BARNEVELD COMMUNITY CAFÉ Review — Soul of American (we’d hope…) Dining

Editor’s Note: Read the related story – “American Players Theatre Presents CYMBELINE Review — Womansplaining the Bard.”

0$...

0$...

0$...

Huh???

The string of zeroes occasioned much blinking at the Barneveld Community Café menu. While the prices were unprecedented, everything else said breakfast diner in conventional fashion. Denver, kitchen sink, cheese and other assorted omelets mingled with the usual of two eggs and bacon with choice of toast or pancakes.

It smelled like a breakfast diner too. The aroma of coffee was in the air—which was the magnet that had drawn us via the Maps App into this spot off rural Southern Wisconsin roads in the wee hours of the morning. Soft sizzles came off the griddle. The décor was shabby**, more than pretending to be shabby chic.

Perhaps the first apparent difference for a Wisconsin tourist is that the cook and proprietor wears a mask—in sharp contrast to watering holes, hotel, hardware store etc. in tourist haven Spring Green, home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, American Players Theatre (APT) and more. One might think that the tourist base of Spring Green’s economy, and its proximity to Madison and Chicago, would have given these tourism hot spots some clout with Spring Green’s powers that be to mandate masks as Delta rages. Not so—the only masks we saw worn in Spring Green were donned by APT ushers and box office personnel and about half our fellow theater-going crowd.

The chef’s name is Cliff. From the plastic sheathed story in the local paper that the volunteer waitress hands you when you ask, you learn that he has been a professional chef for a long time, and through that work met his European born wife with a Scotch- accent. Their world—like everyone’s world—was turned upside down by the pandemic. Most of the people they knew were devastated by the pandemic’s hit on the economy. When children started coming around their doors begging for food for parents too proud to come themselves, it really got to them.

WHEN:

Wednesdays thru Sundays 7 am – 1 pm

WHERE:

Barneveld Community Cafe
110 E Orbison St
Barneveld, WI 53507

PRICE:

0$
Donations appreciated.