Only Zoey’s

The name comes from a child who wanted her own restaurant. Zoey Peters got one, more or less, when her mother Melanie built a Gravenhurst food truck around the idea and put the girl's name on the side. Only Zoey's runs seasonally from a lot on Bethune Drive North, along the Highway 11 corridor that carries Muskoka's summer traffic north, and it works out of a converted 1952 DivCo milk truck — the round-shouldered delivery van whose shape gives the setup its whole look. It is a walk-up stop: order at the window, carry the tray to a picnic table, and eat outside while the weather holds.

The menu is short and it knows what it is. Fish and chips is the anchor — battered fillets, fresh-cut fries, a house tartar, the plate most people order first and the one the truck is known for. The layered poutine is the heavier order, stacked rather than tossed together, filling enough to be the meal instead of the side to it. Around those two sit the fried items the kitchen makes itself: homemade onion rings, deep-fried dill pickles, spicy onion chips with a dip, and Spicy Thai Chicken Bites when someone wants a little heat. Coleslaw, sweet potato fries, and thick milkshakes fill out the rest.

What comes through is that nothing on the list is filler. The sides carry as much of the truck's name as the mains — the onion rings and the dill pickles get talked about as often as the fish — which is not how a roadside fry stand usually works. A place that fries frozen product to move volume does not get remembered for its onion rings. The compact card is a choice a small truck can defend: fewer items, each made the same way every service, which is how a stop earns a second visit rather than a single curious one. Only Zoey's keeps the list short on purpose and cooks it hard, and lets the fryer do the arguing.

Melanie Peters opened the truck in 2018 and has run it as a family concern since, according to local reporting, which ties the name to her daughter Zoey and the restaurant she wanted of her own. The truck landed on its Bethune Drive North lot after an earlier stop elsewhere on the same street, and Peters has since added a soft-serve shack, Lemony Sweet, beside it — a separate counter rather than part of the Only Zoey's order, but a sign the operation has put down roots. When the truck was broken into during one off-season, the losses ran to cash and, of all things, coleslaw; local reporting covered it the way a town covers news about a place it already knows.

The value works the way food-truck value usually does — generous plates, a modest bill, and enough on a shared order to feed two. Families take the easy path through the menu: fish, fries, poutine, a milkshake to close. Small groups build around the fried sides, splitting onion rings and pickles across the table. For travellers moving through Muskoka, it reads as a local stop rather than a chain detour off the highway. The people at the window are part of why it holds regulars; the service gets named about as often as the food. It suits a fair-weather meal more than a fixed plan, since the picnic tables and open-air setup mean weather and timing matter, and the payoff is a casual seat close to the road rather than a dining room.

None of this is bookable. The truck keeps seasonal hours, posts its days on its social pages, and takes every order at the window, which makes it a warm-months plan more than a destination to reserve. When the season is on, Only Zoey's holds its lot the way the old milk truck holds the road: low, round-shouldered, and in no hurry, frying fish and stacking poutine for as long as the weather allows.