Relish

Relish occupies a restored church in the middle of Gravenhurst, and it has filled the old building with two things at once: a scratch café and a small market. Order lunch at the counter and you stand a few steps from shelves of specialty teas, local goods, and frozen meals to carry home. Nothing about the food is precious, though it is health-minded by default — greens, grains, and house-baked bread doing the everyday work of feeding a Muskoka town through the middle of the day, with vegetarian and vegan builds sitting on the menu as equals rather than afterthoughts.

The lunch menu runs on salads, wraps, and sandwiches built on Relish's own bread — a chicken club, a grilled cheese, egg salad and tuna among the everyday options, with Caesar and falafel salads and Greek and miso-tofu builds rounding out the greens. The deli case is where the format shows its hand: a tasting plate turns the counter into a choose-three lunch, pulling from spanakopita, samosas, pakoras, and rotating feature items. The drinks lean house-made and a little playful — four smoothies from blueberry pie to green dream, espresso, and two signatures worth the trip: the Relish Fog, a maple Earl Grey latte, and the Super Latte, built on a mushroom blend. Gluten-free, vegan, and paleo choices are marked rather than buried.

What the two-part format buys is flexibility. Relish is a place to eat and a place to shop, and most visits quietly use both — a sandwich now, a jar of something local and a frozen dinner on the way out. The market side reaches past groceries, with curated vitamins and wellness goods, specialty foods, and things made by neighbours, while the café runs rotating specials and the occasional community event, so the mix shifts a little week to week. For a downtown that serves cottagers in summer and a steady local base the rest of the year, the café-and-market pairing answers both: quick enough for a visitor mid-stroll, useful enough for a resident stocking the week.

The setting keeps the visit casual and daytime-led. Seating indoors is limited — a handful of tables under the old church's high ceiling — with a few more places outside when the weather cooperates, so Relish leans on the counter rhythm rather than a long sit. Order, gather, and either settle in for lunch or take it to go. The kitchen keeps daytime hours through the week and into Saturday afternoon, then closes when downtown does.

Relish opened in 2016 and has held the same footprint since — a café and market under one restored roof in downtown Gravenhurst, a few minutes from the water that shapes Muskoka's summer. The building does some of the work; a church repurposed for lunch carries a character a storefront cannot manufacture, and the light and height of the old sanctuary give an ordinary midday sandwich a better setting than it strictly needs. The market shelves catch the overflow — a browse while the kitchen plates, a take-home dinner bought on the way past the till.

Relish rewards the kind of visit that runs two errands at once. A bowl and a smoothie for now, a bag of market finds for later; a quick weekday lunch between errands, or a slower Saturday browse before the doors close at four. The pairing is not a gimmick so much as a reading of what a small Muskoka town actually wants from a daytime kitchen — somewhere to eat well and pick up the odd thing you didn't know you were out of, without turning it into two separate stops.