December 2006

It is hard to believe that we are approaching the end of our first “season” at Still River Café. Thanks to an unusually mild fall, we still have a fair amount of produce in our gardens, including: beets, carrots, greens, radishes, leeks, parsnips, salsify, parsley and fennel. For the past month, we have also been making a weekly trek to the Greenmarket at Union Square in New York City to supplement our holdings with produce from farms in the Hudson River Valley, New Jersey and Pennsylvania who are blessed with even longer growing seasons.

As such, we will be able to stay open until the end of 2006 as originally planned. Given the timing of Christmas and New Years, however, we have elected to curtail service on both weekends and offer dinner only on Saturday, December 23 and on New Year’s Eve. We will maintain our normal hours (dinner on Fridays and Saturdays and brunch on Sundays) for the next two weekends: December 8-11 and 15-17. Because of our small size (50 seats) and the fact that our guests are neither rushed nor in any rush to leave, reservations are recommended, but we can usually find seating for you if you call early on the day you wish to come.

We hope that you can find time in your busy holiday schedules to come and see us before we go into our brief hibernation. If you haven’t seen some of the favorable press we have received recently, please visit our website, www.stillrivercafe.com, where links can be found to reviews by The Hartford Courant, Billy Costa’s T.V. Diner on New England Cable News Network as well as a recent clip on Scott Haney’s show “Every Town Has a Story” on WFSB Channel 3 in Hartford. We also did a live interview with Faith Middleton in connection with her “Food Schmooze” program on Connecticut Public Radio.

Although we have made no effort to market them, gift certificates are becoming increasingly popular items. Please call (860) 974-9988 or stop by and pick one up if you know someone whom you would like to treat to a meal at Still River Café. They are available in any dollar amount you choose.

Thanks so much to so many of you who have supported our efforts in our first year and made it all worthwhile. If you know anyone who might be interested in what we are doing, please forward this newsletter to them as “word of mouth” (even in electronic form) seems to be our best form of advertising.

Holiday greetings and peace to all.

Kara and Bob Brooks