Excellent | Worth a Detour
Pat’s Colonial Kitchen
Review by: Bruce Bilmes and Susan Boyle
When we’re on the road, we enjoy spending our mornings at a town cafe where the locals meet, the sort of place open for breakfast and lunch only, a place where there’s no need for the waitress to introduce herself as she already knows all the customers. And also the kind of place where the food is good. Oddly though, we’d never found such a place near home. Until now, that is.
Pat’s Colonial Kitchen, in Newtown, is just such a local town cafe. A small restaurant with a country-crafty tea room decor, mismatched mugs, and homemade jam on the table, Pat’s shares an historic 19th-century building with other businesses. It seems to us that everyone eating there is a friend of the house. It’s not unusual to see a waitress sit down at a table for a few minutes to chat.
We love the French toast piled with pristine fresh blueberries, strawberries, and bananas. The syrup on the table is bogus, and we don’t know if the real thing is available, because we find that the thin, sweet strawberry jam on every table makes a superb topping for the fruited French toast. Eggs are served with chunky seasoned potatoes. All the local breakfast meats are available (for non-locals, that would be scrapple and pork roll). They know how to poach an egg if you’re in the mood for Benedict.
Not everything dazzles us (the coffee could be better, and as we noted above, real maple syrup would be welcome), but it is all satisfying. The small front room has some crafts and that homemade strawberry jam for sale.
Directions & Hours
Information
| Price | $ |
| Seasons | All |
| Meals Served | Breakfast, Lunch |
| Credit Cards Accepted | No |
| Alcohol Served | No |
| Outdoor Seating | No |
What To Eat
Pat’s Colonial Kitchen Recipes
Discuss
What do you think of Pat’s Colonial Kitchen?
One Response to “Pat’s Colonial Kitchen”
Carol Bayer
May 17th, 2011
One of the reasons we love using Roadfood.com when traveling is because we are consistently warmly welcomed by locals. We can even overlook mediocre food or going way out of our way, because the ability to experience a community that is new to us is important. We had hoped, based on the review, that Pat’s would be another one of these places. It definitely is not.
We felt from the moment we walked in that we were not welcome in this cozy little restaurant in a very upscale town. We were dressed casually, but neatly and cleanly, were restrained and observant, and treated the staff with complete respect. Despite this, we were greeted coldly, sat at a table that was clearly way too small for us and in the back room (despite there being tables in the front), and just treated rudely throughout our time there.
We said nothing to each other or the staff and independently hoped that the food would make this stop worthwhile. It definitely did not. The coffee was weak. The french toast with fresh fruit had hard, under-ripe strawberries and, we agree, that the bottle of Aunt Jemima’s “syrup” on the table just doesn’t cut it. The eggs Benedict were nothing special and the poached eggs were watery. The bacon was cold and chewy. The only thing really worth having there was the OJ, which the waitress (who could barely contain her contempt for us) initially completely forgot.
The bill was dropped on the table before we were halfway through the meal. Plates were cleared despite the fact that we were still eating. The hostess glared at us from time to time. Of note is that people known to the staff appear to receive a completely different level of treatment.
After paying $42 for breakfast for three, we were happy to leave this place and move on. A place like this is poison in a town that appears to want tourists to visit and we would never dream of visiting it again.