Sõl Kitchen

The Halloumi Salad tells you most of what Sõl Kitchen is after. Fried halloumi and roasted sweet potato land over beets, pumpkin seeds and hearty greens, pulled together by a turmeric-ginger vinaigrette that keeps the plate bright instead of heavy — a salad that eats like a full meal. That balance is the whole premise of this kitchen on Collingwood's Hurontario Street: health-minded food that never asks the diner to treat eating well as a compromise. The plates run colourful and produce-forward, built for someone who wants greens and grains without giving up sauce, spice or crunch.

The menu wanders the globe without pretending to be any single cuisine. The Sol Pad Thai Stirfry threads rice noodles through a peanut, ginger and coconut-milk sauce and arrives vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free as written. A Tuna Poke Bol sears ahi over black sticky rice with edamame, avocado and wasabi aioli; a Madras chickpea and vegetable curry bowl holds down the Indian corner; the Tuscan Flatbread stacks Sol pesto, roasted peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and artichokes. Heavier appetites get Grilled Salmon — organic Red Spring salmon with quinoa and sesame-sautéed bok choy — or a burger of fresh local beef under double-smoked bacon and aged cheddar. There are quesadillas, a Kimchi Bol, a Spicy Black Bean Burrito Bol, and a Kolapore Smoked Trout Salad that pulls a nearby name onto the plate. Chimichurri, black garlic aioli and tamari vinaigrette turn up across the board — a lot of range for one small storefront.

What holds that range together is how seriously the kitchen takes flexibility. The vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free pathways are not bolted-on substitutions; they are written into complete mains, so a table with mixed diets can order off the same board without anyone getting routed to a side salad. The Black Bean Veggie Burger arrives with avocado salsa and herb aioli, a full order rather than an afterthought patty. Pesto Primavera bends toward Parmesan or goat cheese, or away from both. The same flexibility reads as family logic too — burgers, quesadillas, flatbreads and bowls let a mixed-age table feed itself without anyone splitting off to a separate menu.

That sensibility traces back to Silann Kaduc, who founded Sõl and still owns it. Local reporting connects the restaurant to food co-op roots and an artist's eye, and both still register — in the colour on the plates, in the community feel of a place that opened downtown in 2011 and still leans on local art and bright plating for its character. Kaduc's background gives the menu its throughline: the global borrowing, the produce-forward plating and the sourcing language all read as one person's taste rather than a chain playbook handed down from head office.

The sourcing is Sõl's own vocabulary — local, organic and grower-direct where the kitchen can manage it — and it works as context for the whole menu rather than a single showpiece dish. The restaurant is licensed, pours beer and wine, and takes on catering and takeout alongside the dining room. In warm months a patio opens toward the harbour, which suits food already built for a bright, lighter meal; the rest of the year Sõl runs lunch through dinner six days a week, closed Sundays. Lunch and dinner run on separate menus, the lunch side lighter on salads and bowls, dinner leaning on mains like the salmon and Pesto Primavera. Order the Halloumi Salad first for the shortest route to what this kitchen is. The house-made carrot cake, under cream cheese frosting, is the reason to stay a little past the plate you came in for.