5 WEST CAFÉ

One of New Market Main Street’s newest businesses aims to keep the eastern end of Frederick County caffeinated and full of sweet baked goods.

5 West Café opened in early 2022 and it was a long time coming for owner Laurie Mills, who lives in Thurmont.

Mills and her late husband purchased the historic building that houses the new café about eight years ago. The building was entered into the National Register of Historic Places in December 1975 and has served as a hotel, a tavern and even a post office in the past.

After Mills purchased it, it was lovingly and carefully renovated to create the spacious and comfortable café that welcomes guests today.

Head to 5 West Café for your favorite drink.

If straight-up coffee is your thing, you’ve come to the right place. 5 West has its own house brew, with notes of toffee and cocoa, roasted onsite daily by Stageline Coffee Roasters.

Or warm up with an espresso drink, such as a cappuccino, latte, cortado, mocha or macchiato. Or choose a hot tea or hot chocolate. Specialty drinks include the London Fog, brewed Earl Grey tea with honey and steamed milk, and the Canadian Maple Latte. Iced versions of all of the above are also on offer, alongside nitro and regular cold brews.

If you feel like a sweet treat or special snack to go along with your drink, you are in luck. 5 West has a relationship with some local bakers, who bring delicious treats every day the café is open. A recent selection included Boston crème and chocolate glazed doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, chocolate muffins, peach crumb bars and tomato and pepperoni puff pastries.

The baked goods offerings change often, but no matter the day, you’ll find something delicious. Just try to come early for the best selection.

Bring your laptop and take advantage of the free Wifi onsite and get a little work done at one of the many tables in the café’s lounge. Or make arrangements to meet up with a friend for some quality catch-up time.

Whoever you’re meeting and whatever the occasion, 5 West Café offers a cozy spot to curl up with with a good drink and enjoy yourself.

5 West Café 5 W. Main St., New Market 240.915.2191 F facebook.com/5westnewmarketmd d @5westcafe

The City of Frederick

PARKS AND RECREATION DEPARTMENT

The City of Frederick Parks and Recreation Department has provided citizens in the area with quality and affordable programs for over 80 years. Year-round activities include sports, fitness, and leisure for all ages, challenging and educational children’s activities, the William Talley Fitness Center, and an abundance of unique programming.

121 N. Bentz Street, Frederick • 301-600-1492/1450 www.cityoffrederickmd.gov/webtrac

MARYLAND GOLF at its finest

With a county population of 300,000 and 13 golf courses, Clustered Spires has earned “Best of Frederick Golf Course”! Golf Digest awards Clustered Spires a HHHH rating. Clustered Spires reputation is a great conditioned golf course with wonderful greens and considered the best value golf course in central Maryland.

CLUSTERED SPIRES GOLF CLUB

NON-SENIORS RATE Monday–Thursday ........ $43 Friday............................. $47 Saturday & Sunday ....... $61

SENIORS/60+ RATE Monday–Friday ............. $33

TWILIGHT RATE 5 pm–Dusk .................... $27

Dinner, delivered

by Molly Fellin Spence

Frederick chefs shift business models, offer home-cooked meals for weekly customers

Even the most food savvy and creative among us gets sick and tired of making our own meals, three times a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Some people have no trouble at all planning, shopping for, and creating healthy, delicious meals every day. For the rest of us, we’re lucky to have a number of talented chefs creating amazing meals for singles and families and delivering them right to our doorsteps!

These innovative culinary masters have found a way to help us all by making dinner a little easier.

Sara Kep’s Kitchen

https://sarakepskitchen.com Sara Kephart, 23, has been cooking since she was 2 years old, yelling “Bam!” like chef hero Emeril Lagasse in the kitchen cooking next to her dad. Now, the lifelong Frederick resident and Johnson & Wales University grad is crafting homemade, delicious meals for families and single folks all across Frederick County via her business Sara Kep’s Kitchen.

The idea for the meal delivery service came about in 2017, when she was a college student, short on cash.

“When I came home for Thanksgiving break I would sell freezer meals to friends and family to make some spending cash. As soon as I dropped a couple deliveries people were already asking if I would be

doing it again during winter break,” she said. “I made a few menu tweaks and continued my freezer meals every break. My friends and family were telling their friends and family and the circle who knew about these freezer meals kept getting bigger and bigger.”

Kephart took major inspiration from Middletown baking Deb King, owner of Deb’s Artisan Bakehouse. King’s daughter is Kephart’s best friend.

“She always fed us the best snacks at parties and the most delicious breakfasts after sleepovers,” she said. “The biggest thing I learned from Deb is to never skimp on an ingredient or portion size. Make sure there’s enough cheese, meat, toppings, whatever to make sure it is amazing. I remind myself of this every time I create a new recipe or am plating a dinner.”

Kephart delivers family-style dinner bundles, including a protein, starch, vegetable and dessert. Or, customers can purchase each item a la carte. She also offers meal preps with nutrition information for customers who track macronutrients.

She posts a new menu each Monday, for delivery the following Tuesday, and orders can be made easily via her website www.sarakepskitchen.com.

Kephart’s best seller is her homemade lasagna

“It is a huge labor of love. We make our own sauce using local Hemp’s beef and sausage then layer it between pasta noodles and fresh ricotta with herbs,” she said. “It was the first menu item back in the freezer meal days and our customers haven’t stopped asking for it since.”

Despite the obvious challenges of the pandemic, Kephart says it actually helped her launch her business.

“We started while restaurants were at 50% capacity and it was hard to find a lot of meat and produce at the grocery store. People did not, and still don’t,want to leave their house,” she said. “When they ordered from Sara Kep’s Kitchen they knew they would be getting everything they ordered.”

Kephart says Frederick can feel like such a big place at times, but providing a healthy meal for her customers helps her feel close to the community.

“After talking to some customers, you realize how small our community is. We will be chatting, they’ll bring up where they went to high school, realize they were in class with my dad, their grandpa was their Little League coach, they get massages from my aunt or used to work with my neighbor,” she says. “People here love supporting small businesses and will go out of their way to use us instead of a huge corporation. Making connections with customers helps me develop menu items to fit exactly what they’re looking for.”

Veggie Annie

facebook.com/veggieannie | IG: @veggieannie | veggieannie1@gmail.com

Annie Marshall, 54, is the Annie behind Veggie Annie, a custom catering business where the customer’s needs and wants are always front of mind. A selftaught cook, Marshall has honed her specialties during the last 30 years and created a long list of delicious dishes that have a rabid local fan following.

“I’ve learned all I know by making every possible mistake in both the kitchen and the business,” Marshall says. “I feel like I’m finally getting the hang of it!”

Veggie Annie began when Marshall was a newly single mom with a toddler, trying to figure out a way to make a living while keeping her daughter close.

“I’ve always been passionate about vegetables! In my 54 years on this Earth, I’ve followed lots of eating plans; vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, locovore, etc., but veggies are always my best friends.”

Marshall has served on the Board of Directors of the Common Market Food Co-Op for 21 years. She designs each menu from scratch, and is renowned for caring for any kind of special diet folks.

“I’m not a nutritionist, so I’ll never tell you what you ought to eat. But if you tell me what your needs are, I'll make it delicious,” she said.

Unusually Delicious is one of her business mottoes. She intentionally build layers of flavor, “so when you eat it, you get those big, delicious, flavor pows!”

Marshall creates food as local and organic as possible.

When the pandemic hit, and events were canceled everywhere, it meant that Marshall needed to find a new way to do business. So, she started offering a weekly a la carte menu for delivery, via Facebook and Instagram.

Each Saturday she offers up a list of five different dishes that customers order by Monday for a Friday doorstep delivery.

A recent menu included Mediterranean Tuna and White Bean Salad (“a delightful flavor combination: tons of fresh herbs, sun-dried tomatoes, lemons, olive oil. Fresh, bright, lively - this unusual tuna salad is the taste of sunshine!”) and Minestrone with a Creamy Pesto Swirl (“you know how sometimes a big bowl of Minestrone sounds SO GOOD?! Well, that’s what happened here this week! Loads of fresh veggies, dark red kidney beans, tiny pasta (or rice) to add separately, plus a pale green pesto sour cream to swirl into each bowl.”).

Much of Marshall’s menu is or can be made vegan and gluten-free or adapted for other diets.

“I’m so grateful to the customers who carried us through what looked to be a tough couple of years, and it turns out that I love the delivery part of the business as much as the catering part,” she says.

Now grown, Marshall’s daughter, Julianna Lufkin, works with her at Veggie Annie, creating dishes and delivering them.

Marshall is a lifelong lover of Frederick and is happy to call the region home.

“I believe that you have to know and love your ingredients long before you create a dish with them. I adore my local vegetable and meat farmers, along with the dairies, cider and beer producers, distilleries, coffee roasters and beekeepers,” she says. “Frederick County has such a rich agricultural heritage and current thriving scene; I can’t imagine what my business would look like if I were based anywhere else.”

Safi Personal Events

safievents.com | 301.639.8352

Chefs Tiera and Brandon Sumblin, both 28, met as culinary students at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina about 10 years ago. Together, they’ve worked with top chefs and in successful restaurants, including in the kitchen of famed chef Wolfgang Puck. And now their culinary creations are available for the lucky residents of Frederick.

The couple has been featured on the Food Network seven times, winning five of the food competitions they’ve competed in.

Safi Personal Events, their small personal chef company, was created as a result of the pandemic. In May 2020, COVID-19 had just hit and both the chefs were out of work.

“We began offering date-night-at-home packages where we would go into people’s homes and provide a restaurant experience,” Tiera Sumblin said, and it really took off.

“The pandemic is really what pushed us to start everything. It was kind of a blessing in disguise because we didn't know what our potential was until we were forced into it,” Sumblin says.

Safi means “fresh, pure and genuine” in Swahili.

“As an homage to our ancestors, we chose this name to reflect upon our cooking style,” she says.

Currently, Safi Personal Events offers meal pickup/ delivery service on most Sundays and then book larger events throughout the week.

The Sumblins specialize in Southern cuisine with modern takes.

“These are recipes that have been passed down through our families for generations that we are now beginning to make more enjoyable for today’s diners,” Sumblin says. “The main ingredient that never changes is the love we put into every dish.”

Typical menus include fried chicken dinners (regular, lemon pepper, Nashville Hot or baked), which comes with two sides like mac-n-cheese, bacon braised kale, candied yams, or stewed tomatoes and okra. Smothered fried pork chops, beef tips in gravy, and blackened catfish round out the choices.

And don’t forget dessert! Coconut cake, bread pudding and more are available to order as well.

Sumblin says Downtown Frederick has to be one of the best places to own a small business.

“The citizens of Frederick are all about ‘Support Local,’” she says. “Of course as a newer business that started during the pandemic, we could use more support but, what we have had already has been amazing.”

HISTORIC DOWNTOWN MIDDLETOWN

14 W. Main Street, Middletown, MD 21769 | 301-371-4433 | Follow us on

• Monday-Saturday 11am-10pm (grill closes at 9pm) • Patio and Dining Rooms are open and reservations are recommended. • Half Priced Wine Bottles all day Monday-Wednesday • Happy Hour 3-7pm Monday-Friday

www.themaincuprestaurant.com

Getaway to the Gateway! Thurmo nt

WINERIES | DINING | ARTS | HIKING | CYCLING

Explore the hiking trails at Catoctin Mountain Park, enjoy Cunningham Falls State Park where you will find the largest cascading waterfall in Maryland, experience Covered Bridge History, take a stroll down Main Street, take a walk down the Trolley Trail, unwind at one of our scenic wineries, savor the freshness of our orchards, enjoy local flavors at our restaurants. Explore, Experience, & Enjoy our back yard!

For more information, please visit ThurmontMainStreet.com

DINING

Chipotle Mexican Grill • IHOP Kulfi Ice Cream & Italian Ice Matsutake Sushi & Steak • McDonald’s MOD Superfast Pizza • Noodles & Company Panda Express • Poke Bowl Starbucks • TGI Friday’s

SERVICES & SHOPPING

Bank of America ATM • Lenscrafters MOM’s • Nail Trix • Olive & Basket PNC Bank • Pure Barre Fitness Slim Life Health & Wellness Sola Salon Studios • The UPS Store

FASHION

Chico’s • Comfort One Shoes Francesca’s • Jos. A. Bank • LOFT Soma Intimates • White House | Black Market

ENTERTAINMENT

Champion Billiards & Sports Café Regal Cinemas Stadium 16 & IMAX