Owners of restaurant Eldon’s in the Glebe displaced after devastating house fire

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Eldon’s, a popular three-year-old eatery in the Glebe, will be closed until Saturday after a devastating fire tore through the home of owners Cory Baird and Marhlee Gaudet, leaving the couple and their newborn displaced.

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“I’m happy we’re all safe and together, of course,” said Gaudet, 29. “But it’s sad and it’ll be sad for a while.

“Customers and family have offered baby clothes, because we don’t even have a crib anymore. I had to go run to Shoppers and buy a bottle. Little things you don’t even think about, and all of a sudden, you’ve got nothing.”

The blaze began around 4:30 p.m. on Friday in an older five-unit building at 309 Stewart St. in Sandy Hill.

Baird, 35, was at home napping with the couple’s seven-month-old baby Felix when he awoke to a door knock from their neighbour, who was feeding her cat when she heard “what sounded like a sizzle,” said Gaudet.

“She looked outside, she saw fire, and so she ran back into the building and knocked on our door. She’s just the most gentle little French woman and has the smallest voice, so we could barely hear her.”

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Baird ran to the neighbour’s deck with a fire extinguisher and “unloaded it,” which Gaudet estimates bought him about five minutes to round up Felix and the family’s two cats and one dog. Baird also corralled Gaudet’s mother and her mother’s cat, who live along with Gaudet’s sister on the bottom floor of the couple’s two-storey unit.

“It was intense. I’m just like, ‘Oh my gosh, how?’ You end up having to wrangle what feels like a zoo,” said Gaudet, who was at work with her sister at the time of the fire. “He took three trips. By the time he came out with the last cat, the firefighters were entering the building and they were like, ‘Get out!’ My mom didn’t even have shoes. Cory left his phone upstairs. We got just the living beings.”

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The building’s top floor, where Gaudet and another neighbour live, suffered the worst of the damage.

“What I can see from the outside is right above our bed, there’s a hole in the roof. And if not from the fire, there is substantial damage from water and smoke,” she said.

“In the lowest level of the building, one of the firefighters was walking through it and said the water was up to his knees.”

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Gaudet, who for the time being is living in Metcalfe with family, hopes she will be able to enter the unit next week to salvage what she can.

None of the tenants in the apartment building had insurance.

“We used to have tenant insurance at an old apartment,” said Gaudet. “I don’t know why — we’re just like, ‘No, we don’t need it.’ Because that’s how that works right? You never think it’s going to happen to you.”

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The pandemic — and now the fire — have put a lot into perspective for Gaudet and Baird, including the future of Eldon’s.

The couple revealed to this newspaper they plan to relocate their business to Carp to be closer to family, a move Gaudet said was in the making even before the fire. The timeline might now be expedited.

The combination of COVID-19 and a newborn, plus the daily grind of running a small business, “is just not sustainable” without more help, said Gaudet. “Cory ends up there for almost 18 hours a day.”

Eldon’s opened on Bank Street near Second Avenue in 2018. The narrow, homey eatery sells coffee and bread, and offers farm-to-table brunch and lunch menus that feature fresh and simple from-scratch dishes.

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“We will miss the Glebe, oh my gosh. It’s bittersweet, that’s for sure,” said Gaudet, who added that her new restaurant in Carp will still serve Eldon’s smoked fish staples, popular barbecue items, coffee and more.

For now, the eatery will reopen this Saturday thanks to the efforts of “some amazing staff,” and operate only on the weekends for the foreseeable future. Eldon’s also has a stand at the Main Farmers’ Market on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Gaudet expressed gratitude for “the overwhelming amount of messages and support” from friends, family and customers, and to the fire department and Red Cross.

“One of the reasons we’re still able to smile is just the unbelievable amount of support. It’s crazy. When something happens, it’s just wild to see people come together at the drop of a dime. It’s special, it’s heartwarming.”

To donate to the couple’s GoFundMe, go to: gofundme.com/f/help-marhlee-and-cory-rebuild-their-home-life. As of Sunday afternoon, it had raised more than $5,000.