Special Announcement! We will be open from 7am — 2pm on Sunday, May 10 for Mother’s Day!

To show our appreciation to mothers everywhere, we will be offering mothers a 20% discount on their meal. As an additional bonus, if you mention you saw this post on our website or saw it on twitter, mothers will instead receive a 50% discount.* Be sure to tell your server!

But that’s not all we have in store for you. We will be offering a variety of featured items including a Fresh Fruit Cup, Eggs Benedict with Smoked Ham or Bacon, Eggs Florentine for the vegetarians and an Asparagus Omelette with Hollandaise. For the meat lovers a Bacon and Asparagus Omelette with Hollandaise will be offered. Offer a toast to your Mom with a Mimosa or Bloody Mary. View our Mother’s Day Weekend Specials here.

There will also be Bread Pudding French Toast, Waffles with Fresh Strawberries, and Pancakes with a variety of fruit offerings. As always our entire menu will be available from 7am — 2pm on Sunday.

We are also introducing a new item this weekend: Grilled Kielbasa with BBQ Baked Beans served with 2 Eggs and Toast. Steve is now making his own BBQ Baked Beans and they are fantastic!

We hope to see you this weekend so we can wish you a Happy Mother’s Day in person; if you can’t make it, we look forward to seeing you soon — Spring has arrived in the White Mountains!

*Discount does not apply to alcoholic beverages.

You asked … and asked … and asked … and finally, we listened. Eggs Benedict is now on the features board at King’s Corner Cafe! Apparently there’s conflicting stories as to the origins of the dish, but whoever invented it, we’re now offering it. Exactly what *is* Eggs Benedict? It starts with a toasted English Muffin base (we use only sandwich-size Thomas’ English Muffins at King’s Corner). A layer of grilled ham or bacon is added (your choice!) to each half, followed by two poached eggs. The whole thing is then topped off with Hollandaise sauce.

We also have a new Benedict Omelette for those that prefer their eggs omelette-style instead of poached — a ham and spinach omelette topped with Hollandaise sauce.

So if Eggs Benedict is your favorite breakfast treat, you can now get it at everyone’s favorite breakfast spot. King’s Corner Cafe. See you soon!

What happens when you take two shots of espresso and add 6-8 ounces of water? You get a cup of coffee that’s more flavorful and less bitter than a traditionally-brewed cup!

How can this be?

The same amount of ground coffee is used to brew a double-shot of espresso as a cup of coffee; the difference is in the amount of time the grounds are in contact with the water. Less contact means only the best flavor is extracted and the bitterness is left behind. Adding hot water will result in a cup of coffee that’s similar in brewed strength rather than the more intense espresso, but without any loss in flavor.

We try to offer a variety of intriguing “specials” in addition to our regular menu. Steve can’t help but be creative in the kitchen, putting his own special “twist” on old favorites. These items are more likely to have limited availability; your server will let you know if we’re out of anything.

Shepherd’s Pie or Lasagna?

A huge hit with locals as well as visitors enjoying all that Loon Mountain has to offer has been our Shepherd’s Pie. Guinness Stout differentiates ours from the rest! Gaining in popularity is our lasagna – traditional meat lasagna, spinach and meat lasagna, and portobello, spinach and meat lasagna are just three of the recent variations to make an appearance.

Steve says the secret to any great italian dish is a slow-roasted savory sauce. He gets lots of compliments… all of which are taken with sincere humility and appreciation. His tomato sauce is made with sweet Italian sausage, ground beef, and roma tomatoes. The rest of the ingredients are hush-hush, but you ‘chefs’ out there know what goes into a great sauce! If you have any hints or just want to exchange ideas drop Steve a note.

Open-faced Roasted Turkey Sandwich

A long-time favorite is our open-faced turkey sandwich with gravy and cranberry sauce on the side. Our turkey breast is slow roasted right in our kitchen. It’s tender and delicious and also makes great sandwiches — you can have them made in the morning and take them with you to the mountain! Chips and a pickle come with every sandwich.

The King’s Beef Stew

No Winter menu would be complete without beef stew. The King’s Beef Stew is made with beef purchased locally at Wayne’s Market in N. Woodstock. They have really nice cuts of beef at some pretty competitive prices and it’s always fresh. We highly recommend their butcher shop.

Crepes

Last but not least — Crepes! Introduced over a year ago, the Crepes at King’s Corner have been building momentum as Steve been adding to the list of options for stuffed crepes. The latest offering are crepes stuffed with caramelized bananas and drizzled with Ghirardelli chocolate syrup. They’re a huge hit! We also have crepes stuffed with our own baked apples and drizzled with Ben’s Pure Maple Syrup as well as Ricotta and cocoa stuffed crepes with a pure raspberry reduction. So hard to choose!

Come on in and try some of these new menu items. And let us know that you found out about our specials on the web!

If you’d like to keep up-to-date on the latest happenings at King’s Corner Cafe, you can subscribe to our RSS feed by clicking the big RSS link at the bottom of this page. You can receive your updates either by email or your favorite newsreader.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

— Mary

While the vast majority of our patrons are of the people variety, we often cater to our customers’ dogs as well. We always have a big box of biscuits at the ready, and oftentimes will also provide a bowl of water for a four-legged friend that’s been on a long roadtrip.

For some folks, however, biscuits just aren’t enough. Last weekend we had a family order a bagel sandwich for their pet. From all indications he was very happy with his order.

Another family ordered a ham and bacon sandwich on white for their pooch nicely cut into bite-size chunks.

Two of our very frequent customers had a trio of standard poodles for quite some time. While they only lived a few blocks away, two of the three would come along for the ride. They would patiently sit in the car while their owners enjoyed their breakfast and anxiously await their own special weekend breakfast!

Doggie D’oeuvres Recipe

• toast
• homefries
• bacon, sausage, hash

1. Mash the homefries with a fork until they are the consistency of lumpy mashed potatoes. Similarly, break sausage and/or bacon into tiny pieces.
2. Layer the homefries, hash, sausage and bacon on the toast.
3. Cut into quarters diagonally and serve.

Unfortunately all of the dogs have since passed. There are two new puppies, but they’re restricted to biscuits.

At King’s Corner Café, you can have your mocha with or without espresso! At the heart of our mocha lattes and “adult” hot chocolate is Ghirardelli Barista Chocolate Sauce. Did you know that cocoa beans are roasted just like coffee beans? Ghirardelli accepts only the highest-quality beans, rejecting over 40%, and roasts the beans in-house to ensure to ensure the company’s signature flavor profile is consistently maintained throughout all its products.

Café Mocha

Imagine blending rich, creamy hot chocolate with a shot or two of espresso — that’s exactly how a mocha is made! We start with Ghirardelli Barista Chocolate Sauce, add a shot or two of espresso and steamed milk. A mocha is then crowned with Cabot’s whipped cream, and a drizzle of Ghirardelli caramel sauce. Not a caramel fan? We’ll sprinkle Ghirardelli powdered chocolate on top instead.

“Adult” Hot Chocolate

We serve regular hot chocoate for the kids — Swiss Miss and hot water — but a real favorite is the decadent “adult” hot chocolate made with Ghirardelli Barista Chocolate Sauce and steamed whole milk. Just like the mocha described above, but without the espresso. The older kids love them too!

Add a Flavor Shot!

There’s only one thing better than a Cafe Mocha or Adult Hot Chocolate — that’s one with a flavor shot of amaretto, hazelnut, caramel, or frosted mint! At King’s Corner Café we use Monin all natural syrups and have several sugar-free varieties on hand.

Enjoy!

Reining in our food costs is not the easiest thing to do — if you do the grocery shopping for your family you’ll understand what I’m talking about. We have an extensive menu and our customers’ ordering pattern is seemingly without rhyme or reason. We guesstimate what to have on hand ready and available to cook. We’ll sometimes freeze items after portioning — raw chicken freezes well, and cooks well even when frozen, if you cook it at the right temperature. Same goes for our chili, and that allows us to make huge batches at a time. On the other end of the spectrum you’ll find our chowders and soups. We don’t freeze them. Freezing dairy (chowder) changes the consistency. Potatoes don’t freeze well either. They break up into tiny potato balls once they thaw. While we freeze uncooked chicken breasts, we don’t freeze our chicken soup. We use as many as 8 fresh veggies in each batch — and they break down when frozen. That’s just one example of how we’re committed to our high quality standards.

Right down the line we have to make daily ‘educated guesses’ as to what we are going to use that day or in the next few days. We sometimes throw out good food that’s no longer great food because it no longer meets our standards. We won’t sacrifice quality in exchange for lower food costs — that is, we won’t buy inferior products. We don’t consider compromise part of our language. I’d rather tell our customers we are out of something — even after they have ordered an item — than serve a meal where the quality has been compromised. It’s just not going to happen in our kitchen!

Thanks to the point-of-sale system we installed when we first purchased what was then known as King’s Korner, we now have over 4 years of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly customer counts. We use these numbers for scheduling, purchasing, menu planning, and daily food preparation. Sometimes we get burned by our own numbers, but for the most part the numbers allow us to keep a tight rein on food preparation and labor. Labor and Food Costs… wow… always the bottom line. Hard Choices. Our employees are also our friends, and it has been tough making the calls about who to cut and when. Though we’re doing fairly strong numbers against last year, fixed costs have risen. We’ve had to work harder, and make those tough choices when it comes to labor. We’ve been able to keep our menu prices in check, but we are constantly monitoring food costs. Our last menu update was about 3 months ago, which resulted in 3 prices falling and if I’m not mistaken, 4 prices increasing. Not too bad. Food prices fluctuate on a weekly basis… some rise drastically over the course of a month while others fall at the same pace. It’s impossible to adjust pricing weekly or even monthly, but by monitoring prices we can estimate a median range that might just balance out overall. We take hits now and then, but like the market, if you are patient things will even out over a longer period of time. Of course if food prices and energy prices keep going up at some point so will the menu prices. I guess it’s inevitable.

We’re keeping our heads up and working to give our customers that ultimate dining experience each and every time they visit King’s Corner Cafe.

Here at King’s Corner Cafe, we take great pride in our espresso – from the beans we use to the quality of the shots we pull. Espresso — with the first syllable pronounced like the letter “s”, not “x” — is a shot of pressure-brewed coffee using very finely ground coffee. Brewing takes about 25 seconds. Properly brewed, an espresso will feature a layer of rich dark golden cream, called crema on the surface.

See those thin strands of liquid? Those are called “mouse tails” and are an indication of a well-pulled shot — a perfect combination of the right grind properly tamped. If the liquid is coming out of the portafilter in something more akin to cat tails, the water is going through the coffee too fast and will be nothing but colored water. Conversely, if the liquid is coming out in droplets instead of a stream, the grounds are either too fine or too densely packed and the shot will be bitter.

When you order an espresso, this is what you get. A single or double shot of espresso. That’s it —there’s no steamed or frothed milk in an espresso — just a bit of heaven in a cup.

Could our hours be extended to include afternoon and early evening? Sure! We’ve extended our hours many times, especially during vacation weeks and on Fridays & Saturdays during our peak seasons. We’ve even done dinner… but our kitchen and available storage couldn’t handle an entirely different menu. We’ve contemplated opening evenings with our breakfast, lunch and specials menus, and maybe adding a couple of dinner entrees as specials.

Many have said we should do breakfast in the evenings, but it makes for very long hours for Steve (me) and he’s not as young as he used to be. Being open the extra hours has to be weighed against profit and loss — loss of sleep that is! So, what’s the solution? We’re not sure.

Maybe our customers can give us some ideas?