A Sweet Start
Baxter’s Café & Sweet Roll Emporium serves up 64 varieties of tasty breakfast treats.
On our first trip to Baxter’s Café & Sweet Roll Emporium in August, my husband and I found the Douglas Avenue eatery empty and out of food. The Saturday morning breakfast crowd, a barista explained apologetically, had been larger and more ravenous than they had expected. He described a coil of breakfast-craving patrons snaking through the doors an hour earlier.
Co-owner Noah Stephenson had baked six dozen sweet rolls, expecting them to last the day. They sold out in 20 minutes. We were disappointed, but the sweet roll shortage was understandable. Noah and his wife Molly had just opened Baxter’s, and they were still working out the kinks. Above all, we were curious to see what the fuss was all about.
After another failed attempt (it turns out Baxter’s is closed on Sundays), we rolled out of bed on a chilly Monday and made it to Old Town by 6:30 am. The doors were locked again. We scratched our heads and shivered in the brisk autumn breeze. Peering through the window, I glimpsed a cook walking across the hall in the back of the café, and I started waving. A moment later, we were inside, sloughing off the cold.
A server hurried to our table from behind a crowded bar, and we ordered cups of Brazilian light roast, a malty coffee with a hint of caramel, and two sweet rolls: apple pie and raisin cinnamon.
Made from homemade dough, fresh fillings and blanketed with warm frosting, Baxter’s eponymous treats are compact but scrumptious. The crispy edges of the apple pie roll swirl into a gooey center and add texture to the sweet concoction.
After a bite, I understood why the Stephenson’s included the warm treats in the name, and why they had sold out of them that first morning in late August. I forgave, and I forgot.
My relationship with Baxter’s finally reconciled, I ordered a half portion of biscuits and gravy, an open-faced sandwich with scrambled eggs and gravy-slathered sausage on Texas toast. Afterwards, I raved to co-owner Molly Stephenson, who had bustled in mid-meal, about the sausage, which had a rich, bacon-like taste. She lit up. “We’re pretty proud of our sausage,” she said. Stephenson and her daughter are allergic to the artificial preservative MSG, so she makes it a point to cook with organic meats and locally grown ingredients.
After the meal, we wandered the café, perusing local artwork on an exposed-brick wall. We were cheered by pitchers of yellow daisies gracing the café’s vinyl tables. Tin sienna tiles decorate the ceiling, and paper lanterns and portraits of children brighten the shelf above the doorway.
As with many newly-opened restaurants, Baxter’s is still in its trial-and-error period. But its brick walls, succulent sweet rolls and inviting atmosphere imbue the eatery with all the taste and warmth of an Old Town establishment. As we were leaving, a customer walked to the bar and filled a mug he had brought from home with fresh joe. At his table, he spread out the morning paper and sipped his coffee as if this had been his morning ritual for years.
Owner Profile:
Noah and Molly Stephenson met while leading a church group for singles. When the group got together for breakfast, Noah often baked sweet rolls from a recipe he learned from his grandmother.
In 2000, the couple married. Noah, who worked for a while at a juvenile detention center, talked with his wife, a massage therapist, about opening a bakery. Last February, they headed downtown for lunch at Soleil, a tiny café on Douglas Avenue.
When they arrived, the Stephenson’s found a “For Lease” sign on the wooden door. They inquired about the space and signed the paperwork four months later. In August, they opened Baxter’s Café & Sweet Roll Emporium.
Baxter’s serves sandwiches, burgers, salads and flatbread pizzas, but the sweet rolls are their staple. Two to four flavors are available on a given day, but customers can call ahead to order from a menu of 64 flavors including banana split and Boston cream pie.
