Eclectic Café & Catering

The sandwich names at Eclectic Café read like a half-remembered playlist — Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese, Let Me See Your Cabbage Roll, Give Peas a Chance. The jokes would wear thin if the cooking behind them coasted, and it does not. Melanie Robinson runs the kitchen here as Chef Mel, a Georgian College-trained cook who won an episode of Chopped Canada and then put that training behind a lunch counter on Orillia's main street. Her Reuben arrives on a soft pretzel bun, stacked with Montreal smoked meat, bacon-apple sauerkraut, and a secret sauce the kitchen will not break down for anyone.

The sandwiches and bowls are where the range shows its work. The Big Turk is built on house-brined turkey breast with brie, arugula, maple pepper bacon, and cranberry aioli on herb focaccia; the Cubano carries mojo-marinated pork shoulder and oven-roasted peameal under Swiss, pickles, and herby mustard on garlic-buttered ciabatta. The Thai Me Up Bowl cools rice noodles in miso peanut sauce and crowns them with lemongrass-marinated chicken thigh, pickled vegetables, herbs, and furikake. Let Me See Your Cabbage Roll takes the namesake apart entirely — charred savoy cabbage, lamb-and-feta meatballs, herby rice, blistered tomatoes, and paprika dill sour cream. A weekly Burger Roulette keeps the board moving; one June build ran blueberry bourbon compote, brie, arugula, and basil aioli on a brioche bun.

The vegetables get the same attention as the proteins, which keeps a mixed table from splitting into the people who eat well and the people who make do. The Greenhouse Bowl piles saffron Israeli couscous with pickled asparagus, snap peas, radish, feta, and a smoky muhammara; the Strawberry Fields salad sets peppery arugula against strawberries, pickled rhubarb, honey whipped feta, and a basil-sumac vinaigrette. Even the grilled cheese is built like it means it — provolone, Swiss, and aged cheddar on sourdough, filed under Sweet Dreams Are Made of Cheese. A vegan can order the spring pea soup and a kid can order brie and apple on challah, and neither one is the afterthought.

On paper, a menu that runs from a pretzel-bun Reuben to a furikake-dusted noodle bowl reads as scattered. On the plate it isn't, because the growing season decides what goes on it. Robinson reworks the menu about six times a year and cooks to what nearby farms are pulling out of the ground — The Roost Farm, Fifty Acre Garden, Quaker Oaks Farm, Lavender Hills Farm, and Dragon Acres among the names that recur. The sourcing is not a chalkboard flourish; it is the reason a vegan spring soup like Give Peas a Chance can carry leeks, coconut milk, lemongrass, and a house green curry paste one month and read entirely different the next. The eclecticism the name promises is real, but the calendar keeps it honest.

Eclectic grew out of a catering business. Robinson built Melanie Robinson Catering and a farmers-market following first, opened the café in 2017, and in 2019 moved it into the former Fred's Meat Market building near Mississaga and Andrew, trading a start-up's invisibility for a proper downtown address. The catering side never left: the kitchen still turns out charcuterie boxes and meal boxes for private events and for the nearby Glen Oro eco-retreat. Younger cooks pass through the line, the produce comes from neighbours, and Orillia has come to treat the café as one of its own rather than a storefront that simply happens to be open.

Most of the week, Eclectic keeps café hours — coffee, lunch, and takeout from mid-morning into the afternoon, with a patio when the weather allows. Friday is the exception. One evening a week, the lunch counter dims into a dinner service, and the seasonal cooking Robinson has been building toward all week finally gets a proper seating. The grilled cheese and the soup are still there at noon; the Friday table is for the version of the kitchen that has been waiting all week to cook dinner.