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Food for the soul and mind: Can you dig it?

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Owner Eric Jan Adema at his eatery, The Cast and Grind, on Monday. (Lebanon Voice/Harrison Thorp photos)

ROCHESTER - Eric Jan Adema wants to bring a little bit of the Beat generation from the '50s to Rochester, and so he's created a place where folks can be, well, creative.

The Cast and Grind is part coffeehouse, part restaurant, part family outing venue and part place to hang out.

Located next to Kelly's Gymnastics on North Main Street, the just-opened eatery features an eclectic, imaginative menu mostly cooked on cast iron, hence its name. (The "cast" part also comes from the fact there used to be a theater upstairs from the restaurant.)

But it's Adema's vision of the place as much as the vittles that may most help him find a niche among area residents hungry for something other than the typical burger and a few beers on a Friday night.

Adema worked as an executive chef in San Francisco and became intrigued by its Caffé Trieste, where the likes of Beat writer Jack Kerouac once roamed and sharpened his anti-establishment views. Through the decades poets, artists and celebrities gathered at the coffeehouse. It is said that Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay to The Godfather at Caffe Trieste.

Michael 'Red' Harrison serves up a freshly baked dish Monday morning at The Cast and Grind on North Main in Rochester.

Adema hopes The Cast and Grind will inspire creativity in much the same way. He hopes to have acoustic nights, poetry readings and skits in a comfortable back room complete with comfy sofas and chairs and a cozy atmosphere that would make a beatnik drool.

In the back room there's also a movie projector to watch films, board games and wi-fi. Adema said he's had whole families descend on his back room and play board games.

"How often do you see that these days," he quipped.

While the back room should fuel plenty of creativity and camaraderie, the restaurant out front is all about what Adema calls, "an eclectic mix of healthy, simple, playful, comfort food."

He has plenty of deli-inspired sandwiches and salads but his signature dishes are his skillet frittatas and his waffles. Frittatas are an Italian baked egg dish, much like an omelet except you bake it in the oven at high heat. (It cooks in about four minutes, Adema said.)

The waffles are cooked in a true waffle iron and can go anywhere from regular breakfast waffles, to dessert waffles like banana splits to savory waffles, like a monte cristo.

There are also vegan and gluten-free options.

The Cast and Grind is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, 8-8 on Saturday and 8-6 on Sunday.

It is hoped the cozy back room will be the setting for readings, music and camaraderie.

Once back room events like readings and open mike events come together, he'll stay open later, he said, perhaps till 10 p.m.

It is very appropriate that one of the first big events for the coffeehouse and eatery will be the showing on Thursday of "Confessions of a Burning man," a documentary film about the Burning Man Festival, held annually in Nevada, which highlights art, radical self-expression and self-reliance.

Adema's hopes for the direction of The Cast and Grind are all about self-expression just like the festival.

"We want to have a place where people can create and be inspired," he said. "It's all about inspiration, try things, try acting, do a skit, do a comedy routine. In San Francisco you have a place like this on every corner."

To check out The Cast and Grind click here.

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