Chococoa Baking Company, Newburyport, Mass.
Every Tuesday morning I meet with three friends in a coffeeshop and bakery in The Tannery, a small marketplace just a block from downtown.
We talk about all kinds of things, mostly music since we all play something, one of just two things we all have in common. However, while my friends are all guitarists fond of exchanging notes, sharp and flat as well as natural, on chords–major or minor, diminished or suspended, fourths or fifths, progressive or whatever isn’t–I, a flautist, often sit there as if I’m Harpo Marx.
Also in common is our age which we’d rather not talk about–although it is noticeable how often we talk about music from the 50s and 60s, ranging from Louis Armstrong and The Beatles to commercial jingles for Winston and Chevrolet. One friend sang the Bosco song, and the rest of us were too amazed to ask that he keep his voice down.
Spacious and comfortable, Chococoa Baking Company offers 40 seats, twelve of which are just inside the front doors and windows, evenly divided between two large tables on either side of four steps down that take you to the display case and counter with the remaining seats spread among small tables meant for one or two, although they can be combined.
Chococoa (cho-CO-co) is known for its whoopie pies and its own innovation, The Whoopie, a bite-size that comes with a variety of fillings from which you can choose. Admittedly, we tend to think of the whoopie pie as a generic thing, a New England filler, but Chococoa has turned it into a surprising gourmet treat that has gained national attention thanks to rave reviews by satisfied customers as diverse as Yankee Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, O (Oprah’s mag) and CNN.
Eye-opening as much as a tastebud-pleasing, they remind me of the first time I tasted coleslaw in a Baton Rouge restaurant and the remaining week that I spent in the deep South. In New England, coleslaw is but filler with not much taste, a sidedish to offset fish, baked or fried, with something cool. In Texas and Louisiana, it is something to be savored, worthy of being an entre on its own.
So, too, Chococoa’s whoopie pies.
For all that, I prefer the lemon-ginger scones, although I’m half-hoping that on some Tuesday they’ll be out of lemon-ginger so I might try a raspberry-ginger or apricot scone without risking diner’s remorse if the replacement doesn’t match my usual fare.
On most Tuesdays, I’m washing the scone down with some rich dark roast, always black, at one of those large tables where the four of us sit and chat–five on one occasion–but this week both tables were claimed. That has happened before, but we never endured a small table on the lower level for long before a group has vacated one of the two.
This week, however, both were taken. So was every table on the lower level, including one with two of my friends already hunched over it. I saw from above that I could barely cram in, and then what would we do with our fourth? Perhaps because of that, I took note of the one woman seated at one of the tables for six, earphones on, paperwork spread out on both sides of a laptop, a plate with nothing but crumbs on it, and a cup that raneth empty.
I walked past, ordered my scone and coffee, and made my case to the barista who sympathized but shrugged. And so I sat and simmered.
But not for long. When our fourth arrived, I made the mistake of trying to point out the obvious to the oblivious. To be fair to myself as well as the young woman, I made sure to smile and speak calmly:
“Hello?” She looked up with an expression of surprise. I made sure to glance at the empty cup and the crumby plate before I continued: “I’d just like to point out that there’s a group of four of us here sitting at a table for two while you are sitting here at a table for six.”
She shrugged, saying nothing.
“Okay,” I exhaled before I turned and went back to my friends. Soon, a nearby table seating four was vacated, and we had a table where we were able to place four cups at one time. As usual, the talk was immediately engaging, although I couldn’t help but notice two elderly couples come in the back door only to look around, see no seats, and walk back out. How many entered the front door and did that, I did not see.
A half hour, maybe more, passed before one of the owners came over to say hello. She knows us by first name, and when she turned to me, she said with a smile, “Bad Jack.”
I thought it was a reference to my newspaper columns, the only occupation I know which measures success as much by damnation as by praise: “I’ve been called worse.”
“Oh, I bet you have!”
Dawned on me that the barista may have said something to her about my objection, so I went first: “Say, you let people turn this place into their own office?”
“Yes! We call that upper level ‘the coffice,’ and welcome people who need a place to get their work done.”
“She could do that on any table in here.”
Technically, I was way out of line, but the woman was not at all angry. She was amused. I tried again: “You don’t mind that four people just walked in and out of here because there was no place to sit while one woman takes a table with six seats?”
No matter. She was content that such loss is minimal compared to the gain of promoting “the coffice” as an away-from-home office with fine pastries, coffees, and teas in easy reach.
I tried to find common ground: “Oh, I like the coffice concept. I’ve done it myself, in many places. Wish I coined the word myself, but I’d never monopolize more than my own seat in a place this busy. I don’t care what the policy is, that’s a degree of disregard for others that verges on contempt.”
Mercifully, the co-owner was called away before I got to mention the plate without pastry and the cup empty of anything at all.
Just as well. I’ll be back next Tuesday for another scone and dark roast. Good chance that, for the first time this year, the four of us will be sitting at one of several fair-sized tables that Chococoa has already set outside.
-30-
Mouth of the River 