Jaylen Malcom-Tomlinson, 22, has made his dream of owning a restaurant a reality with the opening of Fusion Kitchen in downtown Oshawa on March 14.
After graduating from George Brown Polytechnic’s Culinary Arts program last year, Malcom-Tomlinson and his mother Sasha Malcom signed the lease to the building at 62 King St. W. However, because of renovation delays the restaurant only opened 10 months later.
The building has a long history in Oshawa. It was built in 1838 and was a working tavern and hotel for the route between Toronto and Kingston.
The building also served for five years as the Oshawa House Café, a cherished location for many people in Durham Region.
Malcolm-Tomlinson’s father, Phillip Tomlinson, had his eye on the building for a while and had promised his son the location.
But the family did not realize the amount of work that was needed to open the 188-year-old building to the public.
“Because one part of the city owns one thing and the next part is owned by a different part of the city. So it’s much paperwork for that, as well as the building itself had no gas running through it,” he said.
Despite the delay of the gas installation, the family persevered and used its renovation and construction knowledge from its other company, Donwel Renovations, to speed up the opening.
Malcom-Tomlinson hadn’t always been interested in becoming a chef. In his teen years he dreamed of being a professional soccer player.
But at the age of 15 he shattered his kneecap and severed a patellar tendon in his left knee, forcing him to find a new career and passion.
His experience working in fast food, along with his family’s love of food, made him follow in their footsteps to become a chef and business owner.
Malcom-Tomlinson hopes to bring a new energy to Oshawa with his restaurant. He describes it as an establishment that borders on fine dining instead of the common pub-like food scene downtown.
“We still want to make it feel like you can come in with your jacket and you don’t feel like you’re priced out because the place looks nice,” he said. “We want to give them elevated dining but still make them feel like you’re comfy and home here.”
Fusion Kitchen is opening at daunting time for many restaurants.
According to Restaurants Canada, food industry sales grew by 2.5 per cent in 2025 but is expected to decline by 1.1 per cent this year due to factors such as U.S tariffs and inflation.
As a result, marketing manager Sabrina Dewes is working hard on Instagram to promote the new restaurant.
“You just got to be chronically online. Yeah, like kind of using trends – and joking things too,” said Dewes an Advertising and Marketing Communications student at Durham College with a degree in media studies focused on photography,
She also hopes to bring in more of Oshawa’s older demographic through signage and branching out to other social media such as Facebook.