Colophon Cafe

The Knights of Pythias Building went up in Fairhaven in 1891 and has held a secret society meeting hall, a hardware store, a clothing shop and, during Prohibition, a speakeasy. The ballroom is still up on the top floor. Colophon has been in it since 1985.

Village Books shared the ground floor from 1982, the bookshop on the left and the cafe on the right, until the shop moved down the block in 2004. Colophon took the whole downstairs in 2014. The remains of a hand cranked Sears and Roebuck elevator are still down there, one of them working as a waiter's station.

The bakers make everything from scratch, down to the baguettes and the bagels, and the soup of the day comes back every Thursday on a calendar published a month ahead. There is a full bar with house infusions. Save room for the peanut butter pie, which the cafe tells you to do twice on its own website. Closed Tuesdays.