining room outright — the private-events setup books full buyouts for about forty-five at a reception or thirty seated — which fits a kitchen already organized around plates that move down a table. The wine list that gave PICNIC its name is still there; it just shares the table now with a copita of mezcal.