Marilynne, a farm-focused restaurant named after the chef-owner’s beloved grandmother, serves up Oscar-worthy culinary nostalgia.
by Natalie Goldenberg-Fife // Photography by Anya Shor
An array of antiques, cookbooks and paintings adorn the shelves and walls of the light-filled 55-seat dining room.
Strolling into Marilynne, an original firehall from 1913 turned into a restaurant, in Grey County’s Markdale (population 1,200), is like walking into a real-life Hallmark movie.
Hallmark movies are famed for delivering heartwarming plotlines, wholesome characters, and charming settings that transport viewers into a welcoming world of family, love and small-town serenity. They are films suitable for all ages offering viewers the opportunity to experience the magic of every season, connect with loved ones and be transported into a world of familiar bliss and nostalgia.
“Moving home and going straight to the source to cook the food where it came from just made sense to me.”
This is essentially the Marilynne experience and the story behind it.
If you’re a first-timer, you’ll be spotted right away. Because you will be transfixed by the array of antiques that fill this 55-seat restaurant: purposeful displays of original 150-year-old speckled Granite Ware, stacks of English china, hand-made coloured glass sugar and fruit bowls, a large vintage painting of a young girl and her pet labrador, a framed 1967 quilt that was a wedding gift, and cookbook displays like The Home Queen Cookbook (1893) and The American Woman’s Cookbook (1938).
“Welcome to Marilynne,” one of the sincerely jovial staff will say to you. “The restaurant is named after the chef’s grandmother, who lived in the area since 1967 and was a local travelling antique dealer. Chef Brandon wanted to show off her antiques for everyone to enjoy. She was a big advocate of his cooking and gave him his nickname, Chuck.”
“As long as I can remember I’ve been called Chuck,” says Marilynne Chef-owner Brandon (Chuck) Bannon. “When I was a child my two front teeth came in earlier than the rest of my teeth, so I looked like a beaver for a couple of months. Around that time, my grandmother would read me a bedtime book called Chuck E. Beaver Goes to School. She started calling me Chuck. As I got older, my family matured the name; they currently call me Charles.
“I started cooking when I was 12. My parents ran a food booth at the local arena in Dundalk. My brother and sister and I played so much hockey, it was easier for my mom to take a job at the arena. I enjoyed it and eventually went to work at the local ski club, where I worked with some really great chefs. One in particular encouraged me to leave Grey County to get more experience. So I enrolled in culinary management at Humber College,” Bannon summarizes.
Bannon came up with the idea of returning home to tell the story of his grandmother, who died of complications from diabetes at 83 in December 2019, while honing his kitchen skills in Toronto at some of the city’s most respected and consistently palate-pleasing restaurants, like the Oliver & Bonacini Group’s Canteen and Luma restaurants under Chef Jason Bangerter, who is now the star at the iconic Relais & Châteaux property Langdon Hall, in Cambridge. Bannon also worked at Chef Victor Barry’s Queen Street West country-style kitchen, The County General (now closed), and Chef Michael Hunter’s Antler, a Michelin-recommended restaurant focusing on Canadian local seasonal and wild food.
“It’s kind of a classic story, you know? A kid grows up on a farm, simple life. Goes off to see the world, comes back with a new perspective and it helps him appreciate the things that were here all along,” says Bannon.
“Every restaurant I worked at in Toronto was sourcing food from Grey County. It started at O&B with Northern Woods Mushrooms. Then it was the Thompson Hotel (now One Hotel) with Kolapore Springs trout. At The County General, we were using Osprey Bluffs Honey. These were my literal neighbours back home and I had no idea. It was a bit like having egg on my face because I hated growing up here, feeling it was too small. But I never saw it for what it truly was. Moving home and going straight to the source to cook the food where it came from just made sense to me.”
It took over six years for Bannon to manifest his dream. In 2021, he purchased the building in Markdale with his wife Andrea, an executive at TD. His whole family pitched in to help with construction, plumbing, electricity and marketing. His older brother, Ryan, who founded the Toronto-based design firm Playground Inc., is responsible for all the branding.
“We intended for the restaurant to be a bit of a time warp, for it to feel like it was of a previous time but is still appropriate for now. It’s filled with antiques that Marilynne had collected over the years—it was her favourite hobby. Behind the bar, we even have the advertising poster for the auction sale of my grandparents’ cattle farm. That was the end of an era and, in many ways, our restaurant is a second chance for that spirit to live on,” Chef Bannon says.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Rice Pudding, The Meatball, Harvest Squash Salad, Chocolate Mousse, Pork Chop, French Onion Soup.
“That’s the dream we’re living: celebrating the place we come from, the people who are here putting in the work now, and offering an exceptional experience that feels good to be a part of.”
“Marilynne’s is a room where half the customers know each other. Where one table will get up and talk to someone at the bar. I wanted to recreate a Queen West cocktail and wine bar vibe where you can come sit at the bar, have a drink, and meet your new best friend while having a great meal. That’s why our bar is so big. It’s a real sense of community when you come in on a busy night.”
Food-wise, Bannon explains that the menus are meant to feel like, “the best versions of our family dinner table: big holiday meals, a birthday party, or just that rare night when nobody had hockey and we could all sit down together. For a little lady, my grandmother had a big, passionate personality. My earliest memories are of sitting around her table cooking and eating. When she looked after us, her big thing was to have a chocolate pie or lemon meringue ready to go to make us happy if we were feeling down.
“We also have mom’s carrot cake on the menu. She works in the kitchen with me in the mornings,” says Bannon.
“It’s surreal and a role reversal for sure,” says Bannon’s mom Wendy, who is Marilynne’s daughter. “I fill the gaps wherever I am needed. I like to work in the prep kitchen in the back and have a handful of customers that’ll say, ‘Is Wendy here?’ because I’ve had the opportunity to eat with them or serve them at the restaurant.”
Marilynne’s might be accessible comfort food but it’s also a highly elevated and seriously focused dining experience—think beautifully plated lasagna ($26), French onion soup crafted from veal stock, roasted beets with wildflower honey, fermented rhubarb, coffee granola, and Ontario Blue cheese ($16). There’s a $175, 36-ounce “Big Steak” on the menu served with fresh-cut parmesan fries and red wine jus that serves three to four diners, and a stunningly butchered 12-ounce Good Family Farm pork chop featuring wilted Brussels sprout slaw, celeriac purée and mustard jus ($45).
“We get our pork loins in whole, trim them down, and make our breakfast sausage with it. We use the skin from the loin to make chicharron for our beef tartare. Any bones left are used for jus for the pork dish,” Bannon explains.
It’s good-looking food made by a chef channeling the vibe of his eclectic grandmother and hoping people will feel a connection. Would Marilynne herself approve of the establishment if she could see it today? Bannon considers, “I think she’d think it’s too dark, too loud, and too expensive—she did enjoy a good casino buffet! But I also think she’d be very proud.”
“Marilynne’s is a room where half the customers know each other. Where one table will get up and talk to someone at the bar.”
And Marilynne might have appreciated that all of the food is proudly sourced from small-scale local farms. And that loyal customers come back because they say the cooking reminds them of home.
“The lasagna you make is how my grandmother used to make it,” Jeff Wilkinson, a retired police officer who lives nearby, tells Bannon.
“Marilynne is a community staple but they haven’t necessarily got the hype and the recognition they deserve. I’ve been an advocate of theirs since they’ve opened,” says Chef Joel Gray, co-owner of Down Home, one of the region’s recent recipients of a Michelin Guide recommendation, the equivalent of an Oscar in the culinary world.
“Brandon is doing comfort food that gives you that great sense of nostalgia for home cooking. Everything has a story, a purpose for being there, and he’s decorated the space the way he cooks, which is just very comforting. It’s food we’ve all grown up with. They have the best brunch, and I also love going in for a Sunday roast dinner,” Gray says enthusiastically.
“It’s incredible that we live in a time where Michelin recognitions are something that’s even possible to consider for a little spot, in a little town, on a little highway, in a little county,” Bannon says of the Grey County establishments that earned Michelin recognition in 2024—in addition to Down Home, Creemore’s The Pine received a coveted Michelin one-star designation.
“Michelin-worthy might not be the place where our head is at, right now at least,” Bannon continues. “We want to show up every day and make the best food we know how to make, have the best relationships with our community, and work at getting a little bit better at all of it every day. That’s the dream we’re living: celebrating the place we come from, the people who are here putting in the work now, and offering an exceptional experience that feels good to be a part of. That said, our aspirations do run high; in fact, the day we got to the restaurant, my brother gifted me a Michelin Man piggy bank, which I placed above the pass, as a daily reminder of what we aspire to!”
