The Grand Cantina

The taco named ODB arrives with barbacoa, queso, roasted corn, and lime crema. The one called Los Pollos Hermanos is citrus-brined grilled chicken; Ugly Delicious is crispy gochujang chicken; Veganville is tempura-fried smoked tofu. The names at The Grand Cantina are an inside joke the whole table can read — a Wu-Tang verse, a Breaking Bad front, a Jack Black movie — and the cooking underneath them is in earnest. It's a Walkerville cantina built around inventive tacos, loaded fries, and a bar that runs late, broad enough that a mixed group rarely leaves without each person finding their plate.

The taco list is where the kitchen spends its imagination. Barbacoa beef on the ODB, hoisin-glazed duck and pickled jalapeno on the Sticky Duck, blackened mahi mahi with mango on the fish taco, tempura cod under pineapple salsa, coconut shrimp with chipotle aioli. A full vegan column runs alongside it — chorizo-spiced TVP, tempura smoked tofu, a sweet-potato taco that comes gluten-free on a corn tortilla — so the table orders from one menu instead of negotiating around it. The sides hold their own: esquites under queso crumble and chipotle crema, street corn fritters, pineapple-marinated al pastor skewers, a roasted-cauliflower Cauli-Asada. Then the duck-fat fries, the other signature — cut thick, tossed in parmesan and truffle salt, finished with banana ketchup, and available loaded with melted cheese, pickled onion, jalapeno, and chipotle aioli. Dessert is four churros and a house salted caramel. The Cantina Burger, local Ontario beef on a potato bun, anchors a standing Burger Thursday.

What the menu says about the kitchen is that it treats Mexican street food as a starting grammar rather than a rulebook. Gochujang and hoisin sit next to barbacoa and al pastor; a Korean-style fried-chicken taco lands a few lines from citrus-brined grilled chicken and coconut shrimp. None of it reads as novelty for its own sake, because the execution stays consistent down the list — the same care goes into the vegan chorizo as into the duck. That range is the reason a first-timer and a regular can sit at the same table and both order well.

The Grand Cantina opened in 2018 in Ford City, on Drouillard Road, where the original storefront ran bright and playful with an art-deco, Los Cabos lean. In 2022 it moved to Walkerville and a larger Wyandotte Street East address — two thousand square feet, a long L-shaped bar, two dining areas, and a skull-themed look anchored by a Día de los Muertos mural from local artist DERKZ. Local reporting names John Alvarez and Rosemary Woods as the owners across both addresses. The move traded a small storefront for a proper dining room and bar without losing the colour the original was known for.

Weekends widen the schedule. The kitchen runs a Cantina Breakfast on Saturday and Sunday mornings — breakfast tacos, pancakes, and brunch-leaning burgers before the regular menu takes over — and the patio opens beneath the DERKZ mural once the weather turns. The bar is its own draw, pouring margaritas, tequila, and Mexican beer well past dinner on Friday and Saturday. Reservations book online and takeout runs through the cantina's own ordering page, but a share of tables stays open for walk-ins, which is how most weeknights actually go.

Eight years in, the cantina has settled into Walkerville as the kind of place a city points newcomers toward, with Best Taco Joint honours from the regional Best of Windsor-Essex awards to back the word of mouth. It still runs on the instinct it opened with: name the Sticky Duck after a punchline, then braise the duck like the joke depends on it. Order a mixed three-pack, add the loaded fries for the table, and finish with the churros while the bar gets loud around you.