Esselon Café
99 Russell Street, Hadley
413-585-1515
Open Mon. 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m., Tue.-Fri.-7:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Brunch Sat.-Sun. 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Dinner Tue.-Fri. 5 p.m.-9 p.m. and Saturday 4:30 p.m.-9 p.m.
Entrées $7.95-$14.95
With a commute from Amherst to Northampton several days a week, I have come to abhor Route 9, with its endless succession of traffic lights, merging lanes and strip mall megastores. So when my boyfriend suggested we meet after work for an early dinner at Esselon Café on the corner of West Street and Route 9 in Hadley, I had to swallow my bilious reaction to the locale.
But Esselon is lovely. Once inside its cool, spacious indoor seating area, it’s easy to forget that you’re just steps away from a traffic nightmare. Painted pressed metal ceilings and French café tables create an instant sense of sophistication, but the European style is given a hint of funk by a few enormous wooden tables and colorful posters.
Esselon has managed to succeed at integrating café culture with a true restaurant. At our small windowside table, we were surrounded by telecommuters working off-hours, students focused on their chemistry textbooks, and friends meeting for an evening meal. A bottle of crisp prosecco gave us the feeling of being in a serious dining establishment as we dabbled in the café-esque behavior of jointly completing a crossword puzzle—but only until the arrival of our food.
Our duck confit salad started the meal with a bang. A hefty pile of fresh spinach was barely wilted and glazed with a perfectly executed sherry vinaigrette. Dabs of mild goat cheese enhanced the earthy sweetness of the duck meat and dried cranberries, and crisp, crumbly toasts were a necessary contrast to the creamy texture of the salad. The cherry tomatoes, the only flaw in the dish, were out of place with their mealiness and acidity.
The crabmeat BLT sounded like a perfect light dinner, but fell flat. Canned crabmeat provided a bland centerpiece. The sandwich’s dominant flavor came from deliciously chewy (though unpleasantly cold) slabs of apple-smoked bacon. Again the tomatoes were slightly sour and obviously out of season. The ciabatta roll overwhelmed the filling with too much bread and too little crunch. A baguette, of which the café has plenty, would have been the wiser choice.
The pizza of the day, however—eggplant Parmesan—was surprisingly excellent. A flatbread-like crust was malleable and chewy under its hearty toppings of fried eggplant, rich tomato paste and Parmesan cheese, and crisp around the edges.
Dessert at the café is a meal in itself. Esselon is, after all, an establishment centered around house-roasted coffee and its sweet accompaniments. Baked goods from Woodstar Bakery graced the pastry counter, as did numerous tarts, puff pastries and rich custards.
We finished our meal with an éclair filled with exceptionally delicious vanilla cream and topped with a luscious chocolate ganache. The pastry itself wasn’t as light as it could have been, but licking out the filling and nibbling off the cocoa top was satisfying. A gigantic chocolate chip cookie of Woodstar origin disappeared quickly, proof that Esselon’s decision to truck the sweets along the dreaded Route 9 from Northampton was worth the headache. And the coffee was blissfully perfect. My cappuccino was as beautiful as it was light and tasty, and my companion’s mocha was chock full of chocolate and rich espresso and topped with a heaping portion of real whipped cream.
Esselon is still working out the kinks in its dinners (although the servers have their roles down pat), but the elegant yet unpretentious food and atmosphere are enough to bring me back. My feelings towards Route 9 have softened a bit—at least towards the corner where it meets West Street.•
