The Journal · The Brantford Club

Juniper Dining Co. vs The Brantford Club: The Plates and the Company

Juniper Dining Co. is a French bistro, by its own account a modern fine dining restaurant, at 7 Grand River Street North in Paris, Ontario, open to the public for dinner from 5 in the evening. The Brantford Club is a private club, its door at 98 George Street, Brantford, where a private dinner takes one room of the house and a menu settled with executive chef Eric Wasylenky beforehand.

If the bistro in Paris is what you came for, its own pages say this. Juniper Dining Co. is at 7 Grand River Street North, Paris, Ontario N3L 2L9, near the Nith River bridge in the downtown, at an address its site announces as its new location. The phone is 519 302 2200 and the email is dine@juniperdiningco.ca. By its contact page, dinner runs Wednesday to Sunday from 5 in the evening until 10, with lunch on Saturday and Sunday from noon until 3; its home page says dinner daily from 5, so a call settles the day. A table is booked through the Book a Table button on its reservations page, or by phone or email, and the same page says it can seat large groups and cater a party. A couple who want a tasting-style dinner out on a Friday should stop reading here and book it. What follows is for the dinner that is about the company at the table.

Two Menus, One Written for the Season and One Planned for an Evening

Juniper Dining Co. writes its menu for the public and posts it. By its own site the kitchen takes its cue from French bistros and the bouchons of Lyon, cooks with local and seasonal ingredients, and pairs the plates with cocktails, local beers, and a chosen wine list; a sample dinner menu is linked from the home page as a PDF. The Brantford Club also writes by the season. Chef Eric Wasylenky’s summer menu leans on greens, fish, and the lighter end of the kitchen’s comfort dishes, and the seasonal menu, the lunch menu, the cellar list, and the catering menu are all on the Club’s menu page. The second menu at 98 George Street is the one that matters for a private dinner. It is planned with the party: courses chosen ahead, the table’s preferences taken at booking, the kitchen told the party’s needs before the first plate is set. The Churchill Pork Chops, named for the guest who signed the Register on January 3, 1901, are the one fixed point on it.

Does The Brantford Club take reservations?

A private members’ club arranges its evenings by email and by phone, and The Brantford Club has done so since 1898. There is no booking button on its pages and no published hours, because the house is a club and the dining rooms serve its members and the guests they bring in. A private dinner starts with a note to manager@thebrantfordclub.com or a call to 519-752-0931 carrying three things: the occasion, a preferred date, and roughly how many chairs. The room, the courses, and the hour are then settled in conversation with the kitchen and your event coordinator, and a person answers how the evening works. Juniper Dining Co. works the other way round, as a public dining room should: a Book a Table button on its reservations page opens a booking window, and it says it will be in touch to confirm the details. The full account of a private table at the Club is on the private dining page.

The Friday That Belongs in Paris

Some dinners are about the plates, and those belong on Grand River Street. Two people who want to sit at a public table on a Friday, order from a menu they have read online, and let a bistro kitchen show them what it does with the season have their answer in Paris, Ontario. Juniper Dining Co. describes itself as a modern fine dining restaurant with a comfortable and casual room, and by its own listing the bar stays open after dinner from Wednesday to Sunday until 10, with takeout ordered through OpenTable. None of that is on offer at 98 George Street, and The Brantford Club would not pretend otherwise; a club with no published hours is the wrong answer for a spontaneous Friday. The two towns have talked to each other since the first long-distance telephone call ran from Brantford to Paris on August 10, 1876, so the choice can be made on the day. Paris for the dinner out, Brantford when the dinner is a room.

Juniper Dining Co. vs The Brantford Club, on Seven Points

What each address publishes about itself is set out below, taken from Juniper Dining Co.’s own pages and from the Club’s. The dress row is short here and longer in the Journal’s reading of the club dress code, where smart casual is spelled out garment by garment.

One Room of the House, Held for One Party

The Brantford Club keeps four rooms that dine, and a private dinner takes one of them whole. There is no walk-through traffic past the door and no second seating waiting for the chairs; the evening belongs to the party that asked for it, from a drink in the Bateson Lounge to the table and back to the soft chairs afterward. The house is an Italianate residence of about 1855, already old when the City incorporated, and was the residence of Dr. John Y. Bown, a physician and Member of Parliament in the years around Confederation; the Club bought it in 1898 for $4,500.00, per the Club’s centennial history, and has set its tables in the same rooms ever since. The longer account of each room is in the Journal’s entry on the rooms at 98 George Street. Cellphones are silenced in the rooms, by the Club’s own policy, which suits a dinner that is about the company.

Five things people want settled

Sources: Juniper Dining Co.’s own home page, about page, reservations page, and contact page; the Club’s private-dining, menu, and policies pages; the Club’s centennial history for the purchase price and the Register. The older word for a room like this one is walked through in the Journal’s entry on what a supper club is. The same question, asked of other addresses, is answered across the register of comparisons.