This Lexington cafe puts a savory spin on one-of-a-kind waffles every Saturday

You like waffles, right? Of course you do. Nice and crisp and golden brown, maple syrup and melted butter filling those little honeycomb spaces. Maybe blueberry syrup, maybe strawberries, maybe whipped cream. Delicious. Sweet. End of story.

Martine Holzman, of Martine’s Pastries on Third Street, is here to tell you that you’re wrong. Or rather, you’re only half right. Of course sweet waffles are delicious. But so are savory ones.

Martine’s is already a weekday brunch and lunch destination with its grilled cheese sandwiches with kale, its crunchy Croque Monsieurs and zingy basil-tomato soup, its buttery croissants and scones.

But in the past year it has developed a following for its surprising savory waffles, which it makes only on Saturdays.

“Children of course like sweet waffles, but their parents were asking if we could do something savory,” the Frenchwoman says in a Gallic accent largely untouched by her decades as one of Lexington’s busiest chefs, bakers and caterers. “You can do crepes with spinach or mushrooms or whatever, so why not a savory waffle? It’s such a blank canvas that you can add anything you want to it. And it worked out right off the bat.”

Using a slightly less-sweet version of the Belgian waffle batter recipe passed down to her by the now-retired Lexington restaurateur and caterer Phil Dunn, Holzman and her team have been serving a different, one-of-a-kind savory waffle every weekend.

There have been waffles topped with smoked salmon.

There was a waffle with pickled onions, tomatoes and feta cheese.

There was a waffle with chai-and-sorghum cream and Savory Eggs in Purgatory. (Purgatory, the Catholic concept of a place between heaven and hell, applied to the dish because the eggs were baked in a spicy tomato sauce. As co-owner Jim Holzman, Martine’s husband, says with a laugh, “It definitely leaned toward heaven.”)

More recently, the Holzmans have given free rein to their chef, Mary Edwards, to experiment with Saturday brunch dishes that incorporate influences from her Welsh heritage: a Welsh Rarebit waffle (featuring a generous ladle of cheddar cheese sauce browned in the broiler) and a baked Anglesey Egg waffle, featuring boiled eggs and a creamy leek sauce. As Edwards says matter-of-factly, “It was yummy.”

“We’re a team here, and we want to give our people the freedom to grow, the freedom to innovate,” Jim Holzman says. “We’re a small cafe, but here’s where Mary can do her own thing.”

When I visited Martine’s one Saturday morning last month, Edwards was innovating in several directions at once. The unique delicacy of the day was a good-sized waffle, fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside, topped with a white cream gravy flecked with green bits of Poblano pepper and a sliced, locally sourced bratwurst, mild and juicy, and garnished with a tangle of red chili filaments.

It looked fantastic on the plate, and tasted even better — like a subtler, more refined and certainly more international version of a fresh-baked biscuit with sausage gravy. It was stick-to-the-ribs comfort food, and it hit the spot; maple syrup and whipped cream were the furthest things from my mind.

The next wave of waffle innovation at Martine’s might be the waffle itself. A while back, the cafe experimented with a sweet waffle made of a baked cinnamon roll pressed into the waffle machine, but so far has resisted fiddling with the Dunn recipe by adding savory ingredients directly into the batter or replacing it altogether.

“But you could,” Martine Holzman muses. “We’ve talked about doing waffles made out of hash browns or sweet potatoes, for example, or—”

Hmmm…

Martine’s Pastries

Saturday brunch featuring savory waffles

Where: 400 E. Third St., Lexington

When: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays

Parking: A small on-site lot and street parking is available

Info: (859) 231-9110 or Martinespastries.com

This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 10:26 AM with the headline "This Lexington cafe puts a savory spin on one-of-a-kind waffles every Saturday."