Americano, Special and Cookies

At Neat Café in Burnstown, Renfrew County resisting any item on the menu is challenge enough - I swear whoever crafted the narrative was a relative of the poet Wordsworth - but the further beguilement is that you're made to feel part of the family! Unless you can withstand the equivalent of a Jewish mother's invitation to dine, be prepared to submit to a hearty but healthful repast! The particular culprit to whom I refer is Chef Dawn who for the past number of years has been concocting what are unsurpassable meals for locals and visitors in the Ottawa Valley.

Living as I do in the Town of Mississippi Mills (Almonte Ward) it is but a short bucolic jaunt through the Villages of Pakenham, Waba and White Lake to Burnstown.  There, at the intersection of Burnstown Road and Calabogie Road, is a convenient and comfortable resort (Tuesday to Sunday). Sometimes in the mid-afternoon when conducting a country drive I content myself to prevail upon the barista Dan for an enabling espresso coffee.

Today however - after a 13 km bicycle ride on a sunny but decidedly brisk autumnal morning - I was inclined to something substantial. It was a Saturday morning, the ideal opportunity to indulge myself in more than an imaginative savour of that rhapsodic board of Chef Dawn!  It appears that escaping the allure of everything on the menu was none the easier in spite of the promotion of my appetite - or perhaps because of it. Chef Dawn magnanimously proposed a collaboration of several features, what she dignified as akin to a "tasting menu".

She did however later pronounce upon the arrival of the plate that I wouldn't go away hungry. Nor was she mistaken.  Yet notwithstanding the cornucopia of food there wasn't a morsel remaining!