Scott and Lisa Carrino invited Maria and I to the holiday dinner for the cafe staff Sunday night, it was for people who worked there all year. We do not work there, except in emergencies, but the staff feels like family to us. The cafe is so much a part of our lives, we were happy to accept the Carrino’s invitation to join the dinner.  Plus, we eat there more than we eat at home some weeks. The cafe is a business, but Scott and Lisa see it as much more than that.

They see the cafe as part of a revolution, as the next big thing, as a new way to consider food and to eat. Everything served in the cafe is grown or baked locally, the carrots in the salad are pulled out of the ground in their garden. Nothing is processed or laced with preservatives or chemicals. The soups are already legendary in our town.

Scott said one of the cafe’s proudest accomplishments is that people can trust the food they eat.

We have come to know the staff well, they often seem like family to us, they are cheerful, efficient, fun to talk to, there is a great energy and connection to them. We trade the stories of our lives. The cafe has transformed our little town in many ways. It is not the only place to eat, the Cambridge Diner is popular and busy as well.

But there is no place quite like the Round House it has become a hive of community and connection. Scott and Lisa are good friends of ours, and are much loved in town. They started the cafe more than a year ago with nothing, and they have met challenge after challenge and, bloody but unbowed – getting a small business going is a tough thing – they are plowing ahead into another year. Scott is exhausted, they have endured crisis after crisis – busted vans, dish-washing machines, stoves and refrigerators – sometimes I think he will keel over, but he is tough and creative and determined.

Every Sunday, Maria and I go to the Round House for the cornmeal pancakes, when we look up from our desks after working in the morning, it is gift to run over there for soup or a sandwich.

It was great to see all of these faces together tonight, the dinner was meant to thank them for their hard work. We had salad, meatballs and ziti, and ice cream and almonds for dessert. Sometimes, when I look beyond the confines of my farm, I see the great corporate virus spreading all over the land, bigness and familiarity and profit and loss everywhere, snuffing out community, individuality and creativity. Walking down Boylston Street in Boston last week, I saw a hundred chain restaurants, only a handful of family-owned ones left.

I have always seen the Round House as an antidote to that, a different way.  it is about individuality and the celebration of community. Scott wants to make money and do well, but that isn’t the only thing he wants. He wants to make good food that people love and serve as a focal point for community. The staff is cheerful and motivated, they are treated as well as Scott and Lisa can afford to treat them, the restaurant has become the soul of the town, a meeting and gathering place, a place of community and connection.

We saw tonight that the place is important to us, part of the new and real family that is coming into our lives.