Foxy's

Foxy’s is a new restaurant with a familiar address and a chef coming home. Open since August 1 in the Ayrshire Hotel space previously occupied by The Lobby Bar, it puts owner and executive chef Miles Pundsack-Poe behind a Spanish-inspired tapas, cocktail and bodega concept in the village where he grew up. His résumé includes the three-Michelin-starred Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley and Michelin-starred Etxebarri and Echaurren in Spain, alongside kitchens across Canada and Asia. That experience now meets the local ingredients and foraging traditions that shaped him early. Foxy’s has only just arrived, but its point of view is already fully formed.

The Cantabrian Anchovy Toast makes that exchange legible in a few bites: clean, concentrated fish against smoked goat’s butter, the local note doing more than merely standing in for something Spanish. Uni Toast takes another route, setting sea urchin over milk bread with roasted kelp oil, while the Bluefin Tuna Crudo sharpens rich fish with Valencian orange, mint, pickled chili and begonia. The combinations are detailed without becoming fussy for their own sake. Scallops arrive with ajo blanco, grilled corn and black truffle; octopus draws depth from almond and black garlic before chili crisp supplies the edge. Nothing depends on a sauce or garnish hiding the ingredient underneath. Each plate starts with a recognizable Spanish grammar, then lets one unexpected ingredient change its accent.

That approach keeps the menu from reading as a tour of borrowed classics. Salinity meets smoke, richness meets acid, and soft textures keep finding a crisp or bright counterweight. The smaller plates invite a table to move by appetite rather than course, but the kitchen has enough weight for a full dinner: Iberica Pork Secreto comes with mojo rojo and grilled onion, and beef short rib sits on the larger grill side of the list. The format matters because sharing here is not a decorative instruction. It lets the table trace several versions of the kitchen in one meal, from anchovy and uni through scallops, octopus and the grill, with cocktails carrying the pauses between them. An order can begin with anchovy and finish at the grill without becoming a fixed-course meal.

Pundsack-Poe’s return gives that cooking its shape. The international path matters, but so does the fact that it ends close to where he grew up, with local ingredients and early memories of growing and foraging folded into a Spanish frame. Even the name keeps the story near home: Foxy was the great-grandfather of one of the founders, a family reference attached to a new restaurant rather than an invented mascot. That detail changes the tone of the project. The hotel-lobby setting could have produced something anonymous and polished; instead, the chef’s pathway and the family name make it specific to Elora. Foxy’s may occupy a place built for travellers, but its story is about coming back.

The restaurant works naturally as a date-night table, a late dinner or a longer run of cocktails and shared plates, with the patio opening another version of the experience in summer. Weekend lunch broadens the rhythm without changing the premise: choose a few small plates, leave room for something from the grill, and let the order grow at the speed of the table. There is practical intelligence in that flexibility. A pair can keep the meal close and seafood-led; a group can move from toast and crudo into pork or beef without forcing everyone into the same main-course decision. Foxy’s is new enough that its local reputation is still being written, but the restaurant does not behave like a sketch awaiting completion. The last plate can leave the table without closing the night.