Hidden Gem: Little Lake Market serving fan favourite foods with a focus on gut health
This is part of an ongoing summer series. Come back each week to learn about another hidden gem.
Little Lake Market is bringing big city food options to the small township of Puslinch, Ont.
Alexander Paciorkowski opened the storefront in October 2022. It started as a food lab, but has evolved into a store that offers ready-to-go food and other health-related items.
Paciorkowski said the idea for the market came from his wife’s journey with an autoimmune illness.
“Changing the diet was a necessary part of it. That meant we had to start eating out at different places and cooking differently,” Paciorkowski said. “That eventually led me down to changing career paths to where I am today.”
Previously, Paciorkowski was managing food-related businesses.
While they were adjusting to his wife’s new dietary restrictions, he said they noticed a gap in the industry making it difficult to find tasty, satisfying food that fit their health requirements.
“I came up with the idea of what does it really mean to have a healthy diet, and do it in a way where it actually tastes very good,” Paciorkowski said.
The shop serves their own version of classic foods. They have pizza on sourdough crust, sheep milk gelato, yucca fries, specialty coffees and teas and more.
“If you feel you can’t eat dairy anymore, maybe you can eat sheep milk. If you can’t have a proper pizza anymore because you’re gluten free, maybe you can have a sourdough one,” Paciorkowski said. “We’re trying to offer people the knowledge on how they can have healthier and better tasting alternatives on the products they really missed.”
Paciorkowski comes up with his own recipes using minimal ingredients, making everything gluten free and dairy friendly and without any seed oils.
They also source meat from local farmers whose practices fit with the store’s mission.
“We solve a lot of problems that you find in different foods,” he said. “The biggest thing we try to do is avoid spiking blood sugar, ‘cause if the blood sugar spikes too quickly it’ll crash and if you crash, that’s when you get tired and you might not feel so great.”
Staff at Little Lake Market in Puslinch Ont., gather behind the counter for a photo. June 27, 2024. (Stefanie Davis/CTV News)
Zoe Lendvay, a new employee at Little Lake Market, said she wanted to work at the shop as soon as she visited it.
“As someone who deals with chronic illness and autoimmune disease, it’s really cool to be in a place like this that makes food accessible to people,” Lendvay said. “We’re used to all these restrictions and just feeling sad and a lot of being left out and the fear of missing out, so to enjoy food that is accessible is just a really awesome experience.”
Dave Bulten, a regular customer, said some of the items the market staff have introduced him to have been “life changing.”
“They don’t have beer but they had something better, something called kombucha, which we never heard of,” he said. “[Alexander] explained it to us, and that’s it. We love the stuff and it’s an electrolyte and it really helps. We learned more about the things we can take that are healthy, because we’re kind of normal guys that ride hard but we like to be healthy.”
With recipes that are consistently evolving, the Little Lake Market aims to replace food staples with gut friendly alternatives.
“Food is a very intimate thing in our lives,” Paciorkowski said. “We want to make sure the food has a really positive impact – not just on your health, but your wellbeing.”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Neighbour on the hook for $3,675 in damages due to ‘nuisance cedar’: B.C. tribunal
A B.C. man who reneged on a deal to split the cost of removing a tree with his next-door neighbour is now on the hook for the whole amount, B.C.’s civil resolution has ruled.
WestJet mechanics strike forces dozens more B.C. flight cancellations
Dozens of WestJet flights to and from Vancouver International Airport were cancelled Sunday, as a strike by airline mechanics continues.
She's still busy at 105. What secrets and science are behind Canada's 'super agers'?
There is ongoing research to better understand the relationship between social connection and healthy aging, and why the brains of super agers look different compared with their peers.
Several U.S. military bases in Europe on heightened alert amid possible terrorist threat
Several U.S. military bases across Europe were put on a heightened state of alert over the weekend, with the level of force protection raised to its second-highest state amid concerns that a terrorist attack could target U.S. military personnel or facilities, according to two U.S. officials.
A study identified 6 types of depression. Here’s why that matters
Scientists may be a step closer to that reality, thanks to new research that has identified six subtypes — or 'biotypes' — of major depression via brain imaging combined with machine learning.
Creators urge Ottawa to force disclosure of ‘black box’ AI system training
Canadian creators and publishers want the government to do something about the unauthorized and usually unreported use of their content to train generative artificial intelligence systems.
Some of Canada's wealthiest billionaires, according to Forbes
If you gathered all the wealth that billionaires currently have worldwide, you would have about US$14.2 trillion, according to Forbes Magazine. But what about in Canada alone?
Nude beach etiquette: Lose your clothes, not your manners
Most of us have felt the freedom and delight that comes with stripping down to a swimsuit on a sunny day and wading into a cool sea, the horizon twinkling in the distance.
Charges pending after 3-year-old Edmonton boy struck, killed by truck in marked crosswalk
Police say charges are pending after a boy was killed and his mother and sister were injured in a crash in south Edmonton on Thursday.