Breakfasts – Cushman Market and Cup and Top Cafe

Breakfast. Perhaps you’re up early or you stayed up late. Maybe it’s a meeting, for business or friendship. Or you’re leaving on a trip, or coming back from one. Maybe you just feel like treating yourself. You could grab a coffee and a muffin or bagel at any one of dozens of places, but no, this time you want to sit, drink some coffee and ponder the eternal question: eggs or pancakes?

We are not talking Sunday brunch. For that, you wake up unwilling to face the kitchen and say to yourself or your companion, “Let’s get brunch.” You dress, hustle down to your favorite brunch spot or to that place you’ve always been meaning to try and find that half the Pioneer Valley has the same idea. You wait, coffeeless, hovering like a beggar, begrudging every seated diner’s extra cup of coffee. When you finally do sit down, the coffee is never fast enough and everything on the menu seems expensive and boring.

With breakfast on a weekday morning, you are looking for one of two things: fast service with an inexpensive menu or something special. Unless you are in town already, you want easy parking. You don’t need a white tablecloth, but orange Formica is out. You want a place where the waitress knows half the people who come in. Of course, if she knows your name, you don’t need my help.

In Northampton, there are the two reliables: JAKE’S and SYLVESTER’S. The coffee is good, and the service is too. I like the homemade corned beef hash at Sylvester’s and the barroom ambiance at Jake’s. But sometimes you want something different.

In North Amherst, at CUSHMAN MARKET AND CAFÉ (491 Pine St., 549-0100, www.cushmanmarket.com), owners Pete Sylvan and Rebecca Schwartz have turned the 100-plus-year-old general store into a combination local market, specialty shop and café. The back parking lot is something of a minefield, but once you are inside there are baked goods, bagels, good coffee and a menu with specialties named after the colorful brand names on the vegetable crate labels that cover one wall.

On that menu you could stop at the Sweet Sue, challah French toast with local maple syrup, and feel confident that you’d made a wise choice. It is eggy and cooked all the way through; no soggy centers here. The coffee is Pierce Brothers or Esselon and good. If you want eggs, the cafe has egg sandwiches, from $2.25 to $4.95 with various combinations of cheese, lettuce and tomato, grilled ham, turkey sausage or bacon. The Jolly Rabbit incorporates tomatoes, spinach and goat cheese into an omelet. The Sweetmex is huevos rancheros (black beans, pepper-jack cheese, salsa and corn bread). Morning Glory is a particularly healthy option # organic yogurt and homemade granola, topped with whatever fruit is seasonal. Last week, it was sliced apples.

My mother used to whip up salami and eggs or lox and eggs for a quick Saturday-night supper. Cushman Café offers the Homer (salami and eggs, rosemary home fries and toast) and By The Sea (lox and eggs, with some caramelized onions mixed in). The salami brings a salty, garlic hit to the eggs. The smell of sauteed lox is perhaps not the thing for everyone on a Tuesday morning, but the flavors are true enough to inspire Proustian ramblings, if Marcel had grown up in Queens rather than Paris.

Cushman offers free wireless and a power strip along one wall in case your reason for breakfast is some concentrated laptop work. In the warm months, there are tables outside and, across the street, a small grassy area with a salamander installation that is perfect for distracting children and adults. Cushman Café opens at 7 a.m. Monday through Friday, and at 8 on Saturday and Sunday, and serves breakfast until 11 (1 on Sunday). Full breakfasts hover between $5 and $8.

The CUP AND TOP (1 North Main St., Florence, 585-0445, www.cupandtop.com) on the other side of the river is a good spot for a meeting, especially if your meeting includes toddlers. There is a large play area in the back where kids can romp safely while you enjoy some adult time. The front of the café is brightly lit by large windows and far enough away that the noise of children doesn’t intrude on your morning meditations.

The lunch sandwiches are named for local attractions; the breakfasts have no special names. But the eggs are well-cooked, the home fries tasty, if sometimes a little too cool. Home fries fall into two categories: boiled potatoes sautéed with onions and colored with paprika, or raw potatoes cooked with the crispy bits mixed in. Cup and Tops’s, like most of the home fries in the area, are of the former variety, and while they include some herbs, the cooks very sensibly stop at the addition of green peppers, broccoli or other distractions. Call me parochial, but I never want broccoli in my breakfast potatoes. Cup and Top also has lox and bagel. It can be light on the lox, but it’s a welcome change from eggs, especially if, like me, you’ve spent the last week eating a month’s worth of your egg ration.

Cup and Top is a local place serving local food. The coffee is Dean’s Beans, the teas are TeaGuys, the bagels are Gus and Paul’s, the bread is Bread Euphoria, the milk is Mapleline and the eggs are Diemand Farms. Doors open at 6 a.m. on weekdays, at 8 on weekends, and prices for breakfast specials are in the $4 to $6 range. There is ample street parking in Florence, and I usually run into someone I know.

 Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette,  January 2, 2009.