There are certain foods that tell you almost immediately whether a kitchen knows what it’s doing, like the margarita pie at a pizzeria or the bread basket at a bistro. At Good Friend Cafe & Market in West Shokan, that food is the biscuit.
The Biscuit Test
Flaky, buttery, and distinctly Southern, Good Friend’s biscuits manage the important structural feat of being substantial enough to stand up to some serious gravy action without crossing over into dense blocks of dough. You can get one the traditional way, under a generous pour of sausage gravy, or go bigger with the pot pie biscuit: a warm buttermilk biscuit smothered in creamy chicken pot pie filling. It’s not a light lunch. It is, however, an extremely good one.
Good Friend opened this summer on Route 28A a quarter-mile from the Olive Free Library, taking over a building that has spent more than a century feeding, supplying, and generally giving West Shokan residents a reason to stop in. The space has had several lives since it was built in 1917, including Skin’s Place, the American General Store, and Marty’s Mercantile. Now, owners Marta and Jeremy Baumann have returned it to that familiar cafe-and-country-store rhythm, with Jeremy running the kitchen.
After buying a house around the corner in 2023, the Baumanns found themselves passing the empty storefront several times a day. “Every time we would drive by it, we would just say, ‘I wish something was there,’” Marta says. They imagined somewhere to sit, meet people, drink coffee, and get good food. Eventually, they decided to make it themselves.
The Baumanns may have spent years in New York City before settling in West Shokan in 2023, but their Texas roots are easy to spot in the kitchen, starting with those biscuits. Jeremy began working on his recipe around 2018, part of a series of New Year’s resolutions to master things like sourdough English muffins and, eventually, the Southern biscuit. For Marta, a proper one is flaky, layered, savory, and made with “no shortage of butter and buttermilk.”
“He’s very particular that when they come out, they have the right amount of flakiness,” she says. “That’s his baby.”
Breakfast Goes Bigger
The rest of the breakfast menu gives the biscuits some competition. Breakfast tacos come loaded with bacon, egg, cheese, and potatoes, with an incredibly flavorful salsa worth rationing to make sure there’s some in every bite. The salsa comes from Jalapa Jar, a Texas-born company now based in Brooklyn, and the Baumanns are particular enough about it that they make trips to Brooklyn to stock up.
The menu, it turns out, is a fairly personal collection. “Honestly, every single thing on the menu is my favorite thing to eat,” Marta says. Many of the dishes started as things Jeremy cooked at home, refining them over time before they eventually found their way onto the Good Friend menu.
Breakfast sandwiches are another strong suit. A recent chef’s special layered bacon, egg, and cheese on a sourdough English muffin with greens and sweet pepper jam, the latter adding just enough sweetness and acidity to cut through all that breakfast richness.
Then there’s the cinnamon roll. Ordering one on top of an already substantial breakfast might seem excessive, but restraint has its limits.
Good coffee helps, particularly for a cafe that opens at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays.
Still a Country Store
Good Friend is, importantly, a market too. The shelves and coolers hold everyday staples alongside snacks and local goods, while Buddy’s Snack Shack, a tiny candy shop tucked into the front porch, handles the important business of chips, candy, and ice cream.
Marta wanted the market to be useful beyond giving customers something to browse while they waited for breakfast. While she appreciates the specialty markets found around the Hudson Valley, she wanted Good Friend to stock everyday necessities, too.
“People don’t want to buy an $18 can of tuna,” she says. “They just need something to eat.”
That mix feels especially right in a building that has spent more than a century serving West Shokan. Good Friend keeps the practical parts of a country store, stocking milk, eggs, pantry staples, and coffee, plus the requisite marshmallows and chocolate for s’mores, while giving people plenty of reasons to stay for breakfast or lunch. A quick grocery run can turn into breakfast tacos, a cinnamon roll, or a biscuit buried under chicken pot pie.
Not everything on the shopping list has to make it home.
Good Friend Cafe & Market
New York, 4075 NY-28A, West Shokan, NY 12494
