Brass Monkey Local

Brass Monkey Local cooks like a New York dive bar that wandered onto St. Paul Street and decided to stay. Chopped cheese griddled onto a hoagie, a Nathan's footlong, crispy fries buried under seasoned chopped-cheese beef and queso — this is downtown late-night comfort food with the volume turned up, anchored to the bar culture of New York City and a rock identity the bar wears openly. And then the same kitchen turns around and offers to build nearly any of it without meat.

The food runs on bar-snack maximalism, and the apps alone could carry a table: Xtreme fries smothered in chopped-cheese beef and pico, chips and queso, spring rolls, pizza fingers in egg-roll wrappers, and Crispy Community fries with gravy on the side. Old Skool chicken wings come ten to an order with a long list of sauces, the onion rings are billed as O'rings, and the Blue Ribbon fish and chips arrives as lightly beer-battered haddock with tartar and creamy coleslaw. From there the menu sprawls in every direction a hungry table might wander — a New York chopped cheese on a hoagie, a Cheese Dog Con Carne under queso and chopped-cheese beef, a Crunch Wrap around a crisp tostada shell, Punk Rock nachos for the centre of the table, a Killer Quesadilla, a Buffalo chicken wrap, a smash burger doubled with American cheese, a Massive fish sandwich, a Crispy Club on brioche, poutine, and Nonna T's cauli-bites fried in beer batter with a curry dip. Salads hold the lighter end, and for the group order the O.G. takeout boxes bundle pizza fingers, wings, quesadillas, onion rings, and dips into one box.

Two threads run underneath all of it and tell you what kind of bar this is. The first is how far the vegan accommodation reaches. A Beyond patty stands in on the cheeseburger, vegan chick'n fills the wraps and nuggets, Daiya cheese goes on the quesadilla, vegan ground round drops into the nachos, and the dirty box comes in a fully vegan build. This is not a token meatless line bolted onto a meat menu; it is threaded straight through the order, which is genuinely uncommon for a room built on chopped cheese and footlong dogs. Taken together, it reads like a kitchen that wants the vegan friend and the chopped-cheese diehard at the same table, neither one compromising. The second thread is the naming. The Classic Rock cheeseburger, the Punk Rock nachos, and the Old Skool wings keep the music in the menu, and the New York chopped cheese makes the stated inspiration literal — a bodega-counter sandwich carried north to Niagara.

Brass Monkey opened in 2020, though its connection to the neighbourhood predates the restaurant. Downtown St. Catharines is home turf for the people behind it — the community they have lived and worked in for more than fifteen years — and the bar reads as an extension of that, built around food, drinks, live music, and the friends-and-family regulars who keep a neighbourhood bar going. It sits on St. Paul Street, in the middle of the downtown strip, with patio seating when the weather turns warm and online ordering for the takeout nights.

The hours tell you how the bar gets used. Brass Monkey leans into the weekend — open latest on Friday and Saturday, straight through to midnight — when the rock side runs loudest, and keeps shorter evenings through the week, dark on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is built less for the occasion than for the habit: wings and a beer, a chopped cheese to split, a takeout box for the group that wants a bit of everything. Food, drink, rock, community — the menu is just the longest way of saying the four words the bar leads with.