Last weekend I stretched the boundaries of localvorism by visiting two new (to me) cafes, one each in Newton and Belmont.
First up, Bread and Lily in Newton, where owner Ben Cutler put on an impressive spread for some food bloggers. Bread & Lily offers a full range of edibles from the usual cafe stuff to some impressive house-made sandwiches, catering and even ice cream made on site. They smoke their own salmon and make their own whitefish salad too. Cutler (brother of non-cheese blogger @jeffcutler) explained his “practical approach to doing the right thing” wherein he buys organic and sustainable products unless that would make the resulting menu items unaffordable. Bread and Lily also makes in-house whatever they can at the highest quality, but buys elsewhere from the leading suppliers what they can’t (yet?) perfect themselves.
At left, oven roasted turkey sandwich with cranberry relish, applewood bacon and thyme mayo. At right, a very generous broccoli quiche.
Slightly closer to HQ but somehwat less convenient to the Green line is Ana Sortun’s Sofra Bakery. You may remember Sortun as the brains behind Oleana, the birthplace of Random Apps of Kindness.
Sofra is awash in the cuisine of Turkey, Lebanon and Greece, with lots of yogurts, sweets and pastries, mezze, sandwiches and baklava. I had orange blossom lemonade and a za’atar croissant,and was unable to leave without buying a bag of sugar smoke pecans.
Those sugar smoke pecans are quite impressive, by the way. Steep at $12 per bag, but they go a long way.
Which reminds me in a tangential way.. . I returned to Wrapro with Prof. M and among other tastiness, we enjoyed pistachio ma’amoul:
Greg Paul and his family recipes are more than welcome to scoff (as long as they bring samples) but these were awfully delicious. Ma’amoul come in different shapes and different fillings. These were sort of oval and filled with delicious pistachio and dusted with powdered sugar. There are some great cafes byond the usual waddle range, but also some undiscovered desserts at the usual haunts.
Damnit, that looks delicious. I am getting very hungry.
p.s. the photo for the “very generous broccoli quiche” doesn’t display, nothing has loaded in that spot.
Isn’t Sofra technically Belmont St. in Cambridge? Thanks for reminding me – I have been meaning to stop there on one of my weekly Watertown trips.
Thanks for the shout out and thanks for the visit. I’m waiting for you to publish a ‘best-of’ map of local eateries. Or just invite me to lunch again!
Chat soon.
Psyched that you are reviewing Bread and Lily – I’ve just discovered them too. Their meaty entrees are unbelievable. Ben Cutler knows how to roast a moist chicken!
@ProfessorN – you must have quiche blindness, we can all see it fine. And fine, it is!
@Kristen – there you go ruining a perfectly good lede with facts 😛
@Jeff – well, I had a nice map, but Kristen went and ruined it with her “factual geography”
@Clownface – it takes a dry man to make a moist chicken