The Wild Tart

The Wild Tart is a European-style patisserie and tea room at 61 Metcalfe Street in downtown Elora, open through the day rather than for dinner. The room handles all-day breakfast, brunch, lunch, and afternoon tea, with a hidden garden out back and a private space for groups. It opened in 2020 in the former Secret Garden space, and the hours hold to a daytime rhythm — nine to four on weekdays, nine to five on weekends, with afternoon tea served daily from eleven.

The menu runs on two tracks. The all-day breakfast and light-fayre side carries The Wild Tart Breakfast with two eggs, potato lyonnaise, bacon, sausage, grilled tomato and sourdough; Eggs Benedict with a choice of smoked salmon, peameal bacon or sautéed mushrooms; Brioche French Toast with blueberry compote and Chantilly cream; a Breakfast Skillet built on shredded potato rosti; poached egg and avocado toast; quiche of the day with potato lyonnaise; Salad Niçoise with seared tuna tataki; a tomato, mozzarella and basil flatbread; a beet-cured salmon open-face sandwich with herbed cream cheese, capers and red onion; and a chicken club with bacon and cheddar. The pastry and dessert side carries French lemon cheesecake with candied zest, sweet buttermilk and savoury cheese scones, and a rotating case of cakes and tarts.

Afternoon tea is the centre the rest of the menu orbits. The Classic Afternoon Tea is a composed sequence rather than a single plate: loose leaf tea, finger sandwiches, sweet and savoury scones with house-made herbed butter, Chantilly cream and preserves, then a dessert course of red velvet cake, double fudge brownie, French lemon cream cheesecake and a macaron. The Children's Afternoon Tea runs for guests up to twelve, with tea, juice or hot chocolate, finger sandwiches, a buttermilk scone, and a decorate-your-own cupcake. The format is what separates the room from a cafe — a visit here is built in courses, not ordered à la carte.

The room comes from a particular background. Owners Dominique and Geoffrey Wild are a couple with Swiss, South African and English roots and more than forty years in hospitality management between them. The rooms they came through read like a list of the houses that helped define modern hotel service — Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, Red Carnation, Soho House, Fortnum and Mason, DO & CO, Sketch London. Dominique's interest in afternoon tea traces specifically to her time at Fortnum and Mason. The tea service at 61 Metcalfe is the distillation of that résumé into a single daytime room.

That background also shapes how the room is used. The hidden garden and the private space upstairs handle weddings and wedding breakfasts, bridal and baby showers, birthday parties, children's afternoon-tea parties, luncheons and team gatherings — the occasions that want more shape than a walk-in table. Groups of nine or more are pointed to call rather than book online.

Elora has no shortage of places to eat, but it has fewer places built around a ritual. The Wild Tart gives the village a composed daytime occasion: a breakfast that can run to noon, a tea service that starts at eleven, a hidden garden in summer, and a private room for the celebrations that need a setting. It is the kind of room you book for a reason, on a date you have chosen in advance.