A stopping place at the end of a long haul

We opened in a former boat repair shed in the spring of 2019, with a wood oven, thirty-four seats and no idea whether Barrie wanted what we were doing.

It turned out it did. We took the room next door in 2022, put the long bar in, and now seat seventy-four inside plus the patio when the weather allows. The oven is the same one. So is most of the crew.

The cooking is seasonal in the boring, literal sense — the menu changes because the growing season changes, not because we got bored. From May to October most of the vegetables come from within forty minutes of the front door. In February they don't, and we don't pretend otherwise.

Bread, pasta, pastry, pickles, stocks and ice cream are made here. We break down whole animals rather than buying portioned cuts, which is why there's usually something on the menu you won't have seen elsewhere that week.

The name comes from the Nine Mile Portage, the overland route that ran from the head of Kempenfelt Bay to Willow Creek and on toward Georgian Bay. People carried everything they owned along it. We thought that was a decent thing for a restaurant to be named after — the place where you finally get to put it down.