Finding something you don’t expect in a place you don’t frequent was the motivation for this week’s café crawl. To find such places in my hometown, whose streets I know so well I think I could be a cab driver, confounds my parochialism. One was known to me but needed context and more visits; one is so close to my home that it went virtually unnoticed; and the third was a new-to-me treat. On the fringes of my personal map, there are benefits I’d not experienced, even those right under my nose.

Something about more light and the promise of warmer days sends me beyond the usual, a seasonal urge that is more fun than mulching the garden or spring cleaning. If you are a regular reader, you know that I’ve canvassed a few neighborhoods. This time I go to three neighborhoods, encouraging the travel that spring inspires in me. But one person’s distant-horizon café is another’s home coffee haunt. Novelties work that way too: What in one café is unusual to me might be ho-hum to you. This week, the journey began near Porter Square, thence near Union Square and finally to East Cambridge. Each had something off my radar to recommend it!

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CSCA Café

This one was so close that – as my mother used to say – if it were a dog he would bite you. Within a five-minute walk from Porter Square, the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts Café sits between Ladder 4, my local firehouse, and the army recruiting post, in a relatively café-free location. It will be a place for me to meet people between writing spurts and grading papers at home. That its bakery is the school right across Massachusetts Avenue means that every morsel is fresh from the oven. But when I finally entered, what caught me first is the coffee, as it should: It’s George Howell, one of the best roasters anywhere. 

Howell is the “dean” of coffee experts. He founded the Coffee Connection in The Garage in Harvard Square (with branches in Brookline and Faneuil Hall), but it was bought out by Starbucks, along with the name of his invention, the Frappuccino. Since then, his cafés, now called George Howell, have proliferated, with stores in Acton, Newton, Boston and one here in Cambridge on Brattle Street, ensconced, pinkly, in the new romance bookshop Lovestruck. 

Howell has at least three basic principles in his coffee production. The coffee beans should be freshly roasted (though I don’t think he adheres to the “use within two weeks” practice I learned in Japan); they should be light or light-to-medium roast; and the brew should be allowed to cool so one can appreciate all the layers of flavor that are hidden in hot coffee.

But back to the café, where I appreciated greatly the light roast of the Ethiopian Worka Chelbessa. I ordered the drip. CCAS is bright and small, with just a few tables indoors and some shaded seating outdoors. The surprise, the magnet, are the special pastries in the shapes of various fruits. When you crack the beautifully colored exteriors of the Strawberry, the Mango, the Lemon, you find a delicate cake and mousse, delectable – you may think you should share, but won’t want to. These trompe l’oeil pastries are unique, so take time to admire. The menu is rounded out by scones, tarts, macarons and a dulce de leche croissant.

Bagged snacks are for sale, and, like the bagels offered here from Bagelsaurus, are made by CCAS alumni. Also for sale is a large collection of chef-approved Wüsthof knives and other kitchen utensils, and a few attractive cookbooks. One-stop shopping for treats and cook-appropriate gifts.

Vinal

This small morning bakery-café is on Somerville Avenue, outside Union Square toward the Target and converging highways. It’s a cheerful, almost triangular room with an open bakery behind the counter. Vinal has been there, making its signature English muffins, for seven years. The muffins come in many flavors meant to evoke New England. One of these, anadama, for those who don’t know the legend (it may be apocryphal!) is the name given to a bread made by a disgruntled New England husband. The story goes that his wife either disappeared or forswore cooking and he, fiercely kneading the family bread, made with whole grain flour and molasses, chanted “Anna, damn her!” 

English muffins are more lovingly created and, fresh from the oven, go beautifully with the Portland, Maine-produced Tandem coffees that the shop serves. Tandem has a well-deserved reputation for excellent roasts, carefully sourced beans and overnight shipping service. (We will talk roasters in detail another time.) The English muffins are quite different from the ones I grew up with, Thomas’, which when forked open (never cut, ruins the texture) display pits and valleys into which, when toasted, melting butter runs, a very tasty sight. Vinal’s are more uniform and are sliced. They are soft and resilient and, soaked in maple butter, just fine. Vinal also makes a variety of good sandwiches on the muffins and has other pastries and a buttermilk biscuit I must try next time.

Staff are helpful and pursue you if you’ve forgotten to say you want room for milk in your coffee, and when it’s not too crowded, come to chat at the tables. The room was young on my visit, as at most of the cafés, and at a long table, nine colleagues were having a Friday kaffeeklatsch before settling into work. There are no laptops, nor do they belong at this social space. Yes, I saw a young man with a book, and a couple staring fondly and wordlessly into each other’s eyes, but it was the gentle buzz of conversation instead of the clacking of keys that filled the room. 

Next door is Vinal’s lunch place, Vinal General Store. After I eat there, I will report.

Elmendorf

Here is another wonderful shop, different from others but the same in its neighborliness. And unique, a word I don’t use lightly. Elmendorf calls itself a baking supply store and draws bakers from all over for its unusual flours and grains, various locally grown dried beans, syrups and nut pastes, baking equipment and cookbooks, aprons and potholders. The staff is helpful and knowledgeable on the qualities of grains and flours: Which produce what density of loaf, which need to be refrigerated. No, don’t use that whole grain without some white flour with more gluten; the texture will be hard.

An important feature of this store is its bespoke mill, made in Vermont of two granite stones and to grind just what is needed. Ground in a single pass through the beautiful stones, the flour is “in its most simple form” – as “millers have been doing for thousands of years” – and is thus both ancient and fresh. And local: Turkey Red wheat from Maine, Redeemer from New Hampshire. Teddy and his wife, a baker, opened the shop in 2018. Both had worked at Formaggio (and Teddy at Oleana, with Ana Sortun). During the pandemic, when everyone was making sourdough bread and naming their starters, they used Elmendorf’s flour. People still come to talk about flour and geek out over bread.

I’m reminded that Elmendorf isn’t the only food destination on this part of Cambridge Street. The New Deal fish market draws lovers of fine seafood and “sushi-grade” tuna; Portuguese restaurants dot the road; the Clover commissary is nearby; and Gufo, a fine Italian restaurant with an interesting layout and garden, sits next to the Commuter Rail track. If you are lucky, you will see and hear the train go by, an evocation of small-town America. (Mine was in Minnesota, where nothing said “small town” more than the train that might take you away from it.)

East Cambridge has a sense of village, and Elmendorf is a small community within it, a bread-bakers’ village but also a gathering place for sipping coffee, sharing a richly endowed sandwich or eating a great cookie. The coffee is from Barrington Coffee in Great Barrington, and pairs well with those cookies. As Teddy said, we have a tendency to work with friends, so Barrington, whose owners are his friends, was a natural collaboration. An indoor seating area is carved out behind a bookcase with six small tables (and a couple outside), and regulars greet each other, moving over to accommodate a newcomer who might perch on a windowsill until a chair becomes available. Sometimes there’s an artist with a sketch pad, drawing the scene in which he himself is an element.

Every year the shop sponsors Le Grand Prix Elmendorf du Pain, during which local bakers compete for the best baguette or sourdough bread; the qualities of each judged by local culinary celebrities, and the street filled with stalls selling local crafts. The party this year takes place June 14. Don’t miss it!

CSCA Café, 1995 Massachusetts Ave., Porter Square, Cambridge (7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays to Wednesdays; 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays)

Vinal Café, 222 Somerville Ave., Ward 2, Somerville (8 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily)

Elmendorf Baking Supplies and Cafe, 594 Cambridge St., East Cambridge (8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays; 9 to 5 p.m. Saturdays; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays)

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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Corky White

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