Cold Spring Café is Village’s Country Kitchen

Peter Inserillo has owned and operated the Cold Spring Bakery and Café for close to eight years, but the familyowned and-operated business was decades in the making.

Peter graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and then spent time working in high-end country clubs and restaurants both in New York and Colorado. When he met his wife, Christine, a waitress at one of the establishments in which he was cooking, they married and began raising a family that now includes three boys, the oldest of whom waits tables at the café. Christine runs “the front of the house” and Peter works in the back. All of the recipes are his, and he carefully supervises the preparation to make sure everything is up to his standards.

The café feels like a country kitchen, with cheerful flowerboxes outside, the windows, white walls hung with local photographs and other artwork, folding wooden chairs, and polished plank floors. The café specializes in breakfast, brunch, and lunch. Eggs and pancakes, hearty sandwiches, stews, homemade salads, soups, and, of course, pies and other baked goods are all made from fresh ingredients, including real butter. All of their soups and sauces are homemade, as well, something that is becoming rare in today’s restaurant market, said Peter.

“From the time I was a teenager I never wanted to do anything else but work in a restaurant,” he said.

“I love to bake,” Peter said. The bakery, which is now part of the Café located on Main Street at the corner of Kemble, used to be located about a half block down on the opposite side of Main Street. Peter and Christine decided to incorporate the bakery and ice cream business into the café itself when they were able to obtain additional space in the well-over 100-year-old café building and reconfigure the dining areas.

“I used to spend so much time walking up and down Main Street that it just didn’t make sense,” Peter said. “Between ordering and delivering supplies, managing the staff, bringing baked goods up to the café, and keeping an eye on inventories,” it was not a good use of his time.

While the move to Main and Kemble initially cost the bakery some business, Peter says that the pie and custom cake sales have remained steady, and he’s hoping that once he can get a new door installed on the Kemble Avenue side of the building, ice cream and other baked good sales will increase, as well, since customers will not have to walk through the dining room to purchase these items. “I hope to have everything ready by next spring,” he said.

One of the simplest items in the bakery case, the butter cookies, are a delight to taste. The cinnamon apple scones are another baked item worth looking into. Prices are reasonable to moderate, and there is limited outdoor seating on the front porch. Peter declared that his favorite menu item is the chicken pesto panini with fresh mozzarella.