Hands down, my favorite place to go for breakfast or lunch is Sharpsburg's Café on Main. It's half a block down the street from The Parlour on Main Street. Look for the violet and kiwi color scheme, you can't miss it. The Café on Main has been growing in popularity in Sharpsburg since opening a few years ago. It strikes a great balance by offering fresh-made, upscale food at reasonable prices with an atmosphere that is both cutting edge and quaint. If you have never been to Café on Main, make your next lunch date here.

I go to Café on Main fairly often, so I've developed several favorite items, both from the breakfast and the lunch menus. In the morning, I often opt for the breakfast sandwich—a classic of bacon, egg and cheese on ciabatta bread, and I always order horseradish on the side. I've also had their omelets on occasion—they have a nice selection with a variety of gourmet fillings. My favorite is the Scandinavian omelet with poached salmon and herbed cheese. The pancakes are also yummy, coming in a selection of flavors with an equally diverse selection of toppings. My cousin Jack always gets the chocolate hazelnut, i.e. pancakes smeared with Nutella. Their fruit and cream pancakes—which take the form of a thin pancake folded over a cream filling—are also much recommended, though they aren't a regular menu item; you'll have to be lucky enough to show up one morning when they're on special.

The Café on Main

The lunch menu is even more extensive, offering a variety of sandwiches, wraps and salads, with many of the sandwiches offered in different matched groupings of toppings and dressings. My very favorite regular lunch menu item at Café on Main is the Spicy Chicken Wrap with chipotle. If there's one downside to Café on Main, it's that this wrap is probably the only spicy thing on the menu—if you like spicy, be sure to order hot sauce or horseradish with your meal. While I do often get the Spicy Chicken Wrap, I more often than not get one of the daily specials. Unlike some restaurants where the specials tend to be fall-flat experiments just as often as they're any good, at the Café on Main, the specials can oftentimes be the best items on the menu. Last week when I went to lunch there with Saundra and her sister, one of the specials was—yet again—just too tempting for me to pass up. The southwest turkey sandwich was served on French bread with pepper jack cheese, apples, and a cilantro-cumin sauce that was quite delicious. Like all their sandwiches, it came with Russian slaw and French fries. The Russian slaw is a Café on Main specialty, providing a twist on ordinary coleslaw with green bell peppers in a light vinaigrette. The French fries, I must say, are wonderful. They are truly—and I say this with the grave sense of responsibility it entails—the best fries I've ever eaten. Another great thing about Café on Main is their salads. The Kane sisters each ordered one that day, and I have ordered them a couple times in the past. It's probably the one casual restaurant in the city where you can reliably get a good salad, with dark green (not iceberg!) lettuces, homemade dressings and generous fresh toppings like fruit, nuts, sun-dried tomatoes, feta and gorgonzola. The Café on Main is also a family-run business, and many of staff members are related to the owner; the service is always enthusiastic and friendly, but in a non-intrusive way.

The Café on Main does not get nearly the attention it deserves; a brief attempt to Google it brought up mostly places in Kentucky (apparently, they have a Sharpsburg too), a few directory listings, but no real reviews. This restaurant clearly isn't getting the notoriety it deserves, and if you're not eating there, then you're missing a real treat.