The senior center at Horseshoe Pond Place hosts a community luncheon every weekday, but on Tuesdays the dining room is transformed into Café Bienvenue. It may sound like a fancy Parisian bistro where the waiters speak French, but you don’t have to be the master of any tongue to eat there.
Horseshoe Pond Place is the only full-time senior center in Concord, and their senior nutrition program has been in place for years. The meals are provided daily through Meals on Wheels, but with 1,300 meals a day coming out of its central kitchen for area senior centers, Horseshoe Pond likes to add a personal touch.
A stimulus grant awarded last year enabled Horseshoe Pond Place to bring in a chef once a week and to enhance the meals with added flavor and side dishes prepared fresh on site. Jazzing up the food meant it was time for an exotic new name.
“We wanted to demonstrate that the Tuesday meal is going to be different,” said Polly Fife, director of senior services. Thus, “Café Bienvenue” was born. Of course, “bienvenue” is French for “welcome,” and according to Fife, welcoming seniors is what it’s all about.
“We’re really trying to bring people together,” Fife said. “The goal for community dining is to fight isolation.”
Café Bienvenue is the most well-attended of Horseshoe Pond Place’s luncheons. The meals are open to Horseshoe Pond Place residents and any area seniors. There is a $2 suggested donation for seniors and a $6 suggested donation for guests under 60. There is usually a mix of residents and non-residents.
Carol Muglin of Concord is not a resident, but she frequents the community meals.
“I go to all of them, and they’re all good, said Muglin, adding she began attending the lunches “looking for some place to socialize.”
Sylvia Columbia has lived at Horseshoe Pond Place for 10 years and said the luncheons are a great way to get to know people.
“You can socialize with people that you would have just passed by before as residents,” she said.
And as for the food?
“They’re a big improvement over the old lunches,” Columbia said.
Anita Oelfke, Medicare specialist for the ServiceLink program, is a regular at all of the area’s senior centers. She drops by to dispense Medicare advice and chow down on the meals. According to Oelfke, Café Bienvenue doesn’t receive the types of gripes that other community lunches are prone to.
“In some centers, they complain about how little they feed you,” Oelfke said. “At the café lunches, I never hear that complaint.”
Resident Mary Rose Veseskis says she loves the lunches.
“I love the way we’re treated,” Veseskis said. “The meals are always delicious.”
The grant money that was used to upgrade Café Bienvenue to its current status has run out, and the opportunities to have fresh fruit or freshly prepared side dishes are running out with it. They still put on delicious lunches every weekday, and they kick it up a notch for Café Bienvenue Tuesdays. But while all the seniors that participate in the luncheons seem to enjoy the meals and be thankful for them, some are still left wanting a little more.
“I would have liked to have that funding continue,” Veseskis said.
