The Dish: Sweet Madeleines Cafe and Catering

By WY Daily Staff Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Dish asks a different restaurateur each week for their three favorite menu items at another restaurant. Two of them have to be local. All of them are bound to be good. This week's Disher: Angela Harder, owner of Sweet Madeleine’s Café and Catering in Williamsburg and Gloucester. Visit their website here.

Harder has always been involved in the restauarant business. “I’ve just always worked in restaurants my whole life,” she said. “I’ve always had a love of food.”

Harder worked for eight years in D.C. and northern Virginia before moving to Gloucester, where she was faced with a shortage of good restaurants.

“When I moved down here, there was no place to eat in Gloucester, so I decided I’d better open my own,” she said. “So that’s what I did.”

The catering half of the business can serve up to a thousand people, but Sweet Madeleine’s two locations offer daily luncheons more appropriate for a smaller group. Harder opened her first location at Route 17 and Tidemill Road in Gloucester ten years ago. Her second location, in the Monticello Marketplace in Williamsburg, opened two and a half years ago. Sweet Madeleine’s is known for its sweet treats, including a coconut almond cheesecake and apple caramel bourbon bread pudding, Harder’s suggestions tended toward the Asian.

Number One

Harder’s first choice is the chicken larb gai at Emerald Thai Cuisine in Williamsburg. Although the spelling is a little odd, Harder said it is nevertheless delicious. “It’s a chicken dish, almost like a cold chicken salad, with lots of basil, that I love,” she said. “I like weird stuff.”

Emerald Thai Cuisine

264 McLaws Circle

Williamsburg

Number Two

Sticking with the Eastern theme, Harder also recommends the spring rolls at the Bamboo Hut in Newport News — a place she describes as a “little dive.” She said the sauce and meat work well with the crispy shell. “They’re just delicious, some of the best I’ve ever had.”

The Bamboo Hut

72 Colony Road

Newport News

Number Three

For what she called her “pricey pick,” Harder goes to the River Room at the Duke of York hotel in Yorktown, where she actually recommends two dishes. First is the seafood shishkabobs, which carry loads of lobster, shrimp and scallops. For a more New Orleans-style taste, try the lobster bien dien, a lobster dish with rice, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, scallions and brown butter.

The River Room at the Duke of York Hotel

508 Water Street

Yorktown