Charles In Charge

It's a long story, but about two years ago, my husband met a guy named Charles who had started his own organic catering business, just in time to cater our wedding reception. Charles was a one man show for our wedding that September, putting everything together and taking it all down, in an old venue that didn't even have a kitchen. He cut our wedding cake and served it to our guests, mastered as bartender for the beer, wine and champagne fountain, and provided an Italian spread for lunch (including appetizer plates) to feed over fifty at a price so cheap I won't even reveal it because there's no way you're even going to believe me.

After our wedding, we never heard another word about his organic catering company, and we didn't run into Charles and his wife at art walks on Friday nights like we used to, and it almost felt like he had descended from heaven to feed our wedding guests and had vanished afterward in a poof. And then, one blessed Saturday a few months ago, we found ourselves in Village Books, desperately wanting coffee and heading to the fiction section anyway, and suddenly, the coffee shop on the top level that we hadn't gone to in years, had been transformed into a hot-spot for Fairhaven-dwellers, tourists, college students, and the Bellingham elite, with a hip new food menu and a bearded man whose impeccable taste didn't take long to recognize, casting his charm from behind the counter, running the entire show. We had finally found him, and he was absolutely thriving. Ever since, we have made a practice of visiting Charles, the owner at the Book Fare Cafe (http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/88/816105/restaurant/Book-Fare-Cafe-Bellingham), for coffee on Saturday afternoons, because it's so damn good, and so is Charles.