Lumber Jack's Coffee And Snacks
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Your drive in—if you’re coming from the West—is a chair uprising (Creative Custom Woodcraft’s eye-catching furniture display), followed by red-and-black plaid flags that evolve into OPEN flags and some picket fencing, then finally a turn onto gravel that leads up to a manicured shanty. The window you pull up to has the drink staples on a printed menu and the subject-to-change items chalked up on their own boards. A thrown ceramic vessel reads in needle tool “Good Karma Jar,” and a staff member greets you in—tell me you saw this coming—lumberjack plaid. The staff is kind and chipper, but it does feel a hair forced. “What are you getting up to today,” she inquired with a smile. And, as I took my clipboard and began to drive around to the second window, I got the feeling that the smile was attributed less to my presence and more of me driving away. Make no mistake THE EXPERIENCE WAS LOVELY AND CORDIAL. I just got the sense that customer service is more an exercise rather than a trait. In any event, the last leg, pulling around to the second window on the other side of the log hut isn’t the neatest (very reminiscent of the fumbling old McDonald’s refrain: “You’ll pay at the window”), but you get there and a few moments later you have coffee and pastry. If you need to eat, drink, or simply break from driving, there are plenty of spaces to park. Ready to move on from Hoosick Falls? Take a sip of coffee, pull out onto Route 7 and reverse the order of the introduction: welcome smooth asphalt, wave goodbye to the plaid flags, and imagine the conversation between Creative Custom Woodcraft execs in your head…
“How many chairs should we have in our outdoor display?”
“Yes.”
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Drink: Skim Cappuccino
While technically imperfect, flavor-wise this drink was spot on. My nerves crept in when the woman perplexedly offered: “Any sweetener in there?” But, everything turned out alright in the end as she did—to my relief—ask the milks question. I went for skim (my safeguard on uncertainty: at least if it’s bad, no fats added to my day). I got the regular size, and there were two palatable shots in there. The large apparently has three shots. The regular is the way to go, given that it isn’t your usual 8 oz. cup (I’m bad at measurements, but it was probably 12 oz.). The drink does start to wain after some time, but there’s nothing unforeseen about that. It’s really difficult to maintain flavor to the last drop. This cappuccino gets a little on the muddy side toward the end, but regardless I’m really pleasantly surprised. I have the strangest feeling that the espresso would have performed even more nicely with maple syrup. Because of this hunch, I’d recommend (and if I returned I’d get) one of the signature drinks. That spiel about the apple turnover really rerouted me. Regardless, if they are still pulling shots on their UNIC Tri Mira (as I suspect they are) of their CLEAR CUT ROAST for this drink, I’d say that it is a clear cut victory.
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Food: Apple Turnover
They were out of blueberry muffins and only had chocolate chip. That was fine. I was more interested in the apple cider donuts. Can’t but them singularly...back to square one. The woman who took my order recommended the apple turnover, remarking that it was made fresh in the shack just behind her and it was very popular. While not a huge apple turnover fan, I was starving, so I went for it. I can understand why it’s popular. At a temperature that is a little less than warm (so not warmed up, but an item still in the process of cooling down) and not hard as a rock (aged to some degree), I can believe that they are baked freshly on the premises. It has a buttery smell that delights the olfactory before taste, and it’s one of the few turnovers I’ve had that doesn’t try to break my teeth or is so yeasty that it immediately crumbles in my fingers. It could use more filling, but, all in all, yummy.