Best Place to Eat at a Counter
Café Maison
Café Maison doesn't have "counter dining" in the traditional sense. Diners don't take a seat facing a kitchen or a grill (there's a closet-sized kitchen in the back), but the high seats along the free-standing, rusty-colored Formica counter provide the best perches to enjoy chef Sally Truscheit's cuisine and do some intense people-watching. This French-style neighborhood bistro, which serves breakfast and lunch (Friday and Saturday night dinners are planned for later this fall), attracts a motley customer base from the surrounding Brookside neighborhood: well-dressed matrons, retired couples, gay yuppies, single mothers with kids. They pile around wobbly tables amid a cozy clutter to dine on nicoise salad, the quiche du jour or a thick sandwich made with the best chicken salad in town (flavored with walnuts, golden raisins and fresh dill). In the mornings, bleary-eyed customers occupy the counter spaces to read the paper, sip strong coffee and polish off buttery croissants. The only time the counter is off-limits is on Sunday mornings, when owner Jeff Fitzpatrick uses it as a cold buffet for his Sunday brunch.
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