Cafe DuCharme

Our new hangout. A beautiful, beautiful café, and the owner is really friendly and easy to talk to. Nice coffee, mellow place to pass an afternoon. Overall great!

Since the owner of this tiny little Euro-​café on quiet President Street has started serving the occasional communal dinner, I need to update my review.
Just once per a week in the evenings, Café du Charme transforms from a coffee-​and-​pastries spot to a restaurant. The owner pulls all the little tables together and covers them with linens and candlelight. He turns to the stove and prepares a home-​cooked meal for 6 or 7 lucky people who all come together in the communal space and share an evening with strangers.
The atmosphere and space are great for this purpose. The café is truly tiny and so it works well as a private dining space. We felt that we had been invited into a friend’s home. In addition to us, there were five other diners, all of them strangers. Of course, there are pros and cons, of course, to communal dining with people you’ve not met before. But the interest provided by meeting new people usually outweighs potential awkwardness. The conversation was interesting and lively and punctuated throughout with plates of steaming, hearty food.
The cuisine offered up for dinner was strongly Swiss-​German in its orientation. We started with lovely warm bowls of soup (purée of celery root with apples and cinnamon) — filling but not heavy. The main course was a roast of beef slowly braised in red wine until tender and silky. It was served with stewed red cabbage and rich, buttery mashed potatoes. Dessert was a milk chocolate mousse with strawberries. At one point during dinner, the owner commented that he does not view himself as a chef. And, indeed, rather than fussed-​over, carefully arranged offerings, the food was more in the style of an accomplished home cook — hearty, generous, and satisfying.
So, if you are interested in something a bit out of the ordinary — grab a bottle of wine and go have dinner in a café occasionally transformed into a welcoming kitchen for a few intrepid strangers.

A really outstanding café.
If you want a place to sip some tea or coffee with a friend, talk about old times, or meet someone new, here is your spot. I’m not even going to talk about the food (which is quite good, try the granola) it’s the friendliness of people in here. Seriously, you become a different person when you walk through the door… you become NICE! And on Thursday or some other random night, he makes a dinner (but he won’t tell you what it will be) and you go and sit at a big table and eat and talk with strangers. Watch ‘Harvey’, you’ll understand how awesome this can be.
We’ve entered as strangers, soon we have friends — E.P. Dowd

I really hope people discover this place, it’s easy to miss. It’s tucked away around the corner from 5^th (toward 6^th), and doesn’t seem to be heated, but the coffee is excellent, and the pastries are my favorite of any of the local coffee shops.
The orange brioche and cheese danish brought my brother and I back both Saturday and Sunday, and we enjoyed chatting with the friendly, European owner/​operator. I hope it’s still around (and maybe a little warmer inside) when I get back from the holidays, it seems like it’d be a great place to get some work done, too.

I am so happy there is a place like this in the slope. Quaint, friendly and great for breakfast, late lunch or coffee. The owner is friendly and inviting. Definitely check it out!