Coffee shop and café
Up at Brewhaha, Barry Garton smiles when he hears about the farm-to-table movement as a new phenomenon, because he has been cooking that way since the 1970s — local and homestyle. “My focus in cooking has always been natural foods,” he says.
After almost 20 years on Marshall Street, across from Mass MoCA, he has moved his well-known café to the West End Market on Route 2, just west of downtown. He has brought his signature muffins — pumpkin chip, chocolate banana and more — fair trade coffee and loose-leaf teas, old-fashioned diner meals and fresh vegetables, frittatas, omelettes and salads, to a larger historic space.
Garton bought the building in 2006 and has been rebuilding it over the years, as he restored the silver train-car of the Miss Adams diner in the 1980s. He and his family have a passion for older buildings and keeping history alive, he says.
The West End building is close on a hundred years old, early 1900s, and well-known for its art deco or art moderne facade. Garton has renovated the building and made it accessible but kept the 1930s porcelain enamel panels and the original look. It gives him twice the space he has had, he said, and the new kitchen is four times as large.
