The Local Flavor

Author: Michael Ives

The Bristol Bakery and CafÈ does not have a large, exotic menu. Rather, one can find a collection of thoughtfully prepared, inexpensive bakery staples, with a few seasonal surprises. And the servers are sexy.

Taking over a large part of Bristol's main street, the cafÈ boasts several huge windowpanes that facilitate people-watching. Inside, a sprawling ceiling and brick walls create a cavernous, country atmosphere. Sunday afternoon readers and children inhabit window perches, nodding and smiling at patrons passing through the door.

Bristol Bakery's menu caters to any shade of hunger. For substantial fare, the veggie sandwich is a great deal at $3.75. Other standard meat sandwiches are available for under $4.50. Sandwich making is at the customer's discretion, and we were able to customize our veggie sandwiches accordingly. All sandwich bread is baked on premises, and the brown rice and walnut variety was especially good. Other condiment options include havarti cheese, avocado, hummus and vinaigrette dressings.

Another interesting and less-filling option was mini bagels. We chose a plain bagel with a bruschetta topping, which turned out to be more of a tomato pesto. Other topping options such as scallion cream cheese or hummus were available, all for under $2.

While the sandwich and bagel were great choices, they were clearly not the priority of our visit. Resting below the attentive gaze of our lovely servers were dozens of fresh pastries. Small items such as peanut butter "whoopie" cookies, molasses cookies and almond raspberry shortbread cost under $1.50 each, while larger, more ambitious ginger pumpkin and chocolate mousse cakes cost under $3. Bristol Bakery offers as serious and burly a pastry as I've ever seen. If we had been feeling particularly devilish, we could have lunched on sweets alone.

At the end of the pastry display, I found a self-serve coffee rack. In addition to simple coffee flavors, an impressive array of chai and cappuccino was available from behind the bar for $2 to $3 a cup.

We sat down in old chairs in the corner and melted into the woodwork for an hour, watching Sunday Bristolites stroll down Main Street. Visitors flowed in a steady stream through the door, pausing to admire paintings by local artists and then ambling out into the street with hot drinks in hand. We could have spent hours there and even brought something to read. And then we still would not have been ready to leave.

As for the girls behind the counter, they did not, as I had expected, declare their love for me as I ordered my fare or even as I left in a cloud of cheerful Sunday bustle. I wasn't disappointed, though, thinking of how many Sundays there are in a cold winter. Perhaps, I realized, if the way to my heart is through tasty food, the way to theirs might be through the elegantly decorated tip jar. Duly noted.