Ula Café: Made from Scratch, Served with a Smile
Step One: Set aside a late-morning or afternoon just for you or a couple friends with whom you always have a great time.
Step Two: Head over to Ula Café in Jamaica Plain, and settle in for hour or so.
This two-step process is simple, and the payoff is tasty food and beverages and service with a smile all in a cozy, homey environment.
Nestled neatly in the small business complex known as The Brewery is Ula Café, owned and operated by Kate Bancroft and Korinn Koslofsky. The café boasts a large and varied menu but in no way are their offerings mass produced. The sandwiches (made with Roslindale’s Fornax Bread), soups, salads, and baked goods are all made with tender loving care from the Ula kitchen each day, and the freshness and taste, therefore, are unparalleled. Also, there are a number of vegan and vegetarian options that make Ula terrific for a day out with a friends with varied tastes and eating habits. During my latest visit to Ula, I had a small snack of a snickerdoodle cookie and iced coffee, which were both delicious, and I was reminded how “simple” is great when done well.
Bancroft and Koslofsky founded Ula with a strong belief that “providing a friendly, comfortable and creative space where individuals can casually interact with community members is equally important (for customers, employees and the community at large) as offering delicious coffee and tea, creative pastries and treats baked fresh on-site every day, and hearty soups, sandwiches and salads.”
Ula Café is definitely “walking the walk” of its founding mission. There is just something about the atmosphere at Ula that is inviting and warm. I was having trouble putting my finger on exactly what it was, so I asked co-owner, Korinn Koslofsky for help on that topic and a couple other questions I had about their commitment to local food, community, and the festival.
What are the intentional things you and your staff do to create this atmosphere at Ula?
It was very important to us when we opened that Ula be a place where everyone in the community felt comfortable- young, old, parent, child, businessperson, student, etc. To that end, we ask that our staff to make a point of greeting everyone with a smile and making them feel welcome- and we have been blessed from the beginning with incredible staff who really appreciate our place in the community and work very hard to continue to make Ula a warm, friendly neighborhood spot.
As you describe on your website, you strive for “synergistic benefits for
all” in terms of your collaborations with other businesses. What/who has been one of the “best fits” in this area?
We love the relationship we’ve developed with Bikes Not Bombs, our neighbor in The Brewery. We donate goodies for their Everyday Revolution Tours and fundraising benefits, and in turn they expose us to a lot of people who may not have heard about us, or known where we were.
What are some of your favorite local ingredients?
Right now we’re using corn from Silverbrook farm in Acushnet for our incredible corn chowder, but fall is definitely our season at Ula. We use local apples to make applesauce for our apple-pecan cake; local squash for our roasted butternut squash soup; pumpkins for our pumpkin pies and pumpkin butter, and cranberries for our quince-cranberry tart.
What do you hope to showcase at the festival this year?
I don’t think many people know we bake everything on-site at Ula: cookies, brownies, fruit tarts, cakes, quickbreads, muffins, scones, etc. So we want to highlight our bakery by preparing one of our favorite fall specials- A super moist, flavorful butternut squash bread we make from scratch by roasting local squash, pureeing it, and fold it into a cinnamon and nutmeg-flecked batter, along with tons of toasted pecans and walnuts. For the festival, we are going to bake them in individual little paper molds for people to enjoy themselves or give as gifts.
Hungry yet? Yeah, me too. Make sure to stop by the Ula Café tent on October 1st!
This post was written by featured festival blogger Jon Ross-Wiley of Local In Season.
