Two new spots to try for lunch

Given the current economic times, it takes a lot of guts to open a new eating establishment, especially here in the north country.

Thanks to tips from our food-loving readers, we've discovered two new cafés, one in Carthage and one in Massena, that we'd like to tell you about.

The WDT Reviewing Team filed the following report.

BOMBAY DUCK PICKLE CAFé

STATE STREET

CARTHAGE

NO TELEPHONE

A husband-and-wife cooking team has opened an eclectic little café in the center of downtown Carthage.

It's an old storefront with restored wooden floors and original tin ceiling. There are three tables with tight seating for 12, maybe. An antique display case full of homemade sweets is all that separates the dining area from the food preparation area.

Owners Alison and Ralph Lentz are downstate transplants. We got the feeling this unique twosome might have attended the original Woodstock celebration.

They have no prior restaurant experience, but you'd never know it.

There's no menu, no telephone and no bathroom.

The day's food offerings are written on the specials board: two soups, four entrées and a pile of desserts. All homemade. All local ingredients. All fabulous.

Broccoli soup with mini gnocchi was so thick, you could stand your spoon up in it.

It was like straight puréed broccoli, exploding with intense fresh broccoli flavor. The addition of tender mini gnocchi was a nice touch.

Beef barley soup was amazing, a hearty, flavorful beefy stock with a touch of wine that was so good you wanted to suck it up with a straw; it was loaded with tender beef, mushrooms sautéed in butter, and cooked-just-right barley. We used Alison's homemade challah bread to mop the bowl.

Soups were overflowing their bowls, literally a meal in themselves, priced at $6.50 each. We had no right eating anything else.

That said, we ordered three lunches, served on real dinner plates. Portions were plentiful and cost was reasonable, averaging $8 apiece.

Chicken with portobello mushrooms, sliced fennel, strips of roasted carrot and parsnip over angel hair pasta with a rosemary cream sauce was excellent.

Flavorful dark meat was lightly floured and seasoned. The vegetables were wonderful. Alison turned ordinary chicken into extraordinary chicken.

A vegetarian dish, cauliflower, eggplant and mixed-root vegetables, was tossed with a creamy and spicy green curry sauce, served with rice noodles (translucent, fat like fettuccini) and garnished with colorful shoestring sweet potato.

Alison also made vegetarian moussaka, a traditional Greek dish. She used zucchini, eggplant, potatoes and tomatoes and topped it with a light, white béchamel sauce, nestled among balsamic field greens. In place of ground lamb or beef, she substituted grain crumbles. You didn't miss the meat — it was tasty as could be.

Desserts? Park yourself in front of the sweets display case and your head will spin: apple frangipane pie, chocolate pecan tart, creamy risotto rice pudding, cream puffs, ginger snaps, challah bread pudding ... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Blackberry bars were absolutely delicious. A chocolate brownie thing was thicker than fudge. Chocolate pecan tart was like the best pecan pie you ever had.

We don't rate lunch places, but if we did, the Bombay Duck Pickle would be a solid five-forker.

They're open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

On our way out, Alison told us one of her customers knows the WDT food reviewer guy, and he could get him to come in and do a story. But she told him, "No thanks, I don't want the notoriety."

Oops ... too late.

ESPRESSO, ETC.

150 HARTE HAVEN PLAZA

MASSENA

769-6896

At the end of the long row of stores in Harte Haven Plaza closest to P&C, there's a new coffee shop/café called Espresso, Etc. It opened about a month ago.

It's a little hard to find because the sign from the previous tenant, a collectibles shop, is still prominently displayed on the front of the building.

We stopped by for lunch at exactly noon. It's fairly small and sparsely decorated, with three round tables, an étagère displaying a few Coke products and an odd display of electronic cigarettes — "for those who want to smoke, but aren't fond of a shortened life span."

That whet my appetite, how about you?

The man behind the counter was wearing a clunky oversized headset and microphone like you see at McDonald's drive-up windows. We thought he might be communicating with the kitchen out back, but it was easy to overhear his cell phone conversation about computers and Web sites.

He continued to talk, which was OK. It gave us a few minutes to digest the menu — bagels, wraps, panini, homemade soups and cookies. Some items were handwritten on a whiteboard, others were on one of those large diner-type plastic changeable letter signs.

Once off the phone, he was quite personable and eager to please, alluding to being constantly busy taking lunch orders over the phone. Turns out, he's the owner and the cook. He told us he's got a similar place in the big mall farther down Route 37, and he's done this type of operation in more than 15 states.

Cauliflower-cheddar soup was homemade, he told us, but something from one of his restaurant suppliers might have tasted better. It had a strange metallic taste to it, lacked depth and was bright yellow rather than the orange color you'd expect from cheddar cheese. The Styrofoam bowl kept it plenty hot, though.

Chicken Caesar panini was good — marinated chicken with a little romaine and Caesar dressing pressed between two pieces of sourdough bread. It came on one of those plastic baskets dressed up with crumpled aluminum foil.

A chicken cordon bleu sandwich consisted of a prefab breaded patty along with ham and cheese. We expected a sandwich, but it arrived as a toasted panini.

When we questioned it, the cook said he thought we'd appreciate the bread being warmed up because it was a cold day outside.

Lunches came with seasoned corn chips and plastic utensils.

We took a turkey salad sandwich home to sample. This might have been the best of the litter, shredded turkey with good mayo on fresh wheat bread with a crisp piece of romaine and a plump slice of tomato.

Sweets, mostly cookies, were average. Chocolate chip was loaded with chips; white chocolate with macademia nuts was standard. Both were big and flat and very sugary. A smaller raspberry-filled "pillow" was nice. Cute little cookies with white icing and little red hearts were timely with Valentine's Day just around the corner.

We had a regular coffee, which was good. Lattes and fancier stuff are available.

Lunch for two plus the takeout sandwich came to $21.

No one stopped by while we were there to pick up any takeout orders.

Espresso, Etc. is open from 9 am. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.