Café Sol is Niantic Village’s go-to cafe
restaurant review by RICK KOSTER
A walk — or slow cruise — down and around Main Street in Niantic is to afford yourself just about all the essential dining possibilities required for a seaside New England village. A couple of seafood/clam shacks? Check. A pub or two with appropriate tavern fare? Yepper. Some casually upscale possibilities? Check. Grinders and candy/ice cream? Certainly. Several pizza joints? Required by Connecticut law, apparently. Even a very nice Thai place and, for the time-compromised, a Subway and a Dunkin’ Donuts.
And, of course, there’s Café Sol, which might be thought of as the community’s organic/ healthy-leaning café/coffee shop. It’s got a casual, tchotchkecrammed interior with a positive, sun-colored main dining room, with booths and tables, and a terra cotta-painted entry space with a street-facing counter for dining, a coffee bar, and a register at which all orders must be submitted. Giant chalkboard menus are suspended from the ceiling with items hand-drawn in Degas-colored pastels, presenting options across the spectrum of breakfast, sandwiches, “fun food” such as quesadillas and veggie/ dip platters, and Vegan/vegetarian specialties.
Out front is a plant-happy cement patio with umbrella-protected tables and optimal views of Main Street passersby. In the summer, when Niantic is burbling with tourists and residents eager to spend quality outdoor time, Café Sol is a favorite stop for beach-goers, the runners/joggers contingency for whom steel-cut oatmeal is a life force, and folks who just like the idea of simple smoothie/salad/sandwich options where the ingredients and allure don’t rely on chicken nuggets or cheese-and-brown-gravy fries.
On the surface, then, Café Sol isn’t a place I’d normally seek out.
But inasmuch as the Arby’s in Crystal Mall closed years ago, and there are no billboards anywhere announcing the impending arrival of an In-N-Out Burger — and in loving consideration that my wife, Eileen, is a vegetarian who actually likes stuff like lettuce — I was happy to explore Café Sol.
A few quick observations: given that this IS summer, the place can get crowded. Even so, it’s a pretty self-explanatory process. On one visit, we were told up front we could have a 25-minute wait. Fair enough. We were fine with that. But you might finish your beverages before the food arrives.
Here’s what we ate over three different visits, and what we thought of it:
The Dip ($9) — Two dips — a traditional chickpea and tahini hummus and Sol’s black bean/ lime spread — were served with big slices of fresh red bell pepper, carrots, celery and cucumber, a hunk of feta and pitted Kalamata olives, For dipping, house-made bagel chips were provided. Good stuff, almost across the board. But to run across the occasional raisin bagel chip was a disconcerting shock in the midst of a platter of savory dish of snacks.
Mexican Q (short for quesadilla, $13) — A 12” circumference of tortilla filled with their piquant black bean lime spread, roasted corn, tomatoes and cheese, served with sides of salsa and sour cream. It’s flat as a pancake, making it easy to handle, but still full of fresh and tasty goodness.
Mexicali Rap ($8) — Eileen gets this periodically at Fiddleheads, which carries some Café Sol prepared foods. So when she saw it could be ordered in the Cafe, “deconstructed” in a breakfast bowl, that’s what she did. It was a little disappointing, though. Black beans and roasted corn sat in the bottom of a large coffee mug with a bit of salsa, atop which sat an egg that had been scrambled and cooked in a mug-sized mold. On top of that was Havarti cheese, slices of avocado and a drizzle of chipotle yogurt sauce. The egg wasn’t very warm and the mug was too big for the ingredients, so it looked sad. Either it’s better as a wrap or, because this was on their busier day, she may have just gotten unlucky.
The Goddess ($9) — Going forward, this is what E insists we will order at Café Sol. It was
perfection in a whole-wheat wrap, filled with hummus, avocado, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, pea shoots and their lemon-oregano kale “superslaw.” The avocado, tomato and cucumber were sliced thin, allowing all the ingredients to remain in the wrap and making every bite was both creamy and crispy. The tangy superslaw was a perfect complement to the hummus.
The Italian Q ($13) — Impressed by E’s previous-visit quesadilla, I tried this version, which includes roasted red peppers, slices of Italian sausage, and provolone and American cheeses. I loved this. The peppers’ tang comingled with the sweet sausages, and a one-two punch of the cheeses (particularly the perhaps unusual inclusion of American) made this a beach volleyball game of flavors.
A Cuban ($11, served with chips) — In the world, a Cuban is one of the great sandwiches, but it’s predicated not just on its ingredients — roasted (or pulled) pork, sliced ham, dill pickles, Swiss cheese and yellow mustard, all on a pressed roll — but also how those ingredients are instantly identifiable with each bit. At Cafe Sol, NONE of the ingredients was particularly distinctive, and yet the overall flavor was really good. It wasn’t very Cuban-y, but I’d eat it again, if that makes any sense.
There are also plenty of small item breakfast-y items — muffins, bagels, fruit medleys, the aforementioned steel-cut oatmeal — and an array of designer teas, coffee and espressos, smoothies and so on — so Cafe Sol is a pretty fine place in which to luxuriate if you’ve got a leisurely morning.