ABOUT BUSINESS

We are Dan & Laurie (Lilliman) Megna of Twisted Lemon Restaurant & Boutique Inn, located in Southwestern Ontario in beautiful Haldimand County, in a gem of a town called Cayuga. In total, we have fifteen awesome staff members, and our seating capacity is about fifty inside and eighty in total, including an outdoor patio, private room and gorgeous, authentic Chef Table area in our prep kitchen.

As a destination location, most of our guests (over 70%) enjoy a minimum 45-minute scenic drive to find us. Our culture is built on integrity, positivity, gratitude, and humour. Through commitment, hard work, and a creative team of talented professionals from all walks of life, we enjoy a safe, welcoming environment for our staff and guests alike. In July of 2009, we transformed our home into a restaurant, alongside our children, family, and friends.  We designed, built, and decorated our ‘dream’  ourselves, and we’ve continued to grow with each year, through every challenge, and with every lesson.  To be ‘categorized’, we’re a destination location, popular for celebrating special occasions focused on creating memories and an environment that immerses our guests and separates them from their “every day”.  Although our culture is welcoming, casual, and authentic, we strive daily for professional excellence in our cuisine as well as our wine and beverage program.  With gratitude, we’re happy to say that we’ve never been stronger or more excited for the next chapters to come.

Over the years we’ve been extremely grateful & humbled to win some amazing awards and we’re sending this list of accolades to you now, only to illustrate our commitment to growth and, most importantly, to providing our guests with the best possible overall experience. It’s been amazing to receive these awards, and we never take them for granted. Without our great staff and loyal guests, none of these would be possible!

2009: Best Business for Community Improvement; Haldimand County Recognition Awards

2010-2020: Where to Eat in Canada Guide

2010-2024: #1 each year in up to 27 categories in the Hamilton Spectator Readers Choice Awards; including Best Overall Restaurant, Chef, Service, Cocktails, Atmosphere, Wine Menu, etc.

2010 – 2024: #1 each year (similar to above) Sachem Readers Choice Awards

2017: SWOTC (Southwest Ontario Tourism Corporation) Innovative Business of the Year Award

2023: TIAC (Tourism Industry Association of Canada) Best Small to Medium-Sized Business across Canada

2024: SWOTC (Southwest Ontario Tourism Corporation) Innovation Award for our tourism partnership program

2024: TIAO (Tourism Industry Association of Ontario) just announced (Globe and Mail) finalists in two categories; Culinary Tourism Experience Award, and Culinary Tourism Leadership Award. Winners to be announced October 23rd (fingers crossed!).

Certifications:

Rainbow Registered, Culinary Tourism Alliance Feast On, DiRoNA, Green Step Sustainable Tourism

It all started when we, Dan (a young sous chef) and Laurie (server) met in 2004 while working at a fine dining restaurant in Oakville, Ontario. Our connection was instant and was based on a mutual love for the hospitality business. Eventually, we pursued our dream to start our own business, relocating from the GTA with our 6- and 8-year-old daughters to the small town of Cayuga, Ontario, population 1,400. We bought an old church with the goal of growing a business that would support our family, and we embraced Haldimand County wholeheartedly.

In 2006, we started offering private catering and cooking classes while still working and commuting to Toronto, which helped us to establish ourselves and earn the trust of our local community. After a few years, we maxed out our time and resources, and knew we’d have to ‘grow or fold’.

Armed with blissful ignorance and a bunch of passion, we designed, built and turned our home into a restaurant, investing everything. Dan’s mother even put up his family’s childhood home as collateral!

For months, we lived on credit cards, in a camper van with our young girls, newborn baby boy and a puppy, while we built Cayuga’s only ‘fine dining’ establishment. Twisted Lemon Restaurant opened for business on July 19, 2009, while being filmed for The Food Network’s “The Opener” with celebrity chef David Adjey! After months of correspondence, we were selected as one of six episodes for the premier season of this new show about “. To our knowledge we are the only restaurant left still operating currently.

During this time, while we were operating and building our reputation, we lived above the restaurant. Our son was just eight months old when we opened, and we couldn’t have done it without the baby monitor which was always at the Chef pass! A few years later we would move to the house next door, where we still enjoy the 30-step commute to work.

In 2012 we called a ‘surprise staff meeting’ and were married at “Table 7”. It was perfect! After catering many large-scale weddings, with attention to every detail, we happily kept it simple and then enjoyed a mini vacation with close friends after.

A few years later, in 2015, we opened a second restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario. While we successfully operated it for three years, this time was easily the biggest lesson we’d learn, and we just about lost everything important. Although business was good, we choose our relationship and family first and sold “Lake Road Restaurant” in 2018.

With our sole efforts back in Cayuga, we immediately added a stunning outdoor patio, expanded our sustainable garden, and began the process of adding three boutique inn suites above the restaurant where we used to live. While we were in this empowering process of taking charge back of our lives, it changed again. Enter the pandemic.

We all know what that time was like for the hospitality industry. Before there was support, we drained our savings and paid our staff out of pocket, just to keep them employed. We kept moving forward, never knowing what to expect. We organized a non-profit meal programme and delivered healthy food to our local senior’s residence, who took a very hard hit during that time. Being an upscale destination restaurant in our location, we faced extra challenges.

We did everything that we could, from Take Out Programs, Cocktail Kits, virtual cooking and cocktail classes, and garden plant and house grown produce sales.

The support we received from our loyal guests was remarkable, and they kept us afloat. However, people were getting tired of takeout, and so were we. The amount of packaging and waste was heartbreaking.

In January 2021, the Ontario government allowed restaurants to sell pre-mixed cocktails. Early one morning, preparing to fill the day’s cocktail orders, Laurie looked around the dining room, once filled with smiling faces, buzzing chatter and candlelight. It was now consumed by a mountain of cardboard, foil, paper and plastic packaging. Bottles, bags and tags were the new vessels for delivering cocktails curbside which meant even more packaging with stickers, straws, picks and portion cups! All our personality and focus on memorable dining experiences through connection was stripped away. Exhausted and depressed over the amount of landfill that was needed just to survive, Laurie quit for about fifteen minutes, and it was during this brief period of unemployment that she looked up and asked for “Clarity”.

Determined to focus on the solution & not the problem, Clarity Unruffled Cocktails was born.

These are now a trademarked line of clarified cocktails which are environmentally conscious, come in reusable glass bottles, are packaged in locally custom-designed boxes made from recycled material and produce as little waste as possible. Even the biproducts of these cocktails are used in the Twisted Lemon kitchen!

We designed a 24-cocktail Advent Calendar and various gift boxes, and, with certainty, “Clarity” got us through 2021 with the cocktail revenue matching the revenue of the entire restaurant! Most importantly, our guests now had a unique cocktail experience from Twisted Lemon that they could take home with them to connect with friends and family with. Our personality and experiential connection were back!

It was important to us from the beginning, that Clarity found a way to ‘give back’. As parents, neighbours & friends, nothing is more important to us than supporting young people in our community. As tough a time as the pandemic had been for us as adults and as a business, we recognized that our youth had to deal with so much more.

In fall of 2021, Clarity Unruffled Cocktails was honoured to begin a partnership with McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation, specifically the “Child & Youth Mental Health Unit”, by donating a portion of all proceeds generated from ongoing Clarity retail purchases. To date, Clarity Cocktails have generated more than $10,000.00 to help support our local youth.

In fall of 2023 we were finally able to complete the three boutique suites above the restaurant, including re-zoning our property for a second time. Now, zoned fully commercial and designated as an inn, the rooms average 80%-90% occupancy.

Having accommodations has been a game-changer for us as we are now an active part of the tourism industry.

In January 2023 we created the “Twisted Lemon Experiential Getaways” program supporting regenerative tourism in our area by inviting local businesses to join us by offering their own unique experiences, services, or products that give travelers more reason to visit, stay and experience Haldimand County. This program is about businesses lifting other like-minded businesses, with a focus on sustainability, people, planet and profit.