Christo's Pizza & Burgers

Christo's calls itself a pizza and burger shop, and the Exmouth Street storefront keeps that promise plainly enough. Read down the menu, though, and a Greek kitchen keeps surfacing: gyros and chicken souvlaki, a house salad piled with feta and Kalamata olives, tzatziki offered as a burger sauce, and a specialty pizza stacked with feta, oregano, and black olives. The build-your-own burgers and the specialty pizzas are the headline, and they carry the place. Underneath, the comfort-food menu runs wider than the name lets on.

The burger board is built around a decision the kitchen hands back to the diner. Choose a single, double, or triple patty — or a veggie, grilled chicken, crispy chicken, or hot dog in the same slot — then work the condiments: Christo's Sauce, tzatziki, spicy mayo, hot sauce, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and jalapenos. The premium toppings are where it gets less ordinary, with caramelized onions and mushrooms sitting next to a fried egg, peameal bacon, chili, and even peanut butter. The chicken sandwiches run off the same counter, led by a Nashville hot chicken offered original, medium, or hot with comeback sauce, coleslaw, and pickles.

The pizza side carries its own range. The build-your-own pies come in ten-inch and fourteen-inch sizes, with a topping list that runs from pepperoni, bacon, and Italian sausage to garlic, olives, and pineapple. The specialty pizzas are where the kitchen loosens up: a Greek pizza under feta, oregano, and black olives; BBQ chicken; Spicy Thai built on sweet chili sauce; and Buffalo chicken with blue cheese. For a group, the pizza specials carry the order — two large three-item pizzas, two extra-large, or a pickup-only large pepperoni. The dill pickle pizza, on creamy dill sauce, is there for anyone inclined to argue about whether it belongs.

The supporting menu goes deeper than most counters bother with. The fries are fresh cut, never frozen, and they anchor a full specialty-fries section: Christo's Fries under the house sauce, bacon, cheese sauce, chili, green onions, jalapeno, and sour cream; Feta Fries leaning Greek with tzatziki, olives, and tomatoes; poutine, Mexi fries, chili-and-cheese fries, and dill pickle fries beside them. Onion rings arrive with Christo's Sauce, and cheesy garlic bread and deep-fried pickles fill out the sides. The salads hold their own corner — a Christo's Salad with feta and Kalamata olives in Greek dressing, a bacon-and-Parmesan Caesar, and a loaded Cobb with ham, egg, corn, and cucumber under ranch.

A burger-and-pizza counter is not obligated to also keep a Greek menu, a salad lineup, and a specialty-fries section this long. Christo's keeps all three. The shop has held its place on the Exmouth Street corridor since 2012, long enough for the wide menu to settle into the role it was built for — a kitchen set up equally for a sit-down lunch, a takeout bag, and a delivery run. The same menu that handles a quick solo order handles a group pizza run without shifting gears.

For all its range, the menu keeps circling back to one through-line: the house name on the things that matter. Christo's Sauce turns up on the burgers, the onion rings, and the loaded fries; the Christo's Salad and Christo's Fries carry it onto the Greek items and the sides. The dill pickle pizza and the peanut-butter burger topping say the kitchen will still try the odd thing and keep it on the standing menu rather than a specials page. What a Sarnia diner gets out of it is not one dish to build a visit around but a wide, confident menu that has had years to learn what it does well.