Honeybaked Ham Cafè: Enjoy Real Food at Home

It seems to me that whenever you see a painting of an old-fashioned family dinner, the family will be seated at a large table with a white tablecloth covered with various dishes. Invariably the center of the table is either a roast turkey or a roast ham (many times with pineapple rings and cloves sticking out of it). What is it about this image of a ruddy ham with crisp roasted skin that conjures up notions of family, homecooked meals and feasts?

I think it has something to do with the fact that ham is deeply satisfying to eat. It is unapologetically fatty and delicious. Just as a pig is the symbol of gluttony and laziness, the ham is the symbol of honest to goodness, who cares about diet or cholesterol, food.

While pork was on the "other white meat" crusade, ham was always in the background, being served up beside eggs, in sandwiches and making glorious entrances on Easter Sunday. is a celebration of ham and the wonderful things that go with it.

HoneyBaked Ham is an actual product with a patented cooking and slicing process. It's a delicious, succulent, spiral sliced ham that always manages to be juicy, tender and a great balance of flavors. Savory on the inside with a slightly sweet crust, it's one of the finest hams you'll ever eat. The genius of the HoneyBaked Ham cafès and stores is that you can buy as much or as little ham as you would like.

The spiral hams come in various sizes or you can buy the ham by the pound. I took home a full pound of sliced ham and enjoyed the best ham and cheese sandwiches ever (havarti and brie are particularly good with this ham). I loved the extra thick slices. Somewhere between the thickness of a ham steak and deli sliced ham, these meaty pieces made for a serious sandwich.

There are breads available at the store or you can pop into at the other end of the strip mall. I picked up a six-pack of snowflake rolls which made for especially wonderful portion controlled sandwiches.

What is the perfect condiment for ham? Why, mustard of course. The cafèfeatures a wide array of mustards, including the gourmet offerings of Stonewall Kitchen. If you're a mustard junkie like me, that one set of shelves alone is the mecca of mustards. Mustards of every type, shape and color filled the shelves. I think mustard is one of the most versatile condiments around. Used alone to season meats, as a base for salad dressing or to liven up sauces, mustard really is a jack of all trades.

The Stonewall Kitchens Maine Maple Champagne Mustard was phenomenal. While you can't really taste the champagne outright, there was a complexity of flavor that combined elements of the sweet maple, the richness of the mustard and a light, slight fruitiness from the champagne flavor which resulted in a truly fantastic mustard. This is one of the best mustards for salty meats I have encountered. The myriad of flavors in the mustard pair well with savory meats. 

For dessert, I took home a carrot cake. It's no secret that carrot cake is my favorite and when the staff told me how delicious it was, I couldn't resist. The cake is tasty, moist and frosted with a thick layer of decadent cream cheese frosting. Within the cake there are a sprinkling of raisins and some chopped walnuts around the edges–both of which are classic carrot cake elements and added some interesting texture and flavor to the cake. For a previously frozen carrot cake, this was pretty darn good. If you want to thoroughly enjoy the cake, I warn you not to look at the calorie counts on the side of the box. 

While the HoneyBaked Ham Cafè does have a sandwich and salad menu, it was not the most obvious choice when entering the space. There are some cozy wooden tables with checkered tablecloths towards the entrance but it is set up mostly like a shop.

I perused the shelves of soup mix, cake mix, mustards, frozen desserts and eyed the large wall of refrigerated cases with every permutation of HoneyBaked Ham imaginable. The staff was friendly, knowledgeable and accommodating. They were patient with me as I spent more than the normal amount of time looking over the many goods in the store.

If you're a fan of all things ham, I would highly recommend this place. But even if you're not, there is an abundance of condiments, southern goods and desserts available here as well. I can't remember the last time I saw a "red beans and rice" kit or a "green chili" kit in a store. As the health trend has shifted away from low-cal and fat-free to low-carb and high protein, ham is emerging again as a favorable protein.

Stop into HoneyBaked Ham Cafè the next time you have a hankering for some really great ham, southern offerings, mustard or dessert. At the very least, you can guarantee it's all real food, prepared the old-fashioned way–the way it's been done for at least three generations. Don't have time to roast a ham in the oven for a few hours? Don't bother, the experts have taken care of it, brightly packaged in copper foil and ready to go. In the words of Julia Child, "I'm a card carrying carnivore" and this is my kind of place.