Bakery reunion is sweet - nothing bitter here.

I live in a small town on Cape Cod. We can be accused of being a little provincial, averse to going beyond the border of our simple, safe world. And there is some truth to that. The majority of us are well-educated and well-traveled. We go over the bridge, no problem. We often just choose to remain local for the most part. Cape Cod is awesome.

Then Maison Villatte opened up here in Falmouth. We no longer need to leave our town now - great coffee, natural beauty, awesome library, a curling club and year-round stores - and now a French bakery.

But then they went on vacation - for 6 weeks. In the middle of winter. I felt as if I was going through the stages of grief, using coping mechanisms such as baking my own non-French bread, not driving by the papered up windows, getting a fix of a limited bread delivery on Fridays at Falmouth Wine & Spirits on Fridays. Even going off-Cape more. It has been harder to go without the bakery than it has been to shovel all of that snow.

Maison Villatte re-opened last Friday. My wife and I were there bright and early Saturday for one of our three favorite loaves of bread - the batard. Of course we had croissants while we were there. They are even better than ones we had in Paris last year. At least just as good - and a whole lot closer! And good thing - our batard looked a lot like this one by the time we got home. Welcome back Maison Villatte!