Meet Your Neighbour: Sõl Kitchen
Sõl Kitchen, a vibrant and bright café in Collingwood Downtown is a beehive of activity these days. As soon as you step inside you’re greeted by wonderful customer service, the beautiful noise of cheerful, lively conversations and wonderful aromas.
Now in its eighth year of operation, the vision behind the restaurant was to be able to provide a vibrant space for people to come together and enjoy delicious food and drink. Sõl Kitchen certainly delivers.
Owner/chef Silann Kaduc and her team have been hard at work over the past two years. “Now that we’re fully licensed we’ve had some fun developing an interesting wine list and offer consignment wines that you can’t find at the liquor store, available by the glass or to take home by the bottle. We’ve also expanded the retail market considerably, which is something we always wanted to do from the beginning.” says Silann.
The Market offers at least 16 different types of soup, frozen entrees including lasagna, pesto salmon, chicken stew, beef stew, vegetable curry, chili and a variety of pastas. You can also find frozen chocolate hazelnut twists, croissants (even vegan ones) and gluten free, vegan muffin batters. Everything is made from scratch. Highly recommended is the Venus Chicken: hormone and antibiotic free chicken breast, stuffed with spinach, artichoke hearts, Asiago and Parmesan cheeses, fresh herbs and garlic, egg washed and dredged in Panko bread crumbs. It’s an outstanding entrée especially when paired with their roasted red pepper sauce. Don’t forget the garlic cheese baguette!
“With the latest menu update, some of our long standing menu items have been refreshed, giving them a voice to what Sõl is. We value fresh ingredients with clean vibrant flavours. Our menu is always evolving.” notes Silann who has over 25 years of experience in the food and beverage industry, “and we’re very excited about our new Sõl Bõls. We have three different ones on the menu right now and we like to play around with the flavours. We’ll typically run a new one as a special before it takes a permanent place on the menu.”
Fun fact: When Sõl Kitchen first opened, the original dishes were hand made by Silann in her backyard pottery and glass studio.
We asked Silann if she has any good advice for someone looking to get into business as a first time entrepreneur and she offers “Be confident in your vision and true to your own values because you’ll get lots of advice and it can be easy to get off track if you don’t have a good solid vision of your own to start with. Also, it’s very important to be part of your community and in tune with the people on your team because they’re going to be the ones that will be your support system when things can get tough.”
When Silann does take time off she enjoys taking walks on the Georgian Trail with her best pal Otcho, a rescue dog from Mexico and she also loves the independent and diverse dining scene that Collingwood Downtown has to offer with Low Down Cocktail Bar a personal favourite.
The next time you’re thinking of dining out, check out Sõl Kitchen at 19 Hurontario Street. They’re open from Wednesday through Saturday, 11AM – 5PM. Find a cozy seat, admire the original works of art by Kaz Jones and Andrea Rinaldo, both well known local artists, and enjoy a delicious meal. You can visit their website at solkitchencollingwood.ca/ to check out their menus and follow them on Facebook or Instagram