Area guide · Food
Where to eat near Tobermory
A few thousand people live on this end of the peninsula year round and the national park alone took more than half a million visitors last year, most of them through a village of 4 blocks. The food scene is small, seasonal and busier than its size suggests. For 2 summers we sent people into the village for dinner at 6:30 on a Saturday and they came back at 9, having eaten at 8:15. The village rewards people who eat at slightly odd hours and know what they are walking into. Here is what we tell everyone now, starting with the meal we drive an hour for.
Phone before you drive. Every time.
Almost every kitchen up here works to the tourist calendar. May through October things hum. Outside that window hours shorten and then disappear, and the list of what is still open changes year to year.
So call ahead, whatever the season and whatever a website tells you. Hours move with the staffing, the weather and the day of the week, and a posted time is not a promise. From anywhere on the peninsula it can be 30 minutes to the village and an hour to Wiarton, which is a long way to drive to a dark window.
- Open all year: Pharos in the village, the Hungry Hiker's Ferndale restaurant and the Green Door Café in Wiarton. Note it is the Ferndale sit-down place that runs through the winter, not the Hungry Hiker food truck in Tobermory, and the Green Door is closed Sundays and Mondays all year. Call anyway, because their winter hours may be shorter than their summer ones.
- Closed for the winter: Shipwreck Lee's and Coconut Joe's, along with most of the rest of the village. Our winter guide covers what is left once they shut, and the honest answer for a winter stay is groceries and your own stove.
- Nothing in the village takes reservations. Timing is the whole game here, and the 1 place that takes bookings is an hour south.
Our favorite meal is not in Tobermory
We may as well say it plainly: a guide that only lists what is walkable from the harbour is not much use to somebody with a car. The place we like best anywhere on this peninsula is the Green Door Café on Berford Street in Wiarton, about 1 hour down the peninsula, and it has changed how we plan the drive up.
The food does not look or taste like the rest of the peninsula. Smoked salmon on good bread with a soft egg and radish. A falafel bowl with a dressing somebody actually made. Savory pastries that arrive beside a salad that has been thought about rather than assembled. There is a proper cocktail list, the room is one you want to sit in rather than eat in and leave, and none of it has the fryer-basket quality that creeps into tourist-town menus by August.
They also do the best fish and chips we have eaten on this peninsula, which is an awkward thing to put in a Tobermory guide and is true anyway. It is local Georgian Bay whitefish, so you are not trading the thing you came for to get the better version of it.
It is closed Sundays and Mondays, which catches people out on the drive home as often as on the drive up, so check the day before you build a plan around it. It is open the rest of the year though, and it is a small room that fills, so this is the one place on this page where you should phone ahead for a table.
Wiarton is where you should be doing the big grocery shop in any case, so on the right day the whole stop lines up neatly: eat properly, fill the cooler, then drive the last hour.
Breakfast, which is the hardest meal to get up here
Not many kitchens serve breakfast, and the ones that do fill with people who have been awake since 6 for a Grotto slot. Go early, or go at 10:30 once the first wave has cleared.
The Hungry Hiker is the one we send people to. It started as a food truck and now runs 3 places: the original on Highway 6 just south of the village, a dockside counter at the harbour and a sit-down restaurant at Ferndale, out at the Lion's Head turnoff partway down the peninsula. A proper plate of eggs, sausage and home fries, which makes a 3 km walk to the shoreline feel sensible.
In winter, only the Ferndale restaurant is open. The Tobermory truck and the dockside counter both close with the season, so a February breakfast means driving south rather than north. Check before you set off hungry.
Pharos, at the Tobermory Princess Hotel on Bay Street South, serves breakfast as well as lunch and dinner and stays open all year, which makes it the fallback both when the Hiker has a queue out the door and in February when most of the village has gone dark.
Fish and chips in the village
You will want it at least once with the boats in front of you, and that is a fair reason to eat it here rather than an hour south.
Shipwreck Lee's Pirate Bistro has been going since 1987 and does the outdoor version, in a basket at a painted picnic table, which is the better call on a warm evening and is not an option at all between roughly November and spring. Their headline is an all-you-can-eat Alaskan whitefish, which matters if Georgian Bay fish was the point of the exercise. There are 2 of them: the original at 2 Bay Street, a half block off Little Tub, and a second at 3 Eliza Street by the ferry dock.
Pharos is the sit-down version, on a plate at a table with somebody bringing it to you, which is the better call with a group or on a day the wind has ruined the patio. The menu runs well past fish too, which matters by the third day.
Dinner with a group, when nobody agrees
The Crowsnest Pub on Bay Street is the answer to the group problem, and it has been there roughly 40 years. Pizza, chicken fingers, a caesar big enough to matter and a menu broad enough that the teenager, the vegetarian and the person who wants a burger all get fed without a negotiation. Unfussy and generous, which is what you want after a day on the rocks.
Tobermory Brewing Company & Grill, a few doors along Bay Street, pairs beer brewed on site with a pub menu and the best patio view in the village. It is the kind of place where a quick pint becomes the afternoon, so do not schedule anything after it. The Hungry Hiker's smoked brisket is the other reliable answer to a very hungry group.
A drink where you can see the water
Coconut Joe's Harbour Bar & Grill sits right on Little Tub with a deck, string lights and a carved sign you cannot miss. It is not trying to be subtle and it is a good place to sit with a drink while the tour boats come in. It is a summer place though, and it closes with the season, so do not build a February evening around it. Pharos is the year-round alternative and does proper plates if the group wants dinner rather than a snack.
The sweet shop is not optional
The Sweet Shop on Bay Street South has been making fudge, caramel corn and peanut brittle in small batches since the 1980s, and between that, the candy and the ice cream it is the closing scene of a Tobermory day for most families who come here. One scoop is a rookie order. Nobody has ever regretted 2.
The rest of the peninsula
- Lion's Head, about 30 minutes south, has its own small cluster of places and a bakery. The Hungry Hiker's Ferndale restaurant is on that road, and the detour pairs neatly with the lookout hike.
- Chip trucks and farm stands appear along Highway 6 through the season and are the peninsula's most underrated lunches. Bring cash.
Where to stock up
3 towns on Highway 6, and in each of them the grocery store and the liquor store are close enough together to be a single stop. Working from south to north as you drive up:
- Wiarton, the first of the 3 you reach and the biggest. Foodland on Berford Street and the LCBO on William Street. Do the main shop here. The Green Door is a few doors along the same street, so lunch and the cooler happen in one stop.
- Lion's Head, about halfway up the peninsula. Hellyer's Foodland on Webster Street and the LCBO out at Ferndale as you turn in. The right size for a mid-week top up without driving the length of the peninsula.
- Tobermory, at the very top, where Highway 6 runs out. Peacock's Foodland on Highway 6 as you come into the village and the LCBO on Brock Street. Smaller and pricier than the other 2, which is what a village at the end of a road is, and it will cover whatever you forgot. Both keep shorter hours in winter.
Cooking at the cottage
Most groups fall into the same pattern by the second night: keep 1 or 2 meals out for the atmosphere, at lunch or early dinner when the queues are kind, and eat the rest where you are staying. Buy whitefish from the fish shops while you are at it, because it is the one thing here you cannot pick up at home.
Most cottages up here have a decent kitchen. The thing to check before you book anywhere is which way it faces, because cooking and eating in front of the water is a different evening from doing it facing a wall.
Practical notes
- The summer dinner rush is real. Eat before 5:30 or after 8, or accept the wait. Most places do not take bookings.
- Nearly everything in the village is on Bay Street, so park once at the harbour and leave the car there for the evening.
- Takeout plus a shoreline picnic is the local move, timed for sunset at Singing Sands.
- Dietary needs are workable but thin out fast in the village. The Green Door is the most flexible kitchen we know on the peninsula and keeps a dedicated fryer, with most of the menu gluten free or able to be made so. For anything strict in Tobermory itself, self-catering is the stress-free answer.
- Bring cash for the chip trucks and the farm stands.
Phone before you go. Opening hours, seasons and menus change constantly at this end of the peninsula, several of these places shut entirely outside summer and every one of them can change its mind about a Tuesday. A quick call saves a wasted drive, and it beats trusting any blog, ours included.
Keep planning
