Curried chicken salad. Photo by Debee Tlumacki for Boston Globe.
IN THE KITCHEN If loving food is a cook’s secret weapon, The Foodsmith is in good hands. Three years ago, its co-owner, Laura Raposa, walked away from a coveted job at the Boston Herald to do what she’d always loved. Today, instead of covering social events to get fodder for the Inside Track column she cowrote for 20 years, Raposa is where she wants to be: in a kitchen feeding people. After leaving the newspaper world, she honed her lifelong baking skills by working 10-hour days at Joanne Chang’s stellar Flour Bakery in Boston and cooking dinners at South Boston’s Paraclete Academy. Subsequently unable to find the perfect fit with personal cheffing and catering, she and her husband, Steven Syre, a former Boston Globe business columnist, decided to open their own place. After searching for a location in Scituate, where they live, the couple happened on the right spot in Duxbury’s Halls Corner. After building out the interior over many months, they opened last August.
THE LOCALE The one-room former flower shop is an airy space with big windows, aqua walls, wainscoting, a tin ceiling, green plants, and classic, pastel-colored mixing bowls on display in a wooden cabinet. The from-scratch bakery and mostly takeout lunch place is more open kitchen than restaurant. Five stools line a narrow bar under the big front windows, and a counter divides the space between cooks and customers while showcasing the day’s baked goods behind a glass partition. This year will be Foodsmith’s first full high season, and new people are still discovering it. Others drop in, greeting Raposa by name, to see what’s cooking, ponder the baked goods case, get lunch, arrange a catering order, or grab something to take away.
Foodsmith’s small menu changes daily, while several staples are always available. You can find the day’s offerings online and on a single menu at the counter.
Among the regularly available baked goods are muffins, scones, cinnamon rolls, coffee cakes, cookies, energy bars, and granola. Made-to-order breakfast sandwiches are always served from 7 to around 11 a.m. — Raposa aims to please — at which point lunchier items appear. Grilled cheese, with apple or bacon add-ons, and BLTs are staples, while three other types of sandwiches change daily: one poultry, one meat, and one vegetarian. In a neat trick, each sandwich can be ordered as a salad for an extra buck. Soup is a daily staple, and some type of quiche and salad specials make regular appearances.
Food smith owner Laura Raposa, left, and chef/baker Betsey Hunter, right. Photo by Debee Tlumacki for the Boston Globe.
The applewood-smoked B in the BLT ($7.25) is thick and crisp, and the whole sandwich, on toasted sourdough, is an instant reminder of what makes it a classic. A cheddar, egg, and bacon breakfast sandwich ($4.25) on a grilled Stone & Skillet muffin seduces equally, with bits of grilled cheese crusted up over the edges. (This is no kin to the ubiquitous pre-made, dry versions everywhere.) A tasty tuna, tomato, and cheddar melt ($7.95) is served open-faced on a grilled muffin one day. The coronation chicken sandwich ($7.95), ordered as a salad, is a large mound of curried chicken (with bits of sautéed onion and apricot) served over fresh greens dressed with vinaigrette (secret ingredient maple syrup). And a savory, house-roasted (no deli meats here) pork sandwich ($7.95) is creatively constructed with cooked broccoli rabe where lettuce might be.
Raposa’s granola ($4), sold in 8-ounce bags, is full of all sorts of nourishing, toasted, honey-sweetened oats, seeds, nuts, cranberries, coconut and more, and can be eaten as granola or (I say!) subbed in for dessert when sprinkled on oatmeal, ice cream, yogurt, or eaten straight out of the bag. And leading the baked goods case is apple Betsy ($2.75): a monument to moist, big-crumb cakes, cinnamon, baked apples, and sweet things everywhere.
The Foodsmith, 17 Standish St., Duxbury, 781-934-0134, thefoodsmithduxbury.com.
