My first impression was that you couldn’t get more essentially New England than this. My second was that I didn’t know anyone in New England could make this cup of coffee.
I first came to Pleasant and Main in Housatonic on a winter evening after a snowfall. It was tea-time and dusk, and the café door held a paper sign: Am splitting wood in the garden out back …
Out back holds a cabin just large enough for a stove, bookshelves and a chair. When I called in December, looking for real, thick hot chocolate, the owner, Craig Pero, told me he had just heated a cup on his wood stove while late oak leaves were falling and blowing past. Now I knew where he sat to drink it.
Pancakes with cherries and maple syrup at Pleasant and Main in Housatonic. Photo by Kate Abbott
Caffe latte with rich steamed milk. Photo by Kate Abbott
Eggs Florentine with cheese sauce at Pleasant and Main in Housatonic. Photo by Kate Abbott
Sweet Crêpe with lemon curd at Pleasant and Main in Housatonic. Photo by Kate Abbott
Pancakes with cherries and maple syrup at Pleasant and Main in Housatonic. Photo by Kate Abbott
When I came back (coincidentally) on a morning soon after, he recommended a caffe latte. It came in a glass cup with steamed milk as rich as cream, and it tasted like dark chocolate, rich and warm. It reminded me of the South of France on a trip long ago, sitting at an outdoor table in the sun and stirring an oblong sugar cube into a palm-sized cup.
But here I sat at a table by a window, waiting for a friend. Inside, the place is half restaurant and half antique shop — one large, open room with long wooden tables, shelves of old glass behind the bar and a canoe in the rafters. With the coffee I sampled a croissant, soft and buttery and, most memorably, spread with a golden marmalade, lightly sweet and intensely flavored.
When breakfast came, the two of us began to laugh spontaneously at the generosity of it. Eggs Florentine with spinach and a deep yellow cheese sauce. Pancakes with cherries — heated to a deep red, not too sweet, gently thickened — and real maple syrup. Friends of mine have joked about carrying a hip flask to bring maple syrup to restaurants that only serve that flavored table syrup at brunch, and the real thing always warms me.
We tried a sweet crepe with lemon curd, a thick, tangy custard filling, and I asked for a second cup of coffee, something I almost never do. But this morning had become a festival without my noticing. An ordinary meeting over coffee had become sparkling clear, as though the sun had come out.
