Twisted Arm Bar and Grill

Read the menu at Twisted Arm and a classic-rock songbook starts to assemble itself. The Tragically Dip, the Gord Downie burger, The James Taylor, Five for Fighting, My Little Highway Grill — the naming is the through-line, and it tells a first-time diner what kind of bar-and-grill they have walked into before a single plate lands. This is a Sarnia kitchen on the London Road corridor, open since 2017, that decided its comfort food should have a sense of humour. The jokes are on the menu card; the cooking underneath them is straight pub food made to be shared.

The wings are the flexible centre of an order. They come jumbo by the ten, and the sauce list is where the kitchen shows its hand: Mild and Honey Garlic at one end, then Fire & Ice, Campfire, Maple Bacon, Garlic Parmesan, Thai Chili, and Cobra Thai for a table that wants to push. The Classic Wonton Nachos swap the usual tortilla base for crispy wontons under Thai chicken, shredded carrots, green onions, cheese, and bean sprouts — a sharper share plate than the standard pub pile. The Tragically Dip lands first when the meal is built around sharing, a hot popper-style dip with pita points, with the Twisted Potato Cakes — panko-crusted mashed potato loaded with cheese, bacon, and jalapenos — close behind it. From there the menu runs to loaded builds: the Angry Pickle burger, stacked with pickle cream cheese, red onions, mozzarella, and a deep-fried BBQ pickle; beer-battered and panko haddock cut in two and served with fries, slaw, and house tartar; coconut tempura shrimp with sweet Thai chili; the Mighty Mac & Cheese with garlic toast.

A Thai accent keeps surfacing where you would not expect it. It runs through the wing sauces, through the Thai chicken on the wonton nachos, through the coconut tempura on the jumbo shrimp and the sweet Thai chili that finishes them, through the Thai sour creme on the potato cakes. It is a small, repeated decision that keeps the food from reading as boilerplate bar fare, and it sits comfortably next to the burgers and haddock without asking the menu to commit to one thing. The kitchen is playful on the surface and steady underneath — the part that keeps regulars ordering past the novelty of the names.

The neighbourhood feel is not an accident of décor; it is how the place was built. The owners are lifetime Sarnia residents with more than twenty years of hospitality behind them, and the place leans on community, fresh food, and friendly service rather than any single dish. That posture shows up in the breadth of the menu. Vegetarian and gluten-free options are noted as available, with meatless paths through the 5 Alarm Cauliflower, the Spinach Cheese Dip, the Thai Cauliflower Veggie Wrap, and a Blackbean Burger. A separate kids menu runs alongside the mains, and the share-plate sections are wide enough that a mixed table finds its way without anyone settling.

The dinner menu and the Almost Famous Lunch Menu split the day cleanly. At midday the order tightens to B-Side Sammys — The Full Monty Cristo on sourdough French with ham, smoked turkey, and a maple bacon glaze, The James Taylor, Five for Fighting, The Happy Pappy — and Twisted Half Wraps with a side of fries, soup of the day, or a house, Caesar, or Greek salad. By night the full board opens up, and on Fridays and Saturdays the kitchen runs past midnight while the rest of the week winds down by ten or eleven. That is the rhythm a corridor restaurant settles into: a quick sandwich on a weekday, a long table of wings and burgers on a weekend, the same kitchen handling both without changing what it is.