The car thermometer read 95 when I pulled up to Call Me Honey on Friday. I was wilted and draggy but on mission. I’d heard that Curio, long closed, was now Call Me Honey (sometimes called “Honey’s”) and still offering Liège Belgian waffles with its coffee, as Curio had done years before. CMH opened in February.
This was not a great week to munch on a hot waffle, but remembering from experiences in East Asia that hot tea cools you, I hoped the hot waffle would do the same. And it was time for my third cup of (hot) coffee of the day.
The cheery greetings, coffee enthusiasm and café gossip immediately lifted me. It’s no surprise that the place has retained Curio’s regulars and has added its own fans. The décor is familiar: white tile walls and embossed tin ceiling painted black. The waffle maker beckons and the menu offers expected and unusual choices. What, for example, is The Pearl? But I’m getting ahead of myself. Coffee first.
CMH uses beans from local roaster Broadsheet for espresso drinks, while An(other) Coffee supplies Call Me Honey’s beans for pour-overs and drips. I’ve had its coffee at Tilde, in North Cambridge, and this too was good – perhaps in tandem with the waffle, even better. The list of current coffees includes Rwandan, Thai (a rare origin for specialty coffee), Ecuadorian and the appealingly named SBlendid. An(other) will open its own shop at some point.
The waffles – even in this blistering heat – are very satisfying. The plain has a crunchy, caramelized surface and soft, moist interior. There is a tahini chocolate version, and on weekends CMH offers an extravagant-sounding strawberry-corn-buttermilk confection. These are not the waffles of my childhood, which were soaked in butter and maple syrup and quickly cloying.
The signboard lists a few interesting things. There is matcha seltzer, which, as a Japan-focused observer, I might try. In general I stay away from matchaccinos and other over-matcha’ed beverages. The town of Uji, source of some of the best green tea/matcha, is unable to keep up with the demand because so much of its production is going into sweet green foamy things. Requests for matcha for traditional purposes are sometimes met with sad denials. This variation, however, might make the cut for me. And the one called The Pearl? No signage explains it, but Riss, one of the owners, said it is a kind of distillation of the waffle flavors in a coffee drink. Uh, okay, maybe next time. More appealing is the Taza mocha, which uses Mexican chocolate from Somerville’s Taza. I wonder how that would be when chilled. Probably great.
Riss and Hannah, the other owner, have done things right. First, in keeping much of the Curio design and waffles and using excellent coffee. Second, in making the space their own, but for us. When I asked what customers should know, Riss said that the space is for gathering people and sharing. I’ll return for that weekend waffle and camaraderie, but I may wait until the temperature drops below 90.
Call Me Honey, 441 Cambridge St., East Cambridge (7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday to Friday; 8 a.m. to 2 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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