Ossining’s Wobble Café shines in a national spotlight
The Wobble Caf̩, a neighborhood restaurant in Ossining that has earned a measure of national renown this month, is closed to customers on Mondays, though its owners donӪt take the day off.
On a recent Monday morning, the front door was unlocked behind the “Closed” sign as the green-awning restaurant on Campwoods Road served its other communal function as a welcoming shelter for school kids and afternoon pickup point for those students”™ working parents.
“I”™ve got a pack of ankle-biters waiting for their buses,” said Beylka Krupp, the Wobble Café”™s prize-winning chef. With another snowstorm causing a two-hour delay in the opening of Ossining schools, the owners”™ son and daughter waited with arriving neighbors in a children”™s nook at the rear of the restaurant ”” “where kids can be comfortable without electronics,” said Krupp, whose own nearby “Luddite” home has no television, computer or other electronic staples of our contemporary digital culture.
- Beylka Krupp, the Wobble Caf̩Ӫs prize-winning chef. Photo by John Golden
On a large blackboard on a wall of the kids”™ space, an artist displaying her photographs in the café had posted an artfully lettered announcement: “Congratulations Wobble! Finalist in the General Mills Neighborhood to Nation Contest.”
It”™s a nationwide recipe contest launched this year by General Mills Foodservice to celebrate independent family restaurants and their original dishes that reflect “local flavor” ”” and include at least one ingredient from a list of eligible General Mills products, said a company spokesperson. Krupp is one of three finalists for a $50,000 grand prize ”” $40,000 to the winner and a $10,000 donation by General Mills to a charity chosen by the winner ”” to be awarded March 11 at General Mills headquarters in Minneapolis.
Krupp will fly to Minnesota for the ceremony with her “third arm” at the café, Andrea Matra, who began busing tables at the Wobble as a high school student nine years ago. “Now I do sort of everything,” Matra said from behind the café”™s six-stool counter, a soda-fountain relic from the building”™s former tenant, the Campwoods Sweet Shop. Krupp”™s husband and café co-owner, Rich Foshay, will stay home to run the restaurant the couple has operated for about 10 years.
The Wobble”™s owners recently painted in bright primary colors the walls of the eclectically decorated cafe ”” church-pew seating that spans nine dining tables, a “Kale is Kool” wall decal, “Gobble Til You Wobble” Thanksgiving souvenirs donated by loyal customers ”” to prepare for a prelude to that main event in the Midwest. On March 4, a General Mills representative was to travel to Ossining to present a purely ceremonial oversized check for $10,000 to the owner-chef at the Wobble. That”™s the cash prize that will be awarded to the contest”™s two runners-up.
The Ossining chef hopes to win the grander award for her shrimp etouffee entr̩e. It will compete for the favor of judgesӪ discerning palates with a yogurt chocolate chip coffee cake from a farm restaurant in Orange, Mass., and a pecan chocolate ganache brownie cake from a seafood grill in Galveston, Texas.
That”™s “etouffee” as in “breathless,” said Krupp. The shrimp is served over cornbread in a sauce of tomato, garlic, onion, cream, Cajun spice and herbs. It”™s a flavor more local to New Orleans than to Ossining, although “it”™s not terribly, terribly traditional” even in New Orleans, where the dish is usually prepared with crawfish, she said. The Commander”™s Palace, a renowned New Orleans restaurant, was one stop in the well-traveled Krupp”™s peripatetic culinary education in restaurants and at a summer art school in Michigan.
Krupp grew up on a self-sustaining farm in Vermont. “It taught me an appreciation of food and where it comes from,” she said. “It had a huge impact on my change of career.” Graduating from McGill University in Montreal with a bachelor”™s degree in languages, she headed west to pursue culinary studies in Vancouver, British Columbia, and began a nomadic lifestyle working as a chef and traveling internationally in her off seasons.
Krupp and her husband, a Briarcliff Manor native whose family has owned a cheese shop and delis in Larchmont, Pleasantville and Briarcliff Manor, opened the restaurant at 21 Campwoods Road in 2005. The name Wobble? “It”™s named after our cat, who unfortunately passed this year,” said Krupp. The cat”™s name was the first word spoken by their son, now 11.
“We had a really great start right out of the gate,” said Krupp. “We asked the surrounding communities, neighborhoods, to tell us what they wanted in a local restaurant.” They didn”™t want alcohol served and they didn”™t want another high-priced Westchester eatery. “They wanted inexpensive, a little bit of funky,” she said. “We had a good start because we were willing to give people what they wanted. There was no ego in it for us.”
“We had some struggles” in the recession, she said. Customers who had been coming in three or four times a week reduced their visits to once or twice a week. The restaurant also saw new business from people “trading down” and dining at the Wobble instead of more expensive restaurants.
“People have made friends, people have made marriages here,” said Krupp. “People have come here dating who now have 8-year-old children. It”™s a sense of community that I think has really helped us through tough times.”
The WobbleӪs owners have developed additional lines of business, including a catering service that had Foshay hauling provisions to a corporate training session in Valhalla on that recent Monday. The partners also operate The Footnote, a basement caf̩ in the Ossining Public Library where sales since the recession have sagged just as the number of visitors to the downtown library has decreased. The Wobble also provides meals for Little Friends Day Care in the Campwoods neighborhood and operates seasonal locations at the Friday night summer concert series on the Ossining waterfront and at the private Torview Swim and Tennis Club in Ossining.
“Being a small family business is a financially very tenuous situation,” said Krupp. “We do OK. We look at other locations” ”” having had requests to open restaurants in Tarrytown and Mount Kisco ”” “but we can”™t leave this one. If we moved from this location, it would anger so many people.”
Some of those same customers were taste-testers for the Wobble chefӪs contest entries. Krupp also entered an apple pie yogurt parfait recipe in the breakfast category. For desserts, she submitted her recipe for chocolate beet cake with nutmeg glaze. A vegetarian who offers a rich choice of vegetarian items on her caf̩ menu, Krupp is a big fan of beets.
“That”™s the one I thought would win,” she said.