Kyle Ferreira, who runs the Hamilton businesses Saltlick Smokehouse and Bar Sazerac with his partner Jennifer, makes a cocktail with Canadian spirits on Feb. 4.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
Pizza maker Graham Palmateer pushed his cart down the aisle of A1 Cash and Carry, a restaurant wholesaler in west Toronto, and paused in front of the canned tomatoes.
“Sorry, friend, but you’re dead to me,” he joked, looking down at the flats of bright, sweet California-grown tomatoes he’d been purchasing since he opened his shop, Gram’s Pizza, last June.
These days, he’s using canned tomatoes from Italy. He has opted for pepperoni from Venetian Meats in Stoney Creek, Ont., instead of the industry favourite, Ezzo, which is made in Ohio. He buys flour milled in Mississauga and mozzarella made in Toronto. Once the last Coca-Cola products are cleared off his shelves, he’ll be replacing them with more sodas from Burlington, Ont.’s The PoP Shoppe.
“With all the bluster in the last couple of weeks about tariffs, I figured I’m done,” he said. “Buy Canadian. Avoid American, really.”
This past week, Canadian restaurant owners have been rethinking their menus as well as changing up the ingredients they source and products they serve, in light of a possible trade war between Canada and the United States. While the two countries reached an agreement on Monday to hold off on imposing 25-per-cent tariffs on goods crossing the border for 30 days, the threat was enough to trigger possibly permanent changes to how restaurants operate.
Kyle Ferreira carries pork shoulder on Feb. 4.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s pledge to pull American alcoholic beverages from LCBO shelves earlier this week – which was also paused after the tariff threat was put on hold – prompted the operators of Hamilton’s Bar Sazerac to consider how their cocktail menu would be affected.
The drinks that used American bourbon and mead would have to go. But instead of replacing those products with a non-American alternative, they took a step back and decided to overhaul their entire food and drink menu to make it “primarily Canadian,” said owner Kyle Ferreira, who runs the bar with his wife, Jennifer.
It’s an effort to keep costs down, but also to promote local brands.
They will remove their bourbon-based Oh Captain My Captain cocktail from the menu and are planning to add a hyperlocal martini made with gin and mustard seeds, both from Hamilton producers. Other drinks their team has dreamed up will use products from Ontario distilleries Nickel 9 and Collective Arts.
They plan to build their food menu using as much seasonal Canadian produce as possible. “If you say, ‘These are the vegetables that we have that are grown in greenhouses in Canada,’ then cool. This is what we have to do,” Mr. Ferreira said. “It’s going to be very interesting to see what is available and what we can do.”
The menu at Saltlick Smokehouse, the barbecue joint the Ferreiras run, is another matter. The back ribs are from American pork, so the Ferreiras are bracing themselves for what a 25-per-cent tariff on a meat order that routinely runs a few thousand dollars could mean for their already thin margins.
Kyle and Jennifer Ferreira look over labels on Canadian made spirits before opening the restaurant on Feb. 4.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
The Canadian Cattle Association has warned that tariffs would greatly increase the cost of beef on both sides of the border, which has Mr. Ferreira wondering how pricey brisket – one of Saltlick’s signature menu items – might get.
About six years ago, when he started cooking brisket, the average cost of the cut of meat was about $60 to $70. Now, it’s $150. Saltlick’s menu allows customers to choose three meats and two sides for a fixed price, and to manage the soaring cost of brisket, the Ferreiras have opted to serve a smaller portion of it.
“We’ve gone through every single possible austerity measure that we could think of,” Mr. Ferreira said, “but we’ve pretty much run out of room on our side of the line to give people the best possible value for the best possible price.”
The cost of food purchased from restaurants rose 3.5 per cent from 2023 to 2024, according to Statistics Canada. Tariffs aside, the 2025 Food Price Report, released in December, predicted a 3- to 5-per-cent increase this year.
Mr. Ferreira is loath to remove brisket from the menu, given how popular it is, but “if I ever saw one of our standard-size briskets at $200, I’d just be like, ‘Nah, I’m done.’”
While the Ferreiras took the initiative to update Bar Sazerac’s menu to make it more Canadian-focused, Kelly Higginson, the CEO of industry group Restaurants Canada, says operators across Canada are facing immense pressure from customers to ditch American products – and fast.
Kyle and Jennifer Ferreira sit before opening the restaurant on Feb. 4.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
One of her group’s members, which produces high-end meal kits, was recently inundated with e-mails from customers specifying that they didn’t want any American wine or food in their delivery this week – a difficult demand, especially when businesses have inventory to work through.
Given how entangled Canada’s and America’s supply chains are, avoiding American products isn’t so easy.
Consider the hamburger, Ms. Higginson says. The bun could be made with Saskatchewan flour but baked in California. A cow born in Alberta might be raised in Nebraska and processed in Colorado before being sent back up to Canada in patty form. The bacon could come from Manitoba pigs that were processed in Iowa.
Erik Thordarson, the owner of Winnipeg’s Tabula Rasa restaurant, says he’s worried most about how tariffs could affect his bottom line when it comes to buying fresh fruit and vegetables.
At his Spanish- and Mediterranean-inspired restaurant, even the dishes that are protein- or starch-forward rely on access to quality produce: The crab and saffron risotto has roasted red pepper and peas; the beef tenderloin is served with chimichurri made from fresh herbs; the burrata comes with a tomato and pepper confit with basil.
“If prices were to skyrocket, we would have to assess whether or not using said produce was realistic or if we could reprice it on our menu,” he said.
Like the Ferreiras, he’s trying to switch out American alcoholic beverages with Canadian alternatives. The bourbon will be swapped for a whiskey made by Newfoundland distillery Signal Hill. It’s corn-heavy, aged in an oak barrel and tastes similar to bourbon, he said.
He plans to discuss with his team whether a shift to a menu that highlights Canadian products and ingredients is something they should do even if the tariffs are never imposed.
“Why don’t we do this anyways to support more Canadian products,” he said. “It’s a safety net for our own menu.”
