Sydenham Country Cafe - casual comfort food with a twist

Jeff Green | Feb 26, 2020

Peggy Hallett (owner/manager/head chef) of the Sydenham Country Café, is a ball of energy, especially when she is talking about the café.

The café has been open for less than a month and it already has an established clientele and serves breakfast, lunch, dinner and grab and go options. It is establishing itself as a bake shop, and does catering as well.

A take out window has just been set up at the side of the building for those who need that major coffee-shop option.

When I visited last week, mid morning, the breakfast crowd had come and gone, but the café was still half full, with mid-morning coffee drinkers, and some of the lunch sandwiches were just being prepared for the display case.

Peggy worked in restaurants as a teenager and trained in kitchens. She went to teacher’s college with a view towards teaching cooking, but one thing led to another and she ended up spending 25 years in education, most of it running her own private school in Kingston.

Recently she has been making and selling baked goods, doing some catering and painting, from her home base north of Sydenham. She has seen an opportunity for a café in Sydenham ever since Hillside, which was located in the same location as the Sydenham Country Café on Rutledge Road just east of the village.

“I even looked at properties in the village, trying to see what is available. Then my husband told me that this property had been sold, so I came up and the new owner was here, looking around. I asked him what he was planning to do with this unit and he said he was hoping to lease it to a food business. I had already drawn up what I wanted so we looked at my drawings, and we basically made a deal right then and there,” she said.

That was in the early fall, and it took a few months to prepare the space, get everything up and running and get all the equipment in place.

“I had hoped to be open earlier but we opened when we could and the response Sydenham Country Cafe - casual comfort food with a twist has been very positive so far.”

The menu at the Sydenham Country Café can be described as casual comfort food with a twist. The twist comes from some of the flavour enhancements that Peggy has developed over the years, such as her bacon marmalade that is carefully used on some of the sandwiches that are available at the café.

The cooks at the café prepare a daily soup and entrée special, and Peggy likes to make sure that some favourites are always available.

“We try to make sure that our Lasagne and Chicken Pot Pie are always available, for eat-in or takeout. They are always in demand” she said.

In addition to these classic comfort foods, the café also serves the contemporary equivalent, in the form of the Santa Fe and Asian Protein Bowls, available with chicken, or beans for vegetarians.

Among the specialty sandwiches, there is Montreal smoked meat, Turkey and Swiss, and 4 cheese gourmet grilled cheese (available with bacon or pulled pork)

The coffee at the Café comes from North Roast Coffee in Kingston. Their popular Confederation blend and the darker Sumatran are ready to serve.

And they have a breakfast sandwich? The Sydenham Country Café version is served on an English muffin or multi-grain round, with real cheddar and a hint of what Peggy calls her ‘zippy cheese sauce’. Their toasted western is another breakfast sandwich option.

From 7am – 9am the breakfast window is open, serving sandwiches, coffee, and muffins.

Their menu is available online at www.countrycafe.ca.

“We have gotten off to a really good start,” Peggy said, “and I think we will only have more available for people as we get into the spring and summer season.

The café is open on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 7am – 3pm, Wednesday to Friday from 7am – 7pm, and Saturdays from 9am -3pm. The hours will be extended for the spring and summer seasons.