I never thought I’d write this, but the coffee isn’t always the reason to go. It turns out there is such a thing as “good-enough coffee” and I have found that where you get a desirable nibble might not be a place where the coffee rules. The coffee and the food work in tandem, of course: A good cup of coffee might carry a mediocre croissant, and a great canelé might elevate an overly bitter macchiato. But for some people, coffee is fuel and food is the thing, and for me it’s usually the opposite.
Also important is a café’s ambience. The aesthetic and social surroundings may enhance the experience beyond what your “taste senses” (those received by nose, tongue, ear, nerve endings and eye) register in the food or drink.
The two visits this past weekend, to Café Beatrice and Basma Café, made me look beyond the coffee – something I rarely do. I found this week that though I’m famously fussy (not that I see it that way) about coffee, if there’s a tasty morsel to be had I can sip a “normal” coffee with relative happiness. But the coffee must do more than simply wash down the pastry (whether a muffin or a viennoiserie). It should be like that French response to “how much do I love you?” “Mieux que hier, moins que demain.” (More than yesterday and less than tomorrow. The coffee is better than yesterday and good enough to improve.)
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Cafe Beatrice, at 100 N. First St., in Cambridge. (Photo: Carson Paradis) -
A customer is helped Wednesday at Cafe Beatrice. (Photo: Carson Paradis) -
The back room at Cafe Beatrice. (Photo: Carson Paradis) -
An employee at Cafe Beatrice on Wednesday. (Photo: Carson Paradis)
Café Beatrice
Beatrice is in a part of Cambridge many Cantabrigians don’t know and can’t find, because it isn’t real: “Cambridge Crossing,” developed recently with high-rise biological labs and offices, pharmaceutical companies and other high-tech establishments, with mostly young people who work in them living in high-rise, anodyne, blandly built condominia. The people in the café then are “local,” if living and working there means local. You can tell they’re taking a break from intense work because they’re sitting at a table with one leg stretched out straight in “off-duty” position while the other twitches and both eyes are fixed on phones.
But there is community here, and, as one observer noted, the very heavy doors to the café might help create it. Almost always, those who exit need help opening them, especially if they are carrying takeout coffee and a bag of pastry. Someone will leap up and push with them, always commenting on the difficulty. Inadvertent architecturally created civility.
There are about five outdoor tables under a two-story patio roof, making a quasi-social space in an otherwise anonymous area. Indoors, cold with excessive air conditioning, there is more seating and to one side a sort of dark lounge area passing through to a restaurant.
In this newly created “neighborhood” you see the traffic on elevated Interstate 93 and the Lechmere T stop on the green line, but you can also wander into local landscape architect Michael van Valkenburgh’s park, a bit of urban peace and beauty even for mallard duck families. On a lovely afternoon, people sit on benches and at Lamplighter beer garden tables while kids ride trikes. It’s an oasis of sorts, a tiny Brigadoon landed from the sky, alien to its surroundings.
Old Cambridge Street, while nearby, is a far cry. There you can find mom-and-pop Uyghur food, Italian pizza joints, Portuguese fishmongers, one-off shops. At Cambridge Crossing the majority of options are local chains: Bon Me, Tatte and Lamplighter.
But back to the substances in question. The coffee, for me, is good enough to sustain almost all of a giant pastry, for which Beatrice is known. The kouign amann is enormous and shaped like a popover or perhaps something that would have died off when the meteor fell. It is extraordinary, a three-person treat, exemplifying the best traits of a kouign amann: Caramelized, laminated, each layer buttered and sugared to stand alone, revealing a tree-circlelike texture. Servers should provide a damp towel for sticky fingers.
There are sandwiches large enough to share or to be both breakfast and lunch. Daily specials include a favorite combo, grilled cheese and tomato soup, on Mondays; a Cuban on Wednesdays; and another favorite, a fried chicken sandwich, on Fridays. I’ll be back.
Beatrice, in what a visitor noted as a “Seaport District without tourists (or sea),” seems like a prototype for a chain but is stand-alone, with pastries by Brian Mercury and overall menu by owner Will Gilson (who also owns, among his establishments, the nearby Amba, named for the Iraqi sauce that could, in my view, improve almost anything). Here, that kouign amann plus the mallards were enough; the coffee, though not finished, was too.
Basma Café
How could I not have been to this Somerville gem before? In part, I suppose, because it’s not about the coffee. But Basma offers a lot of complements on its odd menu, itself complemented by the oddity of some items being branded with the name “Crave”: When the new owners took over the café, which had been Renee’s, Crave was the name until they decided, quite rightly, that Basma (meaning “smile” in Arabic) was much better.
The family is Palestinian, but the menu is all over the map, leading me to wonder and even doubt. How can one cook (and indeed there is one cook, Ayman Noufal) make everything from tacos with black beans and all the fixings to shakshuka with all its accoutrements? All cooked breakfasts, brunches and lunches are as varied and … perfect examples of their kind. The lesson here is that something can be just plain tasty without conforming to “tradition” and without the “licensing” of “authenticity.” If I can make falafel, and I can, Noufal can make tacos and a Reuben.
There is so much to try, including a good-looking breakfast burrito, an Irish plate (!) of corned beef hash with eggs, home fries and toast, fajitas, a smoked salmon omelet and steak and eggs. The home fries are exceptional, chunks with crisp outsides and creamy smooth insides. A smashburger, though not my burger, looked tastily crisped, making texture its appeal. In summary, I trust this man.
Noufal has been cooking for decades in his own restaurants, including one recently in Marblehead, but Basma has been his locale for about a year and a half. He cooks and his son garnishes and delivers each order to the couples and families whose table are soon covered with large plated meals. It’s remarkably fast service, considering every dish is made to order and the restaurant’s 10 or so tables are full.
The brewed coffee is a fine Colombian. Also on offer is a rich, dense, toasty Arabic coffee that is made from finely preground Lebanese coffee.
There’s a lesson beyond this place’s deliciousness and good service. A restaurant can have its own character without being branded or defined by a narrow range of options. The breadth of the menu and the confidence with which the dishes are produced ensure that Basma’s customers leave with a wave and a smile.
Café Beatrice, 100 N. First St., North Point, Cambridge. (7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday; 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday)
Basma Café, 198 Holland St., Teele Square, Somerville. (Closed Monday and Tuesday. 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 8 a.m. to noon Friday; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday)
Corky White, a food anthropologist at Boston University, has lived in Cambridge since 1953 with long sojourns in Japan. She has written articles on coffee for Standart Magazine and books including “Cooking for Crowds” (in its 40th Anniversary edition) “Coffee Life in Japan” and, with her son, Ben Wurgaft, “Ways of Eating.” Corky is grounded in coffee and welcomes suggestions at cwhite@csindie.com.
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