ATHOL – A new restaurant, The Little Kitchen Café, has opened near the Uptown Common in Athol, and in addition to New England breakfast and lunch, offers traditional Acadian dishes.
The business is located at 1493 Main St., which used to be home to another diner, but otherwise has been vacant for years. Owner Cindy LeBlanc said that Diane Lincoln, who once owned Bruce’s Browser & Cyber Café, messaged her about an opportunity to open a restaurant in Athol.
“I had to think long and hard about it, but the circumstances were there and everything kind of aligned,” she said. “I thought I might regret it if I didn’t say ‘yes.’”
LeBlanc said she has little doubt her restaurant in Athol will be a success.
“We have a huge Acadian cultural population in this area, and I find that it’s being lost,” she said. “Every generation seems to lose a little more.”
LeBlanc said that her parents moved to Athol from New Brunswick, Canada, in the 1970s. Her mother worked at Heywood-Wakefield, a furniture factory in Gardener, and later started her own business doing wallpaper hanging and painting. Her father enlisted in the U.S. Army and worked at TRW, a plant in Westminster that made auto parts, as a quality control inspector. When they moved back to Canada in 1995, LeBlanc opted to stay in Athol.
“I worked at Rietta Ranch (Flea Market) at the age of 12, so kitchens have always been my place of work,” she said. “Even when I went to university, I was doing something in a restaurant.”
A 1991 graduate of Narragansett Regional High School, LeBlanc said she learned short-order cooking at the Blue Moon Diner with Jamie Floyd.
“I was there some 20 years ago,” she said. “When she was out on maternity leave, I was the manager. I was also the chef at Country Mischief with Gail and Glenn Little in Templeton.”
As far as her training to be a chef is concerned, LeBlanc said learned on-the-fly in the kitchen.
LeBlanc found herself back in Canada in 2011, where she started a small restaurant called Le Petit Cuisine – The Little Kitchen.
“It was located in Richibucto-Village (New Brunswick) and our business was mainly Acadian food,” she said. “French Canadian cooking was a big part of my growing up.”
She said she moved back to the North Quabbin in 2023.
“I’ve always said this area would love the things that they miss,” LeBlanc continued, “like the donair I have on the menu….and I offer eggs LaFayette, which is a little bit spicy. It’s made with andouille sausage.”
LeBlanc said making poutine is quite a process that took whole families to make.
“They would grate the potatoes by hand with a small, little grater,” she said. “They would squeeze the liquid out with cheesecloth. Everybody had a job. The original meat inside a poutine used to be salt pork. These days we use salted pork butt that’s ground. Traditionally, it was made with things that could keep for a very long time.”
Inside the restaurant, customers will find the walls covered with items telling the story of the Acadian people.
“It’s the history and story of the deportation, the exile and our culture in general,” she said. “I have four large art pieces that describe and show our culture.”
LeBlanc said the restaurant hours may change, but currently The Little Kitchen Café is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.