Five Points Bakery & Toast Cafe

By calling itself a toast cafe, Five Points Bakery draws attention to the importance of its bread. It is artisan bread, prepared on tables you can see from the order counter and baked in ovens right behind the tables.

In fact, Five Points really is a toast cafe, meaning that the featured attractions on the menu are deluxe variations of toast. For instance, Power Bread Toast (from a loaf of flax, golden raisin puree, and ground sunflower and pumpkin seeds) comes with goat cheese and peach apricot jam; Marble Rye Toast is complemented by salami, Swiss cheese, garlic pickles, and mustard; with Vollkornbrot (that’s German rye),  you get sauerkraut and raclette. There are about a dozen such presentations, each of which comes artfully arranged with fresh butter and whatever toppings and sprinklings are appropriate, all on a vintage plate with a battery of vintage utensils.

While each toast staging is complete, there’s a long list of available extra companions: peanut butter, Nutella, pickles, apples, yogurt, and a variety of cheeses. If none of the available toasts suit your taste, Five Points offers sweet rolls and pastries — like the bread, made here with organic, local ingredients.

Coffee — “directly traded, organic, lively, well balanced” — comes hot or iced, the latter served on cubes made of coffee.

Dining tables are located both inside and on a patio, and much business is take-out, not just of breads and pastries, but of a short list of groceries stocked in what the owners call “The Farmers Pantry.” These include free-range eggs, grass-fed beef, house-made organic brown sugar, house-made granola, three kinds of honey, Ithaca milk, and sweet Jersey butter.

In other words, this is not the place to come for a Dunkin Munchkin, a McGriddle, or a Croissan’wich. Praise be!