Fig & Feta

At Fig & Feta, the meal does not have to end when the plate is cleared. You can carry the sauce, the feta, and the house dressing home from a shelf by the door, because the place is a Greek restaurant and a Greek market at once — the full name says so, Greek Eatery & Market — on Hurontario Street in downtown Collingwood. The figs and feta in that name are not just signage: they land together on the signature salad, sweet fruit against sharp brine, and again on the Greek burger, where fig jam and feta sit under a lamb patty on ciabatta.

The menu runs long and stays recognizably Greek. The Beet & Feta Salad is the clearest first order — roasted red beets, candied walnuts, Kalamata olives, cucumber, and feta over greens with a Dijon dressing, substantial enough to carry a light lunch on its own. Its sibling, the namesake Fig & Feta salad, leans sweeter, with figs, sautéed mushrooms, red and yellow peppers, and a balsamic reduction. From there the kitchen deepens. A spread of house dips — tzatziki, hummus, tyrokafteri, melitzanosalata, taramasalata — opens the table; fried calamari comes dusted in rice flour and cornmeal; grilled octopus arrives under a lemon-caper glaze with pepperoncini. The comfort end runs to a braised lamb shank with mushroom orzo, feta, and lemon, a moussaka layered with potato, eggplant, and béchamel, and a pastitsio built on penne and ground beef. Chicken souvlaki, beef-and-lamb gyros, falafel pita, and Greek fries under feta, dill, and oregano fill in the everyday register.

What sets the kitchen apart sits one shelf over from the tables. The market is no token rack of olive oil by the door: it carries the house-made sauces and the signature Greek dressing that dress the plates inside, alongside packaged pita, shaved gyro meat, uncooked souvlaki, pre-made moussaka and pastitsio, spanakopita, Greek feta and olives, yogurt, halva, and honey — some made in-house, some brought in from Greece. Pick up a tray of moussaka for the freezer, a bag of pita, and a jar of olives, and a single dinner stretches across the week. Greek lettering runs along the blackboards overhead. The market grew out of demand rather than design, and it makes the kitchen feel like a pantry as much as a dining room — Greek cooking stocked for a household, not just plated for a single sitting.

Bessie Lewis built the business around her own roots. The daughter of Greek parents, she came up in the restaurant trade and, by local accounts, logged more than twenty years in kitchens — fine dining among them, and several around Collingwood — before opening Fig & Feta in 2018 to cook the food she knows. Her recipes lean on family tradition with a lighter, modern hand. The first location sat barely ten; demand pushed it up Hurontario Street to a far larger home — ninety seats and a patio, with the market built in. She runs it as a family business, and the model travels — a smaller takeout-and-market outlet is opening down the highway in Barrie.

That range is what makes Fig & Feta easy to use. A solo diner can sit with a pita and a plate of Greek fries; a table of friends can split calamari, saganaki, and octopus before the lamb shank lands; a household can order the family-dinner takeout bundle and skip cooking altogether. In warm months the patio opens up the seating, and the kitchen caters beyond its own walls. Larger groups book the private rooms, which run from a twenty-five-seat option with its own bar to a combined setting for seventy-five. Through all of it the cooking holds steady — Greek comfort food, plated for the table or packed for the shelf, depending on how long you want it to last.