The Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory is just celebrating their first year and celebrate they should!
It’s a wonderful space where on the ground floor you’ll find comfy chairs, tables to work at with Earth Wind & Fuego and North River Roasters to keep you properly fed and caffeinated.
We stopped in for lunch to check out Earth Wind & Fuego. Their goal is to provide great lunches with a healthy twist or as Madeline Sabril Henriquez says it’s a “paradigm shift to what people typically associate with healthy food”.
Along with burgers, sandwiches and salads, her roots show though in what she calls Dominican fusion with and an Asopao de Pollo or chicken rice gumbo. The recipe comes from her great grandmother and has been handed down through the generations. Her mom taught her step by step how she made it.
I had it along with the suggested additions of avocado and garlic bread. It was delicious with chicken, rice, onion and pumpkin in a delicious broth. I plopped chunks of avocado in it which just made it better. I would have like to have it served a little hotter, but other than that, it was a perfect why-is-it-still-so-cold-out lunch.
The garlic bread was delicious, but if you think there is such a thing as too much garlic, you might want to ask them to go easy. The bread was so good that I never noticed it was gluten free until I looked up their website to write this piece!
Janet had the Sofrito Chicken sandwich. It was loaded high with a combo of marinated organic chicken breast with mozzarella, tomato, spinach and mayo on whole grain bread. The sandwich was served with a bag of sea salt chips which, in usual fashion, she layered onto her sandwich. She said the added crunch and saltiness of the chips made it the perfect.
To get their customers to drink more water, Earth Wind & Fuego offers a variety of infused waters. The day we were there it was mint, cucumber, lemon and ginger and it was great! Ask them what the daily flavors are. The water comes in an oversized plastic up that can be refilled that day and the following day.
If infused water isn’t your thing, a different type of infused water can be found at the North River Roasters counter.
They were the first to open in the Underwear Factory and established their café and roasters there. Feza Oktay has been a fixture at my CSA, at Poughkeepsie Farm project for a couple of years, establishing his brand by offering a coffee CSA, or as he calls it, Community Supported Coffee Roasting. He micro-roasts fair trade coffees every week for pick up at the shop, or other locations where members can pick up a 12-ounce bag weekly, or have it shipped to them.
I’m not a big coffee drinker, so am probably not the best judge, but the coffee I’ve had from them has been really good. They also offer teas, hot chocolate and other goodies which are all delicious and it's a great place to meet up with friends and/or have a casual business meeting.
You'll find Earth, Wind & Fuego and North River Roasters at the The Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory located at 8 North Cherry Street in Poughkeepsie.
Earth Wind and Fuego is open Monday through Friday from 11 AM-2 PM
North River Roasters is open Monday through Friday from 8 AM- 4PM and Sundays from 10-4. Check their Facebook page for special events and updated hours.
