Community Café Serves More Lunches Than Ever Before!

Gatherings are about good food, good connections, and good cheer

Nov 22, 2024

NORTHEAST HARBOR—The woman was flanked by friends and she waved across the road and down a block to a woman heading into the Neighborhood House, thinking that she recognized a neighbor.

It turns out she was wrong.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she entered into the Community Café on Thursday. “I thought you were someone else.”

“You can wave at me any time,” the misidentified woman responded.

She chuckled as she headed over to the line for food. “I will…. I will.”

When she ventured inside, she received one of the 275 lunches served, Thursday, a record breaking amount that didn’t include the volunteers’ lunches, too.

“Now in its fourteenth season, The Community Café is the essence of our mission at The Neighborhood House,” said Neighborhood House Executive Director Anne-Marie Hart. “We are dedicated to the maintenance and improvement of the community values and spirit of the town. The programs don’t focus on any age group or income bracket within our community; we provide equally for all. The program began because we had just finished a $3M capital campaign in 2010 and had installed a new, industrial kitchen. We knew we needed to create a program to try and use it to its fullest. Initially, we thought if we could serve as a lunch gathering spot for around fifty people, that would be great. We had very simple menus usually consisting of soup, bread and salad.”

Thursday’s gathering of 275 was a far cry from fifty.

“In our wildest dreams we never would have foreseen the way this program has grown. It has become insanely popular. What’s been so rewarding is the support we have received from our business community and our loyal kitchen volunteers,” Hart said. “So many businesses and other organizations have approached us about becoming involved as sponsors. In fact, I have more sponsorship requests than I have sponsorship slots. We have a wonderful group of volunteers who donate hours and hours of time in the kitchen to prep, cook, serve, do dishes, etc. It’s been a true community effort. As the program has grown, so has the menu. One thing I’m really proud of is the love put into the food. Nearly everything is homemade. We don’t take short cuts or a let’s just ‘feed the masses’ approach. At the last café, a woman commented, ‘This lunch was made by people who care about food.’ We’ll take that compliment!”

The people who make the lunch do care about food. It’s more than that, though, they care about each other.

That care was evident everywhere inside the Northeast Harbor community center that’s meant to dedicate itself to community values and spirit.

People hugged. People fake swooned in delight. People called each other ‘cuties,’ spoke about retirement dreams, books they wanted to write, moments in the past that they treasured. Then, they hugged some more.

“It’s so good to see you” was a sentence heard over and over again.

The Community Café happens on the first and third Thursday of the months from mid fall through late Spring at the Neighborhood House in Northeast Harbor. This Thursday, the meal was served by volunteers from the Bar Harbor Historical Society, Swan Agency Real Estate, and Mt. Desert Land & Garden Preserve lined up along a long counter, packing and dishing out the food that fed those 275 community members, many of whom were waving to each other across the room.

“How are you? How are you?” neighbors greeted each other.

Balloons congratulating life events were tied to a chair near the stage. A police lieutenant stopped in. Mount Desert Selectboard members, town managers, Bar Harbor Appeals Board members, Tremont School Board members, bankers, guys in orange construction vests and hardhats, retirees, and some that were very new to Earth all mingled, ate ziti, sat together, and shared space.

It was a public supper of the community kind.

“It’s great to see such a wide cross-section of our community come to the lunches. As always, we invite seniors to be ‘on the House,’” Hart said.

Baked beans are often considered the cornerstone of community suppers in New England, but the Community Café branches out with a new menu each time. And though the food is often raved over, it’s not why people come—or at least it’s not the only reason.

The event is also about waving down the street and across the hall, about sitting next to people you know well and don’t know at all. It’s about sharing and discussion and community.

Community suppers, held by fraternal organizations and churches, were quite popular in the mid-1800s and were often held to raise money.

Community suppers were (and still are) often places for people to discuss issues that require civility and thought, problem solving and care.

“After the Civil War, in the era of industrialization and heavy immigration, it was felt that these traditions were slipping away. We strongly suspect that this custom of community suppers on Sunday nights was a response to feeling that there wasn't enough sense of community with all the changes that were taking place in society as a whole,” explains author and historian Keith Stavely in an interview with the Boston Globe.

In that same interview, Kathleen Fitzgerald, historian and author, agreed, “Community cookbooks and community suppers were often fund-raisers for Civil War veterans and veterans' widows. They were also evoking this vaunted New England way of life that is community-based and simpler.”

Since it began, the café has been the place where Connie Madiera received the Boston Post cane as the town’s oldest resident, back in 2015. It’s been a place where three generations of the Pugh family served their neighbors together back in 2014. This year, it was a place where lunch was in honor of Les Foss, who loved it dearly. A large part of Les Foss’ life was spent helping others in trouble and creating community at the café and beyond.

And the café has hosted supper before Mount Desert town meetings where residents were invited to “come socialize” prior to getting to the nitty-gritty of town politics. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, it became, temporarily, the Carry-out Café.

According to the Neighborhood House, it’s “thanks to the generous support of our local business sponsors, we are able to offer lunches at a suggested donation of just $10, and all seniors are invited to enjoy their meal ‘on the house.’”

The next one happens on December 5, and Hart invites everyone to come and “bring friends.” It will be sponsored by Bartlett Tree Experts, WMH Architects, and the Holmes Store. That time it’ll feature steak and cheese subs.

All photos Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story

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