Misfits Bodega

Misfits Bodega is a sandwich shop that makes almost everything a sandwich shop would normally buy. The bread, the bacon, the smoked salmon, the meatballs, the dressings and the pickled spreads all come out of one small kitchen, a few steps from the counter where they get stacked into hoagies and breakfast sandwiches. Chef and owner Ali Grundman runs the Collingwood shop that way on purpose — familiar deli food built with a cook's attention rather than a convenience store's shortcuts. It holds a weekday lunch schedule on Simcoe Street, in the town's Downtown Heritage District.

The menu rewards ordering with intent. The Donna is the one to lead with — turkey, salami, capicola and mortadella stacked against marinated tomatoes, muffuletta spread, oregano vinaigrette and pepperoncini mayo, so the weight of four cured meats stays bright instead of heavy. Nonna's Meatball layers house-made pork and beef meatballs with San Marzano tomatoes, confit garlic, spicy soppressata and fior di latte. Fresh Prince answers in a different register — shaved ribeye, smoked provolone, peppers, onions and beef jus, the menu's cheesesteak-minded option and a hot counterweight to the cold-cut hoagies. For a vegetable-led choice, The Prescription carries marinated artichoke, roasted mushroom, basil pesto and cabbage slaw, and The B-EliTe stretches a bacon sandwich with smashed avocado and crushed sour-cream-and-onion chips. The Greek Freak goes in a brighter direction — roasted pulled chicken with marinated feta, cucumber, pepperoncini oregano vinaigrette and garlic aioli — and reappears as a chopped salad for anyone skipping the bread.

The board reaches past its marquee sandwiches. Breakfast holds equal footing with lunch, served all day rather than cut off at some arbitrary hour: the Bodega Breakfast keeps it plain with scrambled egg, house bacon, lettuce, tomato and cheddar, while The 514 dresses a toasted bagel with seasoned cream cheese, the kitchen's own smoked salmon and red onion — a Montreal nod folded into a Collingwood morning. Salads carry the same thinking, the Donna Chopped rebuilding the signature sandwich as a bowl. Online ordering smooths the midday rush, and the hours stay built around that weekday window rather than stretching to fill a calendar.

What ties the menu together is less the fillings than the habit behind them. The same house bacon, dressings and spreads recur from sandwich to sandwich, so the shop's character lives in details a diner tastes before thinking to name them. The naming carries a lightly playful streak — a grilled cheese called Flip it N Reverse It, a club spelled The Clerb, a pressed turkey melt named The Agency — a wink that never crowds the cooking. The same kitchen sends out morning cinnamon rolls under the Glaze Craze name, a Bubby's Chicken Soup, and a loaded potato soup built on brown-butter potatoes and European smoked bacon, so the scratch work runs well past the sandwich board.

Grundman opened Misfits Bodega in November 2024, after moving to Collingwood and not finding the sandwich she wanted to eat there. The catering arm, Misfits Hospitality, fills in the rest of the story — more than a decade of cooking, and Italian, French and Japanese technique carried by Israeli flavours. That background explains why a lunch counter bothers to smoke its own salmon and cure its own bacon: the storefront is the everyday face of a kitchen that also books private-chef dinners for six to twenty guests, small weddings and drop-off meals, plus a year-round à la carte menu and ready-to-eat meal kits, across Collingwood and The Blue Mountains.

The result is a lunch counter that behaves like a chef's kitchen working in miniature. Start with The Donna and a bowl of the potato soup, or split it with Nonna's Meatball when a table is sharing; either way the tell is the same — the bread, the bacon and the spreads were all made in the back that morning.