About & visit

An old house that smells like butter at five a.m.

A dark-crusted rye loaf and thick slices on a cutting board against a deep shadow

Saltbox Café opened in 2017 with one oven, four tables and a promise to bake everything in the house.

Nora Whitcomb grew up across the river in Lyme and spent nine years in hotel pastry kitchens in Boston. When the Hayden House came up for lease, with its sagging lean-to and a kitchen that had not seen an oven in decades, she signed the same week.

The ground floor took a year to restore. We kept what we could: the pine floors, the summer beam, the hearth in the keeping room. The espresso machine sits where the parlor window catches the morning sun, and the bakery runs out of the old kitchen, just as it was meant to.

We buy from farms we can drive to: eggs from Chester, apples from Glastonbury, maple from Hebron, and whatever the market has on Saturday.

The Hayden House

Two hundred and seventy years on Main Street

1754
Abel Hayden, a ship’s carpenter, frames a two-story house facing Main Street.
1790s
A lean-to kitchen is added across the back, and the roof sweeps down to meet it.
1880s
A century of other lives: a dry-goods shop, the village post office, then apartments.
2017
Nora Whitcomb restores the ground floor and fires the first oven in the old kitchen.

Behind the counter

The people who open up

Nora Whitcomb
Owner
Ran the pastry station at a Boston hotel for nine years, then came home to the river with a sourdough starter in a mason jar. Still opens the doors most mornings.
Marcus Bell
Head baker
In by four, out by noon. Marcus keeps the laminating schedule, the rye, and an opinion about every apple variety in the county.
June Park
Coffee & front of house
Dials in the espresso every morning and knows most regulars’ orders before they reach the counter. Ask her about the pour-over shelf.