A clean, well-lighted place. Hemingway was talking about a Parisian cafe filled with late-night drinkers, but the term can easily apply to MOSAIC CAFÉ (78 Masonic St., Northampton, 585-1155). For one thing, it is a clean and well-lighted place, recently redone from Bill Streeter’s Silver Maple Bindery, which formerly occupied the spot. For another, given the Edith Piaf-like music that wafts through the room and the French accents in the North African cuisine, it feels like an authentic café.

Mosaic opens for breakfast at 8 a.m., serving eggs, omelets, baguettes and dessert crepes. There is a full espresso setup in addition to coffee and sweet mint tea. The omelets can feature asparagus in tarragon sauce, merguez (lamb) sausage, or various combinations of tomatoes, onions and peppers. There are a lot of vegetables in Moroccan cuisine, and Mosaic makes use of what is available locally.

A word about the mint tea. It is sweet tea, poured from a teapot into a small glass garnished with a mint leaf. It is delicious and highly addictive and because of it, I have never tried the coffee or the various sodas and fruit drinks that Mosaic serves.

At lunch and dinner, appetizers include chicken or spinach briswats (phyllo wraps), hummus, vegetable sigars and an olive plate. The salads are stunning. An avocado version consisted of thin slices of avocado draped over a mound of artichoke hearts, cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes. It was garnished with sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and zaatar (an herb and spice seasoning mix), and drizzled with a vinaigrette dressing.

I’ve eaten lunch at Mosaic often, forcing myself to try new things instead of sticking with the dishes I know I like. Among my favorites: the Casablanca pizza, a small, four-slice pie served with Kalamata olives, tomatoes, roasted green peppers, capers and anchovies, and drizzled with a little olive oil before serving. They’ll leave off the anchovies if you ask, but don’t. Sandwiches, available as wraps or on baguettes, come in many varieties: chicken, turkey, ground beef, merguez sausage, eggplant, tuna and sardines. All are accompanied with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and a Dijon or sesame vinaigrette. I got a sardine baguette on one visit. The sardines were canned, but, as they say, “they’re from the right cans.” On another occasion, I had the eggplant sandwich, with thin slices of fried eggplant, greaseless and well cooked. In my opinion, many of the sandwiches work better on the baguettes since the wraps can be a little flimsy.

Crepes are light and lacy, and since the kitchen is open you can watch them being made. Mosaic will fill them with grilled chicken, Swiss cheese or a goat cheese/sun-dried tomato mix. There are dessert crepes, including a peach crepe that is on my list to try. Most dishes are accompanied by two slices of cucumber and a small mound of shredded carrot.

The dinner entrees are stews that feature a combination of chickpeas, green peas, zucchini, carrots, green peppers, olives, capers and a slice of lemon, plus either chicken, beef, fish or slices of hard-boiled eggs. You can have the stew over rice or accompanied by slices of baguette. Soups include white bean, lentil or fish.

Hafie Assad, Mosaic’s manager, co-owner and main cook, is a gentle, pleasant man, and the seasoning of the dishes reflects his style. Moroccans tend to use generous amounts of harissa, a hot pepper condiment, but Assad has toned it down for the American palate. He will season dishes more aggressively if you ask.

Born in Casablanca, Assad came to the United States in 1997. He had worked in his father’s shop in Morocco, but learned to cook, he says, by helping his mother at home. His older brother, Abid, owns Amanouz on Main Street in Northampton, and that’s where Hafie Assad learned the restaurant business. The brothers are co-owners of Mosaic, with Hafie assuming the main duties of running the café.

In the summer, they set out tables in front and in the back courtyard. The courtyard is a shady and thoroughly enjoyable place to eat. The vegetation is New England, but you can bring your laptop (there’s free Wi-Fi), order some mint tea and an appetizer or some desserts and indulge in a 21st-century Paul Bowles fantasy. But you’d better clear out at lunch; the place gets crowded.

Desserts include baklava (walnut and sometimes pistachio), homemade bread pudding and various other homemade baked goods including fakas (like biscotti, but more crumbly), ghriba (almond cookies) and vassma (a small square flavored with pistachios). The cookies can be a little dry, but the baklava is sweet and not too sticky.

Mosaic is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Appetizers range from $3.95 to $4.95. Salads and soups are mostly $6.25 to $8.50; trout or salmon salad is $11.95. Sandwiches and crepes are $5.25 to $6.95. Entrees go from $7.95 to $12.95. Desserts are $1.95.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, February 5, 2010.

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Venus Redux

by Don on January 26, 2010

You always wonder whether a restaurant is consistent or has changed since you wrote about it. I’ve been sending people to Venus in Easthampton, calling it, “perhaps the best restaurant in the area.” Mostly, the feedback is good–no place is perfect, after all–but I was talking with a friend the other day.

In my first review, I called her “the young woman about town,” and mentioned how she liked Apollo Grill, Casey Douglass’ first restaurant. She’s now a young mother, less about town perhaps, but still eating out. She said she and her husband had eaten at Venus last weekend. “I kept saying, ‘I don’t like…’ whatever it was and then I tasted it and it was wonderful.”

Someone else I sent there told me it was a great choice. So, Venus is holding its own.

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Sakura – Buffet Sushi in Northampton

by Don on January 21, 2010

When I first heard about a new all-you-can eat sushi buffet in Northampton, I was wary. As someone once said, the words “discount” and “sushi” should never appear in the same sentence. Buffet sushi sounded awfully close. However, I took the plunge and stopped in one day, and I’m glad I did.

The Chen brothers, Jimmy and Yen Hong, who own Sakura (261 King St., Northampton, 587-0388), had two similar buffets in the Springfield area so have experience with the concept. Plus, Jimmy, Sakura’s affable greeter, told me they grew up in the restaurant business in Hong Kong.

The brothers recently sold their East Longmeadow restaurant, kept the Sumner Avenue restaurant in Springfield, and looked around for a spot to open their first Northampton restaurant. After passing on several sites, they checked out the location of the former Hunan Gourmet, and decided to open up there. [click to continue…]

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Wok Hai and Frozen Pizza

by Don on January 14, 2010

All it takes is a morning of winter thaw and I’m immediately remembering the beach. Summers when I was a boy, my family went to Far Rockaway beach. Rows of tiny bungalows, a boardwalk and a beach. For an apartment house boy, it was heaven. The boardwalk extended from Beach 1st street to around Beach 168th street, wood for almost all of its length, and once a summer all of us used to get up early and bike to the end of the boardwalk (the long way). You actually reached the end–the metal pipe railing extended straight across it. We’d rest, eat the sandwiches our mothers had prepared, then bike back.

Stone jetties broke the waves every 5 blocks or so. My friend Freddie and I used to sit at the end of the Beach 35th St jetty, as far out as we could go, and watch the spray break right in front of us. You could get far enough out that the spray never hit you, but burst right up in front of where you sat. At night, I’d turn around and watch the lights of the arcades and fast food places throw rippling red, turquoise, amber, white, and blue lines on the waves. The carnival lights on the water…  for real.

After a while, we’d pick out way back to the beach, then hit one of the food places for pizza. Truth be told, it wasn’t great pizza–frozen crust, cooked in a small square oven that sat on a counter–but it came out bubbling hot. We called them scorchers and I loved the dance of taking small bites of molten cheese without searing the roof of my mouth.

When I took a class at the CIA, one of the rules was to serve “hot food hot and cold food cold.” The Chinese have a term-wok hai or wok hay–that refers to the smell and the taste that a searingly hot wok imparts to a stir fried dish. I love when a dish comes to the table bubbling and hot. I sneak tiny tastes until that perfect moment when it has barely cooled enough to eat. Thirty seconds later, it is warm and the life has gone out of it, no matter how good it still tastes.  Grab life when it’s ready I suppose is the lesson. Remember to breathe when the air smells tantalizingly of humus.

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Carbonade Flamande – Take Two

by Don on January 10, 2010

Carbonade Flamande

 So this week I did something any restaurant cook does on a daily basis. I made the same dish again, wanting it to taste exactly the same. I was supposed to bring it to my cousin’s last week, but we cancelled because of snow. So, for this Saturday, I wanted to make the same dish again. I used a touch less brown sugar, chopped the prunes in quarters rather than halves, and, most differently, used sirloin steak tips instead of bottom round chunks.

The stew came out great. I needed to cook it closer to 2 hours rather than the one the recipe calls for, but the meat was cooked through and tasty. I think the marbling in the sirloin gave a juicier meat. It was an interesting experiment, since I am not a restaurant cook and most of the time, I tend to improvise to a greater or lesser degree.

The irony, of course, is that Beth Ann cancelled me this time because she was sick. Still, the stew turned out great and I brought it to Gid and Katie’s, where it quickly vanished.

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2009 was not a good year in which to open a restaurant, but even so more than a few intrepid souls took the plunge.

In Northampton, LOCAL (formerly LOCAL BURGERS) combined the American staples, hamburgers and fries, with the current obsession for local produce and was swarming with customers. SAKURA, on King Street, introduced a buffet concept for Chinese and Japanese food. While buffet sushi may sound daunting, initial signs are promising and there seems to be enough turnover to keep things fresh. And Mosaic Café on Masonic Street serves interesting and tasty Moroccan-style food, sweet mint tea, and desserts that go way past the cliches.

In Amherst, MISS SAIGON, a Vietnamese restaurant, took over the space Souper Bowl vacated in its move several doors down, offering pho noodle soups and other Vietnamese specialties. MOTI MOTI opened in the former Fatso’s and Rolando’s space, serving Persian food. Judging by the number of people who ask me if I’ve eaten there, the place deserves looking into. Longtime fixture Delano’s is now STACKERS PUB, featuring bar food.

In Easthampton, Apollo Grill’s Casey Douglass and two partners opened VENUS and THE CELLAR BAR on Main Street. Venus is easily one of the top high-end restaurants in the area and seems to be thriving. The Cellar Bar offers its own menu, along with the full Venus menu when that restaurant’s kitchen is open, just in case you meet some friends for a drink after work and find yourself hungry. Zoe’s Fish and Chop House owner Jim Sands opened YOURWAY GOURMET in the old Blue Moon space in the Eastworks Building and is looking to re-open Zoe’s in the Hadley space that formerly housed Butternuts, which shut its doors this year.

There were a number of closings in 2009. The idiosyncratic PIZZA SHARK in North Amherst succumbed. A new pizza place is taking over the space and the Shark’s black walls and ceiling are already painted a warmer and more inviting beige. In Northampton, BISTRO 186 on the site of the former Good Thyme Deli closed and ECLIPSE is poised to take its place (no word yet on the kind of food it will serve). On Route 9, CHINA DYNASTY closed suddenly. I had my first date in Amherst at an earlier place on that site, Steak Out, and followed the various restaurant incarnations through to Gulf Stream, a fish place where my stepson waited tables. In 1992, when China Dynasty opened, the place seemed finally settled. Now it’s up for grabs again.

The former jewel of South Deerfield, SIENNA, closed its doors this fall after trying unsuccessfully to make the progression from haute cuisine to a less pricey menu, and a more neighborhood feel. In Holyoke, TRAMORE CHIP SHOP closed two weeks ago. However, the DAM CAFE opened next door, serving breakfast, lunch and early dinners.

No year-end story is complete without mentioning the sudden death of GOURMET magazine. It was so sudden that editor Ruth Reichl apparently found out about it while on a promo tour for the latest Gourmet cookbook. Gourmet was the original glossy food magazine, founded in 1941 and holding near-icon status for much of its life. By the time Reichl came on board in 1999, Gourmet had become ossified. Reichl changed the tone of the magazine in an attempt to grow with the times. Barry Estabrook’s expose of the plight of tomato pickers in Florida in the March 2009 issue resulted in a $1/hour pay raise for the pickers.

The precipitous drop in advertising revenue which has hit the entire newspaper and magazine industry took its toll, but the story is more emblematic of the times. Like those who bemoan the death of local book and record stores while ordering mostly from Amazon, many readers held Gourmet in a high regard that did not translate into sales. The Gourmet “brand” will most likely continue as a Web site and a series of books, but a touchstone is gone from the culinary world.

The other big story of the year could be called the DEATH OF ORGANIC AND RISE OF SUSTAINABLE. The Pioneer Valley has a rich array of farms, farm stands and farmers markets, making local eating, at least during the growing months, harder to avoid than to practice. The debate between organic produce shipped long distances versus local but not necessarily organic produce has focused attention on sustainable agriculture. Sustainable practices are often, but not always, organic methods, and have three main goals: environmental stewardship, farm profitability and thriving farming communities.

Community Supported Agriculture subscriptions (CSAs) have also exploded. You buy a share in a local farm, giving the farmer some cash early in the year when it is needed most, and in return you pick up a bag of local produce weekly, right up until the frost. What is especially nice is that the concept has spread beyond vegetables and herbs. The Pioneer Valley will always lack a Boston-style seafood CSA, but growing numbers of local beef, lamb and pork producers have led to two meat CSAs: AUSTIN FARMS in Belchertown and CHESTNUT FARMS in Deerfield Hardwick. In Amherst, WHEATBERRY BAKERY sponsors both a BREAD SHARE and PIONEER VALLEY HERITAGE GRAINS, a local beans and grains farm share.

As we move into the next decade, it is nice to have even more of these to look forward to. Happy New Year all.

Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, January 1, 2010

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My cousin Beth Ann’s husband Mitch eats meat and, I think potatoes, but no vegetables. So, when I cook for them, I look for a full meaty dish that I can make at home and then reheat after the 2 hour drive to their house in Connecticut. For what was supposed to be today’s meal (more on that anon), I chose Carbonade Flamande, Belgian Beef Stewed in Beer.  The recipe I use is from the Belgo Cookbook, from the Belgo restaurants in England. The cookbook is good and has lots of beer info and several dozen recipes for mussels (including the Mussels Garcia, topped with mushrooms.)

Anyway, the recipe is simple: marinate 3 lbs of stew beef in beer for 3 days (I went overnight because, well, planning that far ahead is too hard), then roll in a mix of brown sugar and 1 TBSP (yes that’s right) of nutmeg. Normally, I dislike nutmeg, but it works wonderfully in the stew. Add some tomato paste and chopped prunes. Make a roux, add the marinade and some beef stock and simmer until the meat is cooked. Add a TBSP of Dijon and some more beer and 2 apples peeled and cut into chunks.

Well, the sauce was killer. The meat, supermarket “stew beef” was a little tough and dry for my taste. Fortunately, we were snowed out today and rescheduled for next week when I can try again. In looking around for some guidance, I opened up Molly Stevens’ All About Braising, which is filled with great recipes and good advice. If you don’t have it, get it before the winter is over. Molly’s advice was boneless beef chuck. She commented that she gave up on round (top or bottom) since it was always dry no matter what she did. Molly, I’m with you.  Boneless chuck it is.

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