Belong Sharbot Lake: Open for business

Jeff Green | May 10, 2023

It has been 18 months since the Maples Restaurant was sold to Brad Long. And apart from a limited take-out menu starting in early April, and some recent food pics on social media from soft opening evenings this month, no one has really known what to expect from Belong Sharbot Lake.

That all changes this week. The restaurant is now open for dine in service Wednesday to Saturday, from 12-2 for lunch, and 5-9 for dinner, and for Sunday brunch. The takeout window is open from 11:30am-3pm Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday and 11:30-6pm on Fridays

For the time being, it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but that may change in the peak summer season.

While he says he will fine tune the direction Belong Sharbot Lake will take over time, Brad Long has spent his cooking career, and a year and a half, putting a lot of the pieces in place for what will unfold. The unknowns are external factors, such as local eating patterns, how the mix of year-round local customers, summer seasonal customers, and tourists will take to Belong.

He knows what kind of food he is interested in preparing and serving, and how, with a crew made up of family members and local hires, he intends to prepare and present it.

And it doesn’t start at the front door of the restaurant, but a few steps away, where a large walk-in fridge is located. The fridge is where fresh ingredients will go as when they arrive from suppliers. The ingredients are being sourced from suppliers that Long has worked with in Toronto since the 1980s, and local and regional farmers, and food processors, that he has cultivated since arriving in Sharbot Lake.

A few feet from the fridge, is the door to a large prep kitchen. On the opposite end of prep kitchen is a takeout counter with a door facing Medical Centre Road, and the kitchen also opens up to the smaller finishing kitchen, with ovens and burners ready to prepare hot dishes for both dine in and take-out customers.

The Dining Room has changed somewhat from the previous layout. From the perspective of the entrance-way, there is now a large service island in front of the back wall and the kitchen.

The colour scheme in the dining room is gray and white, with traditional rural Ontario wainscotting and window trim. It is clean and elegant, and in the summer the adjacent patio overlooking Sharbot Lake will increase the serving space dramatically.

The only way to access the restaurant or patio is through the front door of the restaurant, and that is to ensure that everyone who comes receives a high level of service.

“I would call what we are doing a gastro-diner, which maybe no one understands. But in the 90s, gastro-pubs became popular, pubs with better food. This restaurant is not a pub, although we have good beer and wine availabe, it is more like a diner because the food will be at the centre of everything,” said Brad Long

While the Belong lunch menu does not diner staples like hot turkey sandwiches, it can include burgers, sandwiches and salad, along with grilled asparagus in season. The pricing is higher, but comparable, to the other two nearby lunch options in Sharbot Lake.

The dinner menu will be less diner and more fine dining oriented, and will also be priced accordingly.

“If people go to a place like the Keg in Kingston, and do the whole Keg experience, steak, a couple of beers, dessert, it probably costs $70 to $75 a person. It may be more than that here, but only a few dollars more,” he said.

While everyone dining in for supper does not need to go for the ‘whole Belong’ experience, the dinner menu will not include burgers and sandwiches, which are only available at lunch or at the takeout counter.

How Belong Sharbot Lake will navigate its commitment to fine food, local ingredients, fair pay for suppliers and staff alike, while thriving in a rural area like Sharbot Lake, will take time to figure out.

“Give me a year of operation and I should know what I’m doing,” Long said

He won’t be doing it all alone, however. His wife Sheryl, and three of their 5 children, Hannah and Grace on a full-time basis and Daniel on the weekends, will be working with him, and they bring their own skillsets and experience to the restaurant.

Belong Sharbot Lake will be an interesting experiment for the Long family, and for the local community as well.