Westchester Breakfast Club

Cidade Cafe
123 Main Street
Ossining, NY 10562(Map it!)

Attendees: Shelley, Pat, Sylvia, Jeffrey, Andrew

Shelley

With Sylvia on vacation this past week, I took the reins and chose our destination: the Cidade Cafe in Ossining.

Cidade Cafe is located on Main Street across from the large municipal parking lot. Inside it’s cozy, with dark wood tones and soothing cream-colored walls, which are adorned with historical photos of Ossining. Each chair has what I believe to be Cidade’s logo–a coffee mug wiith steam coming from it–carved in its back. The cafe has seating for perhaps about 15 people max. The breakfast menu, written on a chalkboard above the counter (a recurring thing at the cafes we’ve visited), is small, with a list of various breakfast sandwiches on the left side and a list of various omelettes on the right side. The case of pastries is deliciously inviting. The downside is that the pastries aren’t labeled, and many of them are tarts that, for the most part, look indistinguishable from one another. I asked the girl behind the counter to tell us what the various pastries were, but I stopped listening after she described the Portugese custard, which, she said, is so good that it’s what lead to Cidade earning a write-up in the New York Times. One Portugese custard, sold. To go with my custard, I ordered a Western omelette. However, after she conveyed my order to the man cooking up the food, the girl told me that they didn’t have Western omelettes this morning, that the closest thing would be a vegetable omelette. No, that won’t do. So, I instead asked for a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich. I got a bottle of apple juice to wash everything down.

We all settled into the large table by the window, and our meals were brought out to us. Kudos to Cidade for using real plates, not paper or plastic as is many times the case at cafes. My breakfast sandwich looked much better than your average breakfast sandwich. First, the bread was a large, flaky Portugese roll. Next, the cheese was Muenster cheese instead of regular old American or cheddar. Third, the egg was well cooked, not at all runny (if you’ve been following this blog, you know my feelings about runny eggs). Finally, the sandwich was not at all greasy. All combined, it was a very pleasant breakfast sandwich.

The Portugese custard was delicious. It was small enough that I didn’t feel gluttonous, but filling enough to make for a good dessert. The tart crust was soft, and the custard was wonderfully delicate–it tasted very fresh, was not overpoweringly sweet, and was not sickenly gooey as I have sometimes found to be the case with custard tarts (those probably weren’t good custard tarts). As I’ve never had Portugese custard before, I don’t have anything to compare it to, so all I can really say is that it was good and I’d have it again.

My breakfast at Cidade was well worth the price. At just about $7, I got a hearty breakfast and a yummy pastry, in a casual, cozy neighborhood setting. For people in the Ossining area, Cidade Cafe is a perfect spot for a weekend breakfast. (And if you’re on the run, you can get your food to go.)

Back to the top!

Pat

What I Had: Croissant filled with Bavarian (or Portugese?) creme, coffee

What It Cost: $4.00

Worth it: Yeah, why not

The Rating: 3.5/5

The Details: The day prior to this meeting, I flew from Portland to Phoenix to Charlotte to White Plains airport, leaving my hotel at 6:00AM PST and arriving in my house a mere 15 hours later at midnight EST. When I woke up at 7:00 the next morning, my response was a gutteral “oh heeeelllll no,” after which I promptly fell back asleep, and woke up at 9:55 for a 10:00 AM breakfast.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying I didn’t have much of an appetite when I arrived at Cidade Cafe, located across the street from the Ossining Post Office, 15 minutes late. I walked in, ordered a delicious looking pastry from the display case and a cup of coffee, and sat down at my table. It took me 90 seconds from walking into the restaurant to sitting down at the table with food in front of me. That’s good. The pastry wasn’t bad either. As I wrote above, it was a croissant, filled with a delicious creme and topped with a generous (perhaps too generous) portion of powdered sugar. It was a little too crispy in the outside, and a little too doughy in the middle (probably from sitting in the display case for so long) but I still enjoyed it heartily. The coffee was also fine, with a serving of steamed milk.

In short, as an Ossining resident, I’d definitely go back to Cidade Cafe. Maybe even this week.

The Bottom Line: Locals should give it a shot

Back to the top!

Sylvia

After going for about 36 hours with no sleep, I was finally able to sleep for 7 hours before dragging myself out to the Cidade Cafe for breakfast with the crew. Now, why was I so sleep deprived? I had the longest New Year’s Day ever. You see, I left Hong Kong on a 9:30am Flight on New Year’s Day and arrived in NY at about 12:30pm same day. It was a long day, but at least I had been able to savor a whole week’s worth of super delicious Hong Kong breakfasts! A Hong Kong breakfast is awesome. There are many different iterations, but my favorite is Satay beef over instant noodles (or even better, rice noodles) with a side of eggs and a buttered roll (heavenly if with a drizzle of condensed milk on top). I had that with Hong Kong Style milk tea, which is not found in these parts unfortunately. As odd as instant noodles sound for breakfast, it hits the spot. Yum yum! Anyway I digress…

Bleary eyed, I arrived at the Cidade cafe with no idea of what I wanted to eat. Ossining is known for the Portuguese population, something I always knew, but never tried any of their food outlets. Thank goodness for the limited menu, as I immediately gravitated to my favorite breakfast sandwich: Sausage, egg and cheese. On top of that, I also had a Portuguese egg tart, a small bottle of pineapple nectar, and a cup of coffee.

Having been without the good stuff for so long, the cup of coffee was good. I ordered mine with skim milk, and it arrived prepared with the perfect amount of milk (I wonder if they steamed the milk).

The sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich was superb. The cheese was Muenster cheese, which surprised me, and it was on a Portuguese roll, which made me really happy. The sandwich was very good, and filling.

The Portuguese egg tart was excellent. I am not sure of the history of the egg tart, but according to Wikipedia, the egg tart (dan tat) usually found in Chinese bakeries or served at dim sum might have been decedents of the English egg custards. It might have also traveled to China via Macau, which was a Portuguese colony. I had one when I was in Macau last year and was generally unimpressed, possibly due to the poor choice in food stall. This one was good. Very smooth, and perfectly sweet. The crust was light, but not incredibly flaky like some Chinese egg tarts can be. I would rank it among the better egg tarts out there.

The czar says: A good solid place for a casual breakfast. Try some of the baked goods!

Back to the top!

Jeffrey

Ossining is such a nice town. I enjoy it a lot. We decided on a small place in Ossining, the Cidade Cafe. My sister had just gotten back from a week in China, so a café was a good choice. The place is easy to find. It’s on Main Street, as opposed to where Google Maps led us. It’s just north of the big municipal parking lot and the post office. There was available parking in front of the cafe, but since I was confused by what Google maps gave me, we parked about a block away. Sorry Sylvia. (She was wearing a thin sweater.)

Inside was nice. There were a few tables in the front with really nice chairs that had coffee cups carved in the back. It made it classy. We ordered from the counter and as soon as they realized we were a large group, they said they’d bring our food out for us. The girl behind the counter was helpful in telling us what was good and what she recommended. It also helped that she was really cute. I’m more likely to take her suggestions. I ordered a ham and cheese panini; a weird bottled drink thing made of really sweet juice, and an egg custard thing. I also got a coffee with milk, which would also be delivered.

Yummy food! My panini was delicious. They don’t use just any cheese. I think they use Muenster cheese, which makes it so much better than other places that don’t go the extra step. The egg custard thing was something reminiscent of a dan tat, which is some kind of Asian egg custard with a really flaky crust. This crust, however, was not flaky. I liked it a lot. As I said before, the Passion Fruit drink was way to sweet for my palatte. I didn’t finish it. My coffee was fine for me. The nice thing about the coffee was that they added the milk and they used steamed milk, which made the coffee seem a bit lighter.

All in all, I think I spent maybe 5 or 6 dollars on my meal. I thought that price was great. Afterwards, I bought a sausage bread roll thing for the road. This was another suggestion from the cute girl behind the counter. I couldn’t say no. When I ate it at home, it was really good. If I lived in Ossining, I would frequent this place often.

Back to the top!

Andrew

Cidade Cafe probably has the best breakfast sandwich I’ve ever had, and it all has to do with the wonderful ciabata-type roll they put it on. Two perfectly cooked eggs, sausage patty, and muenster cheese in a delicious roll. It’s also probably one of the only places that I’ve gotten a breakfast sandwich where they didn’t pull the roll out of a black plastic garbage bag; instead, it came from a nice looking basket with a linen in the bottom. That has to mean it’s good. In addition to the breakfast sandwich, I got a macaroon type pastry with some yellow cream filling piped on it. The macaroon was baked onto a sheet of filo dough with the yellow cream running down the center. All together, the pastry had a wonderful texture with smooth and creamy sitting on top of firm and
flaky.

The entire breakfast came to $7.25 with a cup of coffee. This was probably the best breakfast under $25 that I’ve had with the WBC.

Back to the top!

Back to the top!