Former food truck grows into The Grove
Biz will offer food Fruit Shack was known for
When The Fruit Shack in Niagara-onthe-Lake closed for good last February, butter tart fans were bereft.
The red-sided farm market run by the Pohorly family on Highway 55 beckoned pastry lovers near and far with its bold proclamation that it was home to Canada’s best butter tarts. Countless crowdsourced reviews backed up the claim.
So when I messaged Steve Pohorly, maker of the pre-eminent pastries, about the fate of these most Canadian beacons to his family business, a few months ago, he wrote back to tell me to stay tuned.
He just needed some time to figure out his next steps.
Enter Charlie Clowes, co-owner of British-themed food truck Ello Gov’na, and Mason, the caterer preparing food at Silversmith Brewing Co. in Niagara-on-the-Lake. When she and her husband Steve Wharton re-open The Fruit Shack as the newly rebranded The Grove later this month, there will be butter tarts, just not Pohorly’s — to start.
There will be a petition, done in fun, however, to urge Pohorly with his proprietary recipe back into action as soon as he’s ready.
“He’s open to it, but he’s super tired,” Clowes said. “He’s running a farm. There will be collaborative opportunities there but that’s why the petition will be a good thing — just to let him know how much people love them.”
Still, there will be much about The Grove that Fruit Shack regulars will recognize. Pohorly, whose parents wanted to retire from running the farm market, provided the couple with his list of suppliers and helped Clowes and Wharton source products. His family’s fruit will still have a channel to market through The Grove, too. Ditto for the jams, jellies, pies, bagels, meats and cheeses for which The Fruit Shack was known.
But with Ello Gov’na permanently in park — the couple sold the food truck, its mission to change minds about British cuisine — The Grove, with its sizable commercial kitchen, had all the makings of an outlet to continue offering British fare with a nostalgic nod to Clowes’ grandmother, who taught her to shatter the stereotypes that U.K. dishes are only OK.
They will sell house-made meat pies and pasties, salads and prepared meals that can be taken to go or finished at home, such as pork belly with a hoisin sauce glaze, green goddess chicken and lemon-infused Israeli couscous, tikka masala, Thai curries and poke, which is like deconstructed sushi.
They’ll also stock products from new suppliers, including Roselle Desserts in Toronto, The Wandering Locavore, a Burlington-based preserve maker, and Lowry Bros., the food label put out by nearby Ravine Estate Vineyards.
“Quirky” ingredients for molecular gastronomy, and even hard-to-find British items like treacle, not to be confused with molasses, will also be offered.
All of it reflects old Niagara-on-the-Lake as much as the changes to the town’s population in recent years, explained Clowes, whose family immigrated to Niagara from England when she was a child.
“We’re not limiting ourselves to Niagara region (but) we’re still supporting Niagara, but now people don’t have to leave to get certain things,” she said. “We still want everything to be in small batches and sold only from this location.”
The expanded kitchen space also bodes well for Mason, named after Clowes’ late paternal grandfather. It will give her and Wharton more flexibility with the menu at Silversmith while also giving them greater clout with suppliers. With space to store larger orders at The Grove, they’ll be able to access ingredients from more sources.
Clowes and Wharton know the challenges of being a small food business from their food truck days, so they’re also offering to tack orders from other fledgling operations onto their own for The Grove and Mason. Really, it fulfils Clowes’ dream of running a specialty food store to support small-scale chefs.
It’s “supporting not just the community with fresh products, we want to be a collaborative business as well, which was born out of the partnership with Silversmith,” Clowes said. “A lot of other small businesses we’re friends with, we’ve reached out to them and said we have these suppliers and are able to maintain them. Just hop on our orders.”
Adding The Grove to what they do gives the couple an opportunity for another — even bigger — aspiration, too.
“I’m hoping I can have kids while working here, which I don’t think would happen if we opened a restaurant,” Clowes said. “I’m hoping this will be a place that will be so much a part of the community and we can build our family here.”